Editors' Introduction

W ELCOME to volum e 35.1, the first issue m arking the thirty-fifth anniversary of Atlantis publication!
As readers may recall, our last issue (34.2, Spring 2010) featured articles produced by graduate students who had presented papers at the annual m eeting of the Canadian W omen's Studies Association/L'association canadienne des études sur les fem m esheld at Carleton University in 2009. Given the level of response to the call for papers, we were not able to include all of the accepted articles in the special topic issue. Hence, the first four articles offered here constitute the second part of our W omen's Studies Graduate Student issue, "Across the Generations in W om en's Studies," and similarly reflect the rich diversity of W omen's and Gender Studies scholarship in Canada.
The first two articles provide compelling analyses of literary works. In "Troubling Origins," Sharlee Reimer offers a re-reading of Larissa Lai's novel, Salt Fish Girl (2002), a fictional work that has been variously "read" by critics as "an Asian Canadian novel, a science fiction novel, a feminist novel, among others." Reimer, however, focuses her analysis on the ways in which Salt Fish Girl "renders incoherent" the concept of "authentic origins" and thereby, presents a political critique of "Enlightenment discourses that support racism , sexist, homophobic, and other m arginalizing practices." According to the author, this "interrogation of origins" in Lai's novel forms the basis for addressing the question of "coalition politics" - with "shared experience" rather than "shared origins" constituting "a basis for political action." Bianca Rus' "Rem apping the European Cultural Mem ory," focuses on Julia Kristeva's novel, Murder in Byzantium (2006). Through her analysis of this text which she argues offers a "rem apping of the European tradition" with "fem inine creativity and sensibility" at its core, Rus exam ines issues related to European identity, cultural m em ory, the

repression of the feminine and the maternal, and the relatively recent political debates over the inclusion of religious references in the European Union's new constitution. She maintains that the "revalorization" of the feminine, as explicated by Kristeva, offers the possibility for "rethinking European identity," thereby, "leaving the question of 'Europe' to be endlessly interrogated and reinvented."
The next two articles address internationalist discourses and graduate student funding in Canadian academic institutions. In "'Thinking Beyond Borders'?" Kate Cairns provides a critical analysis of one of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Breakfast Speaker sessions held during the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in 2008. Featured was a keynote address by University of British Columbia President Stephen J. Toope entitled, "Canadian Universities and a New Internationalism " and responses to it by mem bers of the SSHRC Governing Council. In interrogating a series of tensions that emerged in this session - global citizenship/ national identity, transnational social justice/ national academ ic com petitiveness in the international realm, "Canadian fem inist"/"m ulticultural" gender values -, Cairns calls for transnational fem inist critical interventions as a means to contest the increasingly dominant internationalist discourses within Canadian universities and their reliance on particular “articulations of nationalism , im perialism , and patriarchy." Roslyn Thom as-Long's "Producing the Graduate Student" provides a textual analysis of graduate student scholarship applications (Ontario Graduate Scholarships and SSHRC Fellowships) in an effort to investigate the institutional and discursive processes whereby "worthy" funding recipients, as workers and learners, are produced in Ontario universities. In addition to exam ining how "the student-subject" is disciplined and codified within an increasingly entrenched academic

