Canadian
Review of American Studies 27:3, 1997
Articles:
NAFTA
in Transition: The United States and Mexico
Stephen J. Randall
Barriers
to Trade or Culture's Last Stand: Copyright Issues Under NAFTA
Paul D. Paton amd Christine J. Prudham
Politics
after Nationalism, Culture after "Culture"
Jody Berland
Are
National Cultures and Identities an Optional Extra?
Edelgard Mahant
Two
Poems
George Elliott Clarke
The
Atlantic Gulf of Comprehension: European Responses to American
Media Imperialism
David Hutchison
Canadian
Cultural Policy-Bridging the Gaps: Or the Cultural Activist-A
Laboratory Specimen
Alexander Crawley
Canadian
Cultural Policy in a Globalized World
Joyce Zemans
Commerce,
Culture, and Identity After NAFTA: Prospects at the Millennium
Mavor Moore
From
Nation to Generation: The Economics of North American Culture,
1930s-1990s
Caren Irr
'Electric
Reality,' Retribalization, and the Global Village: Japan's Econo-War
with the United States
Frank D. Zingrone
Post-NAFTA
Political Science in North America: Political Culture, Seymour
Martin Lipset, and Continental Divides'
Paul Rich and Guillermo De Los Reyes
Institutional
Complementarity and Canadian Identity
H.T. Wilson
Risking
Nationalism: NAFTA and the Limits of the New American Studies
Bryce Traister
'Rough
Trades': Charles Bernstein and the Currency of Poetry
Kevin McGuirk
Trademark
or Metaphor?: Two Case Studies of "Mixblood" Writing
in the United States Today
J.K. Donaldson
Guest
Editors' Note
This
special issue consists of a selection of papers from the thirty-second
annual conference of the Canadian Association for American Studies,
"Trade Marks: Commerce, Culture, and Identity After NAFTA."
It was held on 17-20 October 1996 in Toronto. The conference,
which was organized by Robert Adolph and Leslie Saunders, attracted
scholars and students in many disciplines from Canada, the United
States, Mexico, and Europe as well as participants from outside
the academy: poets, journalists, lawyers, and administrators.
The
purpose of the conference was to serve as a meeting place for
those interested in how the cultures of North America have been
affected by the sweeping economic changes of the nineties powered
by large corporations and governments commonly referred to as
"globalization" and of which the most characteristic
institution on this side of the Atlantic is the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The explicit or underlying theme
of most of the papers in the present volume is perhaps best summarized
by David Hutchison: "Does access to the culture of the United
States necessitate the weakening or destruction of the cultures
of other less economically powerful nations, and if it does, is
it a price worth paying?"
On
behalf of the Canadian Association for American Studies, the editor
would like to thank the following for their generous support of
the conference: The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
of Canada; The United States Information Service; and the President,
Vice-President Academic, Deans of Atkinson College and the Faculty
of Arts, and the Chair, Division of Humanities, all of York University.
This
special issue is dedicated to the memory of Catherine Keachie,
president for ten years of the Canadian Magazine Publishers' Association,
and at the centre of the struggle for a strong national cultural
policy described by many of the contributors in the following
pages.
I
am deeply grateful to the external readers of the manuscripts,
the encouragement of Christine Bold and Stephen Randall, and above
all to our copy editor and editorial assistant Eileen Delman.
Robert
Adolph
