Counterblasting Canada

Gregory Betts is the Chancellor's Chair for Research Excellence at Brock University, the Director of Canadian Studies, and an Associate Professor in English. He is the author of Avant-Garde Canadian Literature: The Early Manifestations (UTP 2013). Paul Hjartarson is Professor Emeritus in English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta. His most recent book, co-authored with S.C. Neuman and EMiC UA, is The Thinking Heart: The Literary Archive of Wilfred Watson (UAP 2014). Kristine Smitka teaches in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta. To better understand the relationship between print and digital forms of publishing, her research focuses on the paperback book as a medium that defies the old vs. new media binary.

In 1914, Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound--the founders of vorticism--undertook an unprecedented analysis of the present, its technologies, communication, politics, and architecture. The essays in Counterblasting Canada trace the influence of vorticism on Marshall McLuhan and Canadian Modernism. Building on the initial accomplishment of the magazine Blast, McLuhan's subsequent Counterblast, and the network of artistic and intellectual relationships that flourished in Canadian vorticism, the contributors offer groundbreaking examinations of postwar Canadian literary culture, particularly the legacies of Sheila and Wilfred Watson. Intended primarily for scholars of literature and communications, Counterblasting Canada explores a crucial and long-overlooked strand in Canadian cultural and literary history. Contributors: Gregory Betts, Adam Hammond, Paul Hjartarson, Dean Irvine, Elena Lamberti, Philip Monk, Linda M. Morra, Kristine Smitka, Leon Surette, Paul Tiessen, Adam Welch, Darren Wershler.