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m arket model, Thomas-Long highlights the gendered, class-based, and racialized implications of these institutional processes and practices as well as resistances to them.
In the open topic section, the series of articles included examine a broad spectrum of fem inist topics from two m ain disciplinary perspectives - literature and history. The first three articles engage in feminist analyses of literary works. In "Trois exils, trois fem m es, trois Médées du Québec contemporain," Marie Carrière exam ines three Québec novels - New Medea (1974) by Monique Bosco, La Médée d’Euripide (1986) by Marie Cardinal, and Le livre d’Emma (2002) by Marie-Célie Agnant as contemporary re-writings of the myth of Medea and her act of infanticide. Cinda Gault's "Independence Versus Comm unity," offers an analysis of two key characters from Margaret Laurence's novels - Hagar in The Stone Angel (1964) and Stacey in The Fire Dwellers (1969) - and focuses on the incompatible desires for independence and comm unity in these characters' lives set in two different historical periods. As Gault concludes, "Hagar and Stacey are both wives and mothers, and although they fight against confining gender roles, they are trapped as m irror im ages of each other in the sam e conflicted space between what they need and what they get; Hagar is crippled by the costs of her independence, and Stacey by the costs of her family." In "Masculine Trans-form ations" Mandy Koolen undertakes a reading of Jackie Kay's novel, Trumpet (1999). W hile attentive to questions of gender, race, and nationality, Koolen argues that the text "prom otes acceptance of de-essentialized understandings of gender form ation" and provides "an unusual critique of transphobia by highlighting the ways that transphobia may negatively affect not only trans-people but also cis-people." In effect, according to Koolen, the novel "shows that the belief that gender identity should reflect one's natal sex may hinder the developm ent of potentially fulfilling relationships with trans-people and restrict the gender options and expressions of all people."
The final three articles explore various

historical topics - ranging from queer fem m es and the reiteration of misogyny within butchfemm e and radical-lesbian feminist comm unities in the 1950s to the 1980s, and the gendered career paths of Saskatchewan teachers over the course of the twentieth century, to the historical contours of Hungarian feminisms at the turn of the twentieth century. In "Uncompromising Positions," Anika Stafford tackles the issue of m isogyny in relation to fem m e identified lesbians in the context of North Am erican butch-fem m e bar culture in the 1950s and 1960s and in radical-lesbian feminist writings of the 1970s and 1980s. Drawing on firstperson narratives, psychoanalytic theory, and radical-lesbian fem inist critiques thereof, she highlights the ways in which "m isogynist discourse can be recreated even as it is challenged" within counter-cultural comm unities. June Corm an's "Gendered Career Paths for Saskatchewan Educators," offers a broad overview of the gendered career paths and divisions of labour in the teaching profession in Saskatchewan between 1905 and 2005. Drawing on oral interviews, statistical documents, and provincial government records, Corman is interested in tracing change over tim e, taking into account such variables as "composition of teachers, marital status, geographical distribution, salary scales and adm inistrative duties" as well as such factors as "economic cycles, national inventions in wars, changing gender expectations regarding appropriate fem ale and male behaviour, equal rights legislation and struggles to im prove the conditions of wom en and the conditions of working people provincially and nationally." In "Undoing the Collective Am nesia," Agnes Vashegyi MacDonald presents an overview of the history of Hungarian first-wave feminism, documenting the role of key women's organizations as well as of influential wom en poets and writers. W hile highlighting the specificities of Hungarian first-wave fem inism s, MacDonald also emphasizes that m any of the issues tackled were sim ilar to those of other W estern women's movements in the same period - education, suffrage,

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social reform , public health, labour conditions,

sexuality, and m arriage. W e end the issue with

an exam ination of recent historical

scholarship, in the form of Sikata Banerjee's

interview with the 2009 CW SA/ACEF Book

Prize winner, Norman Smith, author of

Resisting Manchuko: Chinese W omen W riters

and the Japanese Occupation (Vancouver,

University of British Colum bia Press, 2007).

In this issue, then, the editors of

Atlantis are pleased to highlight some of the

significant scholarly contributions being made

by W omen's and Gender Studies graduate

students in Canada. In addition, the articles

included in this issue continue to exemplify the

breadth, diversity, and vitality of fem inist

literary and historical scholarship in the country

and outside its borders. In keeping with the

international scope of the issue, we are

pleased to have as cover art a photo of the

European Court of Human Rights, Strasbourg,

France, taken by Brad Gibb.

W e wish to extend thanks to Michele

Byers for her work as the Atlantis book review

editor over the last few years. And we invite

you

to

go

to

the

Atlantis
th

website

to

see

m ore

about our 35 anniversary celebration

offerings – www.msvu.ca/atlantis.

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