Eastern Encounters: Canadian Women’s Writing about the East, 1867–1929

Eastern Encounters releases early Canadian women writers from a simple focus on autobiography and racial politics and interrogates their specific and sophisticated Asian influences. With a compelling reconstruction of historical context, Ganz has created perhaps the first book in a much-needed series that will revisit Canadian nationalism through the important cultural exchanges she examines. Though shaped with an Asian readership in mind, Eastern Encounters is an important work for all who wish to challenge the notion that Judeo-Christian traditions almost exclusively shaped early Canadian discourse.

• Shoshannah Ganz, Author

  Shoshannah Ganz is associate professor of English at Grenfell Campus, Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada. Her areas of interest include Canadian literature; Canadian literature and ecology; and the influence of Japanese literature and culture on Canadian writers and writing. Shoshannah has published on a number of Canadian authors and co-edited The Ivory Thought: Essays on Al Purdy with the University of Ottawa Press in 2008. Her current research looks at the way industry is figured in the literature of Canada and Japan and the impacts of industry on humans and the more-than-human environment. This research extends beyond the literary texts to explore the remaking and remarketing of the post-industrial landscapes of Japan and Canada as tourist destinations.