Humanities

<i>Feisal G. Mohamed</i> and <i>Mary Nyquist</i> Milton andQuestions of History: Essays by Canadians Past and Present<i>Milton and Questions of History: Essays by Canadians Past and Present</i>. Edited by Feisal G. Mohamed and Mary Nyquist. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012. Pp. viii+426.

The Arthur Papers: Being the Papers, Mainly Confidential, Private, and Demi-Official, of Sir George Arthur, Last Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, in the Manuscript Collection of the Toronto Public Libraries. Edited by Charles R. Sanderson. Part I. (Toronto: Toronto Public Libraries and University of Toronto Press. 1943. Pp. 240. $1.00.) The Arthur Papers: Being the Papers, Mainly Confidential, Private, and Demi-Official, of Sir George Arthur, Last Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, in the Manuscript Collection of the Toronto Public Libraries. Edited by Sanderson Charles R.. Part I. (Toronto: Toronto Public Libraries and University of Toronto Press. 1943. Pp. 240. $1.00.) Carl Wittke Carl Wittke Oberlin College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 49, Issue 4, July 1944, Pages 712–713, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/49.4.712 Published: 01 July 1944

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook Reviews. By Paul Baxa.Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. Pp. xvi+232. $55.00. Roads and Ruins: The Symbolic Landscape of Fascist Rome. By Paul Baxa.Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. Pp. xvi+232. $55.00. War, Massacre, and Recovery in Central Italy, 1943–1948. By Victoria C. Belco. Toronto Italian Studies.Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. Pp. xii+574. $95.00.R. J. B. BosworthR. J. B. BosworthUniversity of Western Australia/Reading University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 83, Number 3September 2011 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/660335 Views: 27Total views on this site © 2011 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Reviewed by: Unexpected Affinities: Reading Across Cultures Steven Shankman (bio) Zhang Longxi . Unexpected Affinities: Reading Across Cultures. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. xv, 138 pp. Hardcover $29.95, ISBN 978-0-8020-9277-9. This is a wide-ranging book, written in a lively and accessible style, by a formidable scholar of cross-cultural comparative literature. As Zhang rightfully laments, today's academic world is far more comfortable with literary critics who adhere to the shibboleth of the absoluteness of cultural difference than with those who see connections between cultures, especially between cultures as different as China and the West. Zhang Longxi, in contrast, argues that "the point of reading across cultures is to reach a truly global vision of human creativity" because "only from such a broad perspective can we fully appreciate literary works and forms in all their diversities, and appreciate them not as isolated monads sealed off from one another, but as expressions of themes and ideas that are deeply connected, even though manifested in different languages and cultures" (p. 37). In the field of literary and cultural studies in our deeply historicizing academy these days, almost universally wary of universalism, Zhang's claim is both heterodox and welcome. Unexpected Affinities is based upon a series of Alexander Lectures Zhang delivered at the University of Toronto in 2005. On the one hand, the theme of Zhang's lectures—a vision of unity behind appearances of multiplicity—is true to the tradition of Northrop Frye, the Canadian critic who taught at the University of Toronto and whose archetypal approach to literary criticism saw all of literature as participating in a single grand vision, or system. On the other hand, Zhang's contribution is atypical of the Alexander Lectures, as he is the first critic from Asia to deliver them. As broad as was Frye's vision in elaborating his paradigm of archetypal criticism, the Canadian critic made no mention of any of the great classics of Asian literature. Chapter 1, "The Fallacy of Cultural Incommensurability," convincingly argues that East and West are not incommensurable opposites, that there are a great variety of opinions on many topics expressed in each of these two traditions, and that some figures from the East have more in common with their Western counterparts than they do with many of their fellow Easterners. One of these opinions expressed by some in both the Far East and the West is that East and West are incommensurable opposites. The fact that the case for incommensurability finds expression in both China and the West, Zhang argues, paradoxically invalidates that very case, since this contention is put forward by both Chinese and Western thinkers. In European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, the great comparatist E. R. Curtius, in arguing for the importance of seeing European literature as a whole, likened his own approach to taking an aerial photograph of the landscape he explores (European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask [New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1953], p. ix). Zhang chooses the image of standing back from a canvas (which [End Page 310] he adapts from Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961], p. 140) or high up on a ladder in order to gain an appropriate perspective on the abundant variety of the world's literary texts. Chapter 2, "'Faire une perle d'une l'arme': Reading Across Cultures," finds striking, remarkably detailed similarities in the way Chinese and Western European poets viewed their poems as oysters' pearls—things of beauty that are, in fact, produced, like the oyster's pearl, as a by-product of considerable discomfort and suffering. These affinities are indeed unexpected and, therefore, striking. Readers might, however, find less arresting and original the similarities Zhang finds between Eastern and Western views of life as a journey. In his famous essay "Plato's Pharmacy," Jacques Derrida showed how Plato used the word pharmakon to refer both to poison and to cure. In chapter 3, "'Within the infant rind of this weak flower': The Ambivalence of Poison and Medicine," Zhang extends and broadens Derrida's enquiry, finding this precise ambivalence not only in Western writers...

