Imagining the Canadian Agrarian Landscape: Prairie Settler Life Writing as Colonial Discourse

Authors

  • Shirley Ann McDonald Creative and Critical Studies University of British Columbia | Okanagan

Keywords:

prairie settlers, settler narratives, settlement myths, frontier, agrarian utopia

Abstract

 

Focusing on southern Alberta, my paper discusses the power of settler life writing to replace Indigenous conceptions of the prairies with colonial visions. Pioneer memoirs promote myths of the prairie as a fertile utopian environment or as a hostile frontier. By accentuating their labour and their social status, pioneer life writers support their claims of entitlement to colonize land.

 

Author Biography

Shirley Ann McDonald, Creative and Critical Studies University of British Columbia | Okanagan

Shirley McDonald is a graduate of the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta (2013), where she her doctoral project focused on the life writing of Anglo-Canadian prairie settlers. She is the recipient of two Roger Soderstrom Awards of Distinction, bestowed by the Alberta Historical Resources Foundation, and has published her research in Prairie Forum and The Australasian Canadian Studies Journal. She also has an invited article published in Gary Geddes: Essays on His Works (Guernica).

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Published

2015-12-03

Issue

Vol. 46 No. 4 (2015): October 2015

Section

Articles

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Copyright for articles published in this journal is retained by the Journal.