Spring/Summer 2005 - University of Toronto Press Publishing

NEW IN PAPERBACKFive-Part InventionA History of Literary History in CanadaE.D. BlodgettSociology and Mass CultureDurkheim, Mills, and BaudrillardPatricia CormackThe literary history of a nation is one of the main cornerstonesof its national identity. As a result ofCanada’s diverse cultural history, however, its literaryhistory is varied and, as E.D. Blodgett contends inFive-Part Invention, is composed of five parts –English Canada, French Canada, First Nations communities,Inuit communities, and immigrant communities– that work to create the whole. Using thecritical writing on constructing nationhood, Blodgettsuggests that Canadian literary histories can be usedto address the problem of nation and to examine howthe various ‘national’ groups making up Canadadevelop unique narratives that demonstrate their differentresponses to the notion of nationhood andtheir sense of place within Canada’s borders.The first such history of its kind in Canada,Five-Part Invention offers a means of reading ethnicdifference through cultural representations andaddresses the roots of Canada’s fragmented literaryhistory, speculating on the reasons why this traditioncontinues today. Original, intelligent, and provocative,the book brings an entirely new perspective tothe notion of literary history and will greatly influencethe study of Canadian literature in the future.E.D. Blodgett is a university professor emeritus withthe Centre d’études canadiennes at the Universityof Alberta.LITERARY STUDIES375 pp / 6 x 9 / January 2005Paper ISBN 0-8020-3815-8 £18.00 $27.95 COriginally Published in Cloth: March 2003In Sociology and Mass Culture, Patricia Cormackinvestigates the broad cultural significance and relevanceof academic sociology by examining itsongoing relationship with modernity and mass culture.Recognizing sociology’s participation in culture,she bids us to see the discipline as informingethical, epistemological, and pedagogical questions.Through an examination of the writings ofEmile Durkheim, C. Wright Mills, and JeanBaudrillard, Cormack illustrates how their formulationsof sociology as a cultural practice are rooted inthe very mass culture that the discipline studies.Central to her argument is a discussion of conceptualand rhetorical devices – ‘totems’ and ‘tropes’ –within social theory. Based on her reading of thethree theorists, Cormack posits that the social is adiscursive artefact, becoming over time a ‘socialfact,’ explaining and sustaining ordinary life.Sociology and Mass Culture is a textually orientedethnography that presents a theoretical investigationof the relationship between sociology andculture. It will be of great interest to those workingin sociology as well as critical and cultural theory.Patricia Cormack is an associate professor in theDepartment of Sociology and Anthropology at St.Francis Xavier University.SOCIOLOGY / CRITICAL THEORY144 pp / 6 x 9 / AvailablePaper ISBN 0-8020-8686-1 £15.00 $24.95 COriginally Published in Cloth: August 200216