The Canada–US Border

Culture and Theory

Edited by David Stirrup, Jeffrey Orr

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Explores the Canada–US border through a variety of theoretical, cultural and literary approaches

Includes chapters discussing the work of Wayde Compton
Includes chapters discussing Native American Literature and Border Theory
Features case studies of the Detroit River and Twin Towns along the Canada–US and Mexico–US Borders
Includes an afterword by Victor Konrad
Presents a chronology of events at the Canada-US Border

Moving beyond border studies paradigms dominated by the Mexico–US border, this collection aims to contextualise cultures and communities within a wider global understanding of border thinking. It builds on recent considerations of, and changes to, the cultural life of (and across) the Canada–US border, to prioritise theoretical reflections on representations, identities and policies. Approaching the border as a place, a theory, a practice and a process, this collection draws attention to the ways in which aspects of the Canada–US border itself (re)frame discussions of the borderlands as sites that continue to evoke, invoke and provoke ideas of nation and post nationalism; negotiation and imposition; resistance and refusal.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Series Editors' Preface

Introduction: Borderline Considerations, Conditions, Constructions and Contradictions, Jeffrey Orr and David Stirrup

1. Getting Played: Confession, Identity and Border Security, Jeffrey Orr

2. Border Media: Contributions to a Non-Linear History of the Detroit River, Vincent Manzerolle

3. Comparing Twin Towns along the US Southern and Northern Borders: A Historical Review, Pierre-Alexandre Beylier

4. Continental Liberty, Natural Reason, Survivance: Gerald Vizenor’s Sojourning in the Borderlands, Chris LaLonde

5. The Logics of Border Theory: Negotiating Sovereignties at the Impasse, David Stirrup

6. Grit and Grief: Wayde Compton’s 49^th Parallel Psalm as borderblur elegy, Tanis MacDonald

7. Border Hypotheses: Speculations on Territory and Sovereignty in Wayde Compton’s The Outer Harbour, Gillian Roberts

8. Afterword: Naming, Knowing and Negotiating Third Spaces of the Border, Victor Konrad

Chronology of the Canada–US Border

Author Biographies

Index

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Reviews

One of the first to establish an interdisciplinary, humanities-based perspective on the Canada–US border, the collection insists that this boundary needs to be taken seriously as its own object of study. In the current moment when international borders are becoming reinforced or newly established, the collection is necessary reading for those interested in border, Indigenous, settler colonial, American and Canadian studies.
– Claudia Sadowski-Smith, Arizona State University

About the Author

David Stirrup is Professor of American Literature and Indigenous Studies at the University of York, UK. He is the author of Visuality and Visual Aesthetics in Contemporary Anishinaabe Writing (Michigan State UP, 2020) and Louise Erdrich (Manchester University Press, 2010), and co-editor of Tribal Fantasies: Native Americans in the European Imaginary (Palgrave, 2012, w. James Mackay), Parallel Encounters: Culture at the Canada-US Border (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2013, w. Gillian Roberts), and Enduring Critical Poses: Beyond Nation and History (SUNY Press, 2021, w. Gordon Henry, Jr. and Margaret Noodin). He is Co-Principal Investigator of Métis: a Global Indigenous People, funded by the AHRC (2023–2025, with Chris Andersen); Indigenous Knowledges: a Digital Residency Exchange and Best Practices Pilot, funded by the AHRC-NEH (2022–2023, with Jennifer Jenkins); Beyond the Spectacle: Native North American Presence in Britain, funded by the AHRC (2017–2021, with Jacqueline Fear-Segal); and of the Culture and the Canada-US Border international research network, funded by the Leverhulme Trust (2012–2015, with Gillian Roberts). He is a founding editor of the open access journal of Contemporary Indigenous Literature, Transmotion.

Jeffrey Orr is Associate Professor of Digital Communication at the University of the Fraser Valley in British Columbia, Canada. His research interests include visual rhetoric, border studies and micro-rhetorical communication. His current research examines the rhetoric of governmental health communication, and public rhetoric pertaining to border policy on the Arctic.