Sovereignty, Interrupted: The Contested Legacies of Montreal's Quiet Revolution

Catalog description

What does it mean to build and defend culture, sovereignty, and social democracy? What does it feel like to live in a bilingual city? How can historically oppressed and marginalized peoples reckon with their own continued culpability in the oppression of others? What are the continuing legacies of the upheavals of the 1960s? The course explores these questions in contemporary Montréal, Québec’s largest and most diverse city and cultural capital. During the Quiet Revolution, ordinary Quebeckers declared that they would be “maîtres chez nous,” masters in our own house, as opposed to English Canadians, Catholic priests, or autocratic politicians. They remade the city politically, culturally, and architecturally and created modern—secular, social democratic, and nationalist—Québec. This class will take an ethnographic and historical approach to Montréal, using the city as a site to explore questions of nationalism, identity, feminism, art, and globalization. We will explore Montréal through scholarship, visual and performance art, novels, and film. Topics will include national liberation struggles of Québécois and other ethnic groups; bilingualism; nationalized health and child care; visual sovereignty; Expo 67; and Indigenous—specifically Kanien’kehá:ka—sovereignty and nationhood. We may consider work by Denys Arcand, David Austin, Céline Dion, Sean Mills, Alanis Obamsawin, Anne-Claire Poirier, Moshe Safdie, and Skawenatti. The course will be delivered in English, and French is not required.