Reviewed by: Not This Time: Canadians, Public Policy, and the Marijuana Question, 1961–1975 T. Stephen Henderson Marcel Martel . Not This Time: Canadians, Public Policy, and the Marijuana Question, 1961–1975. University of Toronto Press. x, 278. $27.95 Marcel Martel's Not This Time is a well-researched case study of the complexities of creating public policy within Canada's federal government. Martel examines the debate surrounding marijuana, whether Ottawa should have continued to suppress its use through the criminal code or liberalized the laws. Throughout the period, marijuana remained classified as a narcotic, and its sale, possession, and use could result in criminal prosecution. From 1969, Crown prosecutors and judges had the discretion to punish possession of marijuana with a fine, and those convicted could apply later to have their criminal records expunged. In effect, this is a study of inertia in public policy as the federal government made no changes in the legal status of marijuana. Martel's approach to this long public policy debate appears straight-forward: he examines the rise of recreational drugs as an issue, driven by media coverage and the blossoming counterculture; he discusses a number of interest groups that attempted to shape the debate and influence legislation; he recounts the hearings of the Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs (the Le Dain Commission); and he explores the factors that kept Parliament from passing any legislation at all. Each section is deftly handled, but his analysis of interest groups is both the strongest and weakest part of the book. It is clear that the persistent opposition of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to any change in Canada's drug laws, the ambiguous position on marijuana taken by the Canadian Medical Association, and the failure of student groups to build alliances with any external interest group opened the door for Ottawa to choose delay and inaction. Martel's account of the methods and effectiveness of these interest groups is solid, as is his look at the influence senior bureaucrats could wield within government. His biggest challenge – one he meets with mixed success – is the category of 'youth.' By the late 1960s the public perceived marijuana as a drug of youth, not attached to a particular class or ethnic group. And it is probable, as Martel suggests, that the thought of middle-class kids going to jail and carrying a lifelong criminal record for smoking a joint spurred many Canadians to favour a liberalization of drug laws. Martel's methodology is tied to interest groups and bureaucratic processes, and 'youth' does not fit neatly into this pattern. He chooses to focus on university students and their tactics of political activism, including symposiums, petitions, and referenda. On the one hand, this illustrates some of the reasons for the failure of the liberalization movement; university groups had constant turnover of membership and they [End Page 404] rejected almost everything they heard from the Establishment, even when it could lend support to their cause. Youth, however, were politically active beyond the bounds of student unions, and one could make a case that smoking pot was a political act, as Doug Owram suggests in Born at the Right Time: A History of the Baby-Boom Generation (1996). More importantly, the majority of youth never went to university and they are largely absent from this book. Martel mentions the 'villages' of Gastown, Yorkville, and the carré Saint-Louis, but more attention is paid to the University of Toronto's 1967 Perception symposium than to these public spaces where laws were flouted and a marijuana-friendly lifestyle was on display. Beyond this limitation in his methodology, Martel has produced a very strong study of how the public and the state grapple with a divisive issue. His primary and secondary research is thorough, and his analysis of how much or little influence an interest group can wield is instructive. Finally, Martel's account of the Le Dain Commission and its context is exemplary. This book is recommended to those interested in the development of public policy and legislation on non-medicinal drugs. T. Stephen Henderson Henderson, Department of History and Classics, Acadia University Copyright © 2008 University of Toronto...

Journal Article Surgery of the Hand. Some Practical Aspects Get access Surgery of the Hand. Some Practical Aspects. By John Harold Couch, M.A., M.B., F.R.C.S. Edin., Department of Surgery, University of Toronto and Toronto General Hospital. Foreword by W. E. Gallie, M.D., F.R.C.S. Eng., Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto. Cloth. Price, $1.50. Pp. 147, with 35 illustrations. Toronto: The University of Toronto Press, 1939. Physical Therapy, Volume 20, Issue 4, July-August 1940, Page 251, https://doi.org/10.1093/ptj/20.4.251b Published: 01 July 1940

African Studies in Income and Wealth (Edited by L. H. Samuels. International Association for Research in Income and Wealth. London, Bowes & Bowes, 1963. 45s.) New South Wales Politics, 1901–1910 by Joan Rydon and R. N. Spann (Sydney Studies in Politics, 2. Cheshire, Melbourne, 1962, for the Department of Government and Public Administration, University of Sydney. A15/‐) Professor John Meisel's The Canadian General Election of 1957 (Toronto, University of Toronto Press; London, Oxford University Press; 1962; 52s.) The Alignment of Political Groups in Canada, 1841–1867 by Paul G. Cornell (Toronto, University of Toronto Press; London, Oxford University Press; 1962, 38s) Mr. W. F. Dawson Procedure in the Canadian House of Commons (Toronto, University of Toronto Press; London, Oxford University Press, 1962, 48s.) Canada, the Commonwealth and the Common Market, edited by W. B. Cunningham, (Montreal, McGill University Press, 1963, 16/‐) Professor Thorburn's Politics in New Brunswick (Toronto, Toronto University Press; London, Oxford University Press, 1961, 48s.) Politics and Society in India edited by C. H. Philips, the Director of the School of Oriental and African Studies, provides a valuable start for the School's new series of Studies in Modern Asia and Africa (London, Allen & Unwin, 1963. 25/‐). Sociology: A Guide to Problems and Literature (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1962. 32s.) New Zealand Politics in Action: the 1960 General Election, R. M. Chapman, W. K. Jackson and A. V. Mitchell (London, Oxford University Press, 1962. 35/‐) The New Zealand Constitution (Clarendon Press: Oxford University Press, London, 1962, 25/‐) My Life (Cambridge University Press, 1