Please Pass the Crumpets … er, Croissants: Teaching Québec in Victoria, British Columbia

Abstract

In Sanctioned Ignorance (2013), based on his doctoral thesis in comparative literature (University of Alberta), Paul William Martin provides an overview of “the teaching of the literatures of Canada.” Framed by Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of “the market of symbolic goods” and based on fieldwork which consists of in-depth interviews with professors in French and English university departments and an examination of university calendars, his work offers a fascinating “snapshot” of the teaching of our literatures. Over several pages, Martin investigates and comments upon the unique program that I run at the University of Victoria: the undergraduate degree in comparative Canadian literature, jointly offered by the departments of English and French. This highly specialized undergraduate degree concentrates on classic literary texts from English-speaking Canada and French-speaking Québec (with subfields in Québec cinema and Québec history and various courses on culture and literature: Cartier and Champlain; graphic novels; Métis, migrant, and Amerindian writing; fine art; and so on). In this article, I propose the advantages of such a program to the future of the study of Québec in Canada, examine the challenges I have faced in maintaining this program over the past twenty-five years, and reflect on the teaching of the literature and culture of Québec in an anglophone university in the city that is identified as being “more British than the British”: Victoria, British Columbia.