Veronica Thompson – författare

Long a topic of intricate political and social debate, Canadianidentity has come to be understood as fragmented, amorphous, andunstable, a multifaceted and contested space only tenuously linked totraditional concepts of the nation. As Canadians, we are endlesslydefining ourselves, seeking to locate our sense of self in relation tosome Other. By examining how writers and performers have conceptualizedand negotiated issues of personal identity in their work, the essayscollected in Selves and Subjectivities investigate emergingrepresentations of self and other in contemporary Canadian arts andculture. Included are essays on iconic poet and musician Leonard Cohen,Governor General award – winning playwright Colleen Wagner,feminist poet and novelist Daphne Marlatt, film director DavidCronenberg, poet and writer Hédi Bouraoui, author and media scholarMarusya Bociurkiw, puppeteer Ronnie Burkett, and the Aboriginal rapgroup War Party.As critic Diana Brydon has argued, contemporary Canadian writers are"not transcending nation but resituating it." Drawingtogether themes of gender and sexuality, trauma and displacement,performativity, and linguistic diversity, Selves andSubjectivities offers an exciting new contribution to themultivocal dialogue surrounding the Canadian sense of identity.

The current political climate of confrontation between Islamistregimes and Western governments has resulted in the proliferation ofessentialist perceptions of Iran and Iranians in the West. Suchperceptions do not reflect the complex evolution of Iranian identitythat occurred in the years following the Constitutional Revolution(1906 – 11) and the anti-imperialist Islamic Revolution of 1979.Despite the Iranian government's determined pursuance ofanti-Western policies and strict conformity to religious principles,the film and literature of Iran reflect the clash between a nostalgicpride in Persian tradition and an apparent infatuation with a moreEurocentric modernity. In Familiar and Foreign, Mannani andThompson set out to explore the tensions surrounding the ongoingformulation of Iranian identity by bringing together essays on poetry,novels, memoir, and films. These include both canonical and less widelytheorized texts, as well as works of literature written in English byauthors living in diaspora.Challenging neocolonialist stereotypes, these critical excursionsinto Iranian literature and film reveal the limitations of collectiveidentity as it has been configured within and outside of Iran. Throughthe examination of works by, among others, the iconic female poetForugh Farrokhzad, the expatriate author Goli Taraqqi, thecontroversial memoirist Azar Nafisi, and the graphic novelist MarjaneSatrapi, author of Persepolis, this volume engages with thecomplex and contested discourses of religion, patriarchy, and politicsthat are the contemporary product of Iran's long andrevolutionary history.