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Stage Turns

The Canadian Association for Theatre Research has cited Kirsty Johnston’s Stage Turns for an honorable mention for best book-length publication in English.

From the Ann Saddlemyer Awards Committee:

“Johnston’s Stage Turns: Canadian Disability Theatre marks a substantial intervention into Canadian theatre studies from the dynamic perspectives of disability arts and disability-led performance. The core of her study is composed almost entirely of ‘on the ground’ research of companies in Canada who are testing assumptions about disability through performance. Her choice of companies attests to the work of groups and organizations across the country using theatre to combat the systemic discrimination and medicalization of differently abled bodies. Johnston’s commitment to a wide range of primary material practices – which include dialoguing with artists, researching the mandates and structure of companies, evaluating funding policies, and analyzing productions and festivals – challenges readers to understand disability arts in Canada as a context-specific and politically inflected praxis. Disability and disability arts are not uniform concepts and categories in this study as demonstrated in Johnston’s original case studies of Workman Arts, Theatre Terrific, Stage Left, and Realwheels to name just a few groups. This textured materialist analysis is accompanied by detailed and thoughtful readings of Stage Left’s Mercy Killings or Murder: The Tracy Latimer Story and Workman Arts’ Vincent expanding the canon of Canadian theatre studies. Stage Turns seeks to understand how disability artists bring politics to the stage through stories that are compelling because they are vital sites of activism.”

 

To learn more about Stage Turns, or to order online, click here.


Finalists for Canada Prizes announced

Celebrating the best Canadian scholarly books across all the disciplines of the humanities and social sciences, the Canada Prizes are awarded to books that make an exceptional contribution to scholarship, are engagingly written, and enrich the social, cultural and intellectual life of Canada.

The following MQUP books are finalists for the 2013 Canada Prize in the Humanities.

 

The Natural History of the New World, Histoire Naturelle des Indes Occidentales

Edited and with an introduction by François-Marc Gagnon, with Nancy Senior and Réal Ouellet

Part art, part science, part anthropology, this ambitious project presents an early Canadian perspective on natural history that is as much artistic and fantastical as it is encyclopedic. Edited and introduced by François-Marc Gagnon, The Codex Canadensis and the Writings of Louis Nicolas showcases an intriguing attempt to document the life of the new world – flora, fauna, and aboriginal.

The Codex Canadensis and the Writings of Louis Nicolas shows how the wildlife and native inhabitants of the new world were understood and documented by a seventeenth-century European and makes available fundamental documents in the history and visual culture of early North America.

The Codex Canadensis won the 2012 Sir John A. Macdonald Prize, the 2012 Melva Dwyer Award and is a selected entry for the AAUP Book and Jacket Show.

More on The Codex Canadensis
Wilson_Mcgee2Thomas D’Arcy McGee, Volume 2
The Extreme Moderate, 1857-1868
By David A. Wilson

After a tumultuous career as a revolutionary in Ireland and an ultra-conservative Catholic in the United States, Thomas D’Arcy McGee moved to Canada in 1857, where he became a force for moderation and the leading Irish Canadian politician in the country. Determined that Canada should avoid the ethno-religious strife that afflicted Ireland, he articulated an inclusive, broad-minded nationalism based on generosity of spirit, a willingness to compromise, and a reasonable balance between order and liberty.

As someone who took an uncompromising stand against militants within his own ethno-religious community, and who attempted to balance core values with minority rights, McGee has become increasingly relevant in today’s complex multicultural society.

Thomas D’Arcy McGee, Volume 2 won the 2012 Canadian Political History Prize and was shortlisted for the 2012 J.W. Dafoe Book Prize. Thomas D’Arcy McGee, Volume 1 won the 2010 Raymond Klibansky Prize and is the co-winner of the 2008 James S. Donnelly, Sr. Prize.

More on Thomas D’Arcy McGee


Sandra Djwa is a Finalist for the 2013 Charles Taylor Prize

Djwa

McGill-Queen’s is delighted to announce that Journey with No Maps: A Biography of P.K. Page by Sandra Djwa is a finalist for the the 2013 Charles Taylor Prize for Non-Fiction. The Charles Taylor Prize recognizes excellence in Canadian non-fiction writing and emphasizes the development of the careers of the authors it celebrates. The winner of this year’s prize will be announced at a gala luncheon and awards ceremony at The King Edward Hotel in downtown Toronto on Monday, March 4th. More information here.

Congratulations, Sandra!

Read an excerpt from Journey with No Maps.

To learn more about Journey with No Maps, or to order online, click here
For media inquiries, contact MQUP publicist Jacqui Davis.  


 

The Merger Delusion finalist for Shaughnessy Cohen Prize

 

Djwa_journey

Peter Trent’s The Merger Delusion: How Swallowing Its Suburbs Made an Even Bigger Mess of Montreal is a finalist for the Writers’ Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.

About the Award

The finalists were selected by a jury of politician and political scientist Ed Broadbent, columnist Tasha Kheiriddin, and novelist and translator Daniel Poliquin. The prize will be presented in Ottawa at the Politics and the Pen Gala on March 6, 2013.

Now in its twelfth year, the prize is awarded annually to a non-fiction book that captures a political subject of interest to Canadian readers and enhances our understanding of the issue. The winning work combines compelling new insights with depth of research and is of significant literary merit. Strong consideration is given to books that, in the opinion of the jury, have the potential to shape or influence Canadian political life.

About The Merger Delusion

Powerless under the country’s constitution, Canadian municipal governments often find themselves in conflict with their provincial masters. In 2002, the Province of Quebec forcibly merged all cities on the Island of Montreal into a single municipality – a decision that was partially reversed in 2006. The first book-length study of the series of mergers imposed by the Parti Québécois government, The Merger Delusion is a sharp and insightful critique by a key player in anti-merger politics.

Peter Trent, mayor of the City of Westmount, Quebec, foresaw the numerous financial and institutional problems posed by amalgamating municipalities into megacities. Here, he presents a stirring and detailed account of the battle he led against the provincial government, the City of Montreal, the Board of Trade, and many of his former colleagues. Describing how he took the struggle all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, Trent demonstrates the ways in which de-mergers resonated with voters and eventually helped the Quebec Liberal Party win the 2003 provincial election.

As the cost and pitfalls of forced mergers become clearer in hindsight, The Merger Delusion recounts a compelling case study with broad implications for cities across the globe.

Click to read an excerpt from The Merger Delusion

 

To learn more about The Merger Delusion, or to order online, click hereFor media inquiries, contact MQUP publicist Jacqui Davis.  

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