University of British Columbia
National Inventories: Editing a Cambridge History
Bio
Eva-Marie Kröller (Professor), Staatsexamen (Freiburg), Ph. D. (Comparative Literature, University of Alberta), F.R.S.C.
Alexander-von-Humboldt Fellow 1987-88, Killam Research Prize 1995, Killam Teaching Prize 1999, Dean of Arts Award 2002, Killam Faculty Research Fellow 2009, Visiting Professor, John-F.-Kennedy Institute, Free University of Berlin, 1992, and Nordamerikaprogramm, University of Bonn, 2001, both Germany.
She specializes in comparative Canadian and European literature, with an emphasis on travel writing, literary history and cultural semiotics.
She has supervised students in English, Comparative Literature, Interdisciplinary Studies, Germanic Studies and Slavonics, and former students hold positions at the University of Ottawa, University of Moncton, the University of Lethbridge and other institutions.
She was Chair of UBC’s Programme in Comparative Literature 1990-1995, and she won the 2004 Distinguished Editor Award of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals for her work as Editor of Canadian Literature 1995-2003. She served as a juror on The Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction from 1999 to 2004, and will be serving on the 10th anniversary jury 2010-2011.
Current Research: With Coral Ann Howells (U of Reading/U of London), she recently published the Cambridge History of Canadian Literature (Cambridge UP, 2009). She is writing a biography of the McIlwraith family, and she is also researching a biography ofThomas B. Costain. For an interview about editing the Cambridge History of Canadian Literature, click here.
Abstract
Editing a volume in the “Histories” series of Cambridge University Press such as the “Cambridge History of Canadian Literature” requires coordination of numerous intellectual, political, and practical factors, all of which must converge on producing a legitimate inventory of national literature. This lecture discusses some of the challenges involved in this editorial enterprise.
