The West and Beyond: New Perspectives on an Imagined Region (review)

Reviewed by: The West and Beyond: New Perspectives on an Imagined Region R. Douglas Francis The West and Beyond: New Perspectives on an Imagined Region. Alvin Finkel, Sarah Carter, and Peter Fortna , eds. Edmonton: AU Press, 2010. Pp. XXV, 435, $29.95 paper In the introduction to The West and Beyond, Sarah Carter recalls her attendance at one of the early Western Canadian Studies conferences that ran annually from 1969 to 1990 and were hosted by the University of Calgary until the early 1980s. She notes the 'tremendous sense of energy and vitality' (xii) that pervaded the conference. The editors point out that the conference, 'The West and Beyond: Historians Past, Present and Future,' held at the University of Alberta in 2008, from which the papers were selected for this volume, was an attempt to revive the Western Canadian Studies conferences. Thus, a useful way to review The West and Beyond is to compare it to earlier conference proceedings to see continuity and change in Western Canadian historiography. The volume of the first Western Canadian Studies conference, entitled Prairie Perspectives, was edited by David P. Gagan and published in 1970. Gagan identified three objectives of the conference and the published papers: interdisciplinary, appealing to a community beyond the academy, and enriching Western Canadian historiography. The focus was on the Prairie provinces and had a common theme: an examination of 'the origins and nature of the Prairie regional identity' (3). There was an assumption that such an identity existed; it needed only to be revealed, and that was the purpose of the conference proceedings. As one who attended a number of these conferences and co-organized one of them, I recall an excitement that infused these conferences and the published proceedings - contributors believed [End Page 549] that they were bringing to life a region that had long been undervalued and neglected. The West and Beyond collection of articles is less interdisciplinary than earlier conference proceedings. As well, few of the papers will appeal to a non-academic audience, being highly technical in approach. But the papers do make an important contribution to Western Canadian historiography, albeit of a nature different from that of earlier conference proceedings, as I will note later. The volume lacks a common theme, and there is not the sense of something new and exciting being revealed about the West, as was the case with earlier conference proceedings. If these are some of the possible limitations of the volume, there is much that is commendable. The editors are to be congratulated for including a number of essays by doctoral students or newly minted PhDs, thus reflecting the most recent trends in research and historical writing. The volume also includes articles on groups that have been neglected or only marginally dealt with in earlier Western Canadian historiography: First Nations, working class, visible minorities, women, and gays and lesbians; indeed, 60 per cent of the articles in the volume are devoted to these minority groups. Of particular note is a whole section devoted to First Nations as well as one of the plenary papers: Winona Wheeler, 'Cree Intellectual Traditions in History.' The focus of the volume is on social and cultural history. The approach is decidedly postmodern: challenging or deconstructing conventional meta-narratives, focusing on minorities or what postmodernists call 'Others,' and looking at Western Canadian society from a global rather than a national or regional perspective. It is in approach and focus that The West and Beyond: New Perspectives on an Imagined Region differs so markedly from earlier Western Canadian Studies volumes. Contrary to what the title of the volume might imply, it is not the region that is being revealed but rather recent trends in historical writing. The fact that the evidence these historians use to illuminate their theories or to illustrate their methodology is Western Canadian is secondary; what the authors want to show is their knowledge of recent trends in historical writing, particularly a postmodernist approach and perspective. The contrast is most striking in comparing Robert Wardhaugh's article 'W.L. Morton, Margaret Laurence, and the Writing of Manitoba' with Lyle Dick's 'Vernacular Currents in Western Canadian Historiography: The Passion and Prose of Katherine Hughes...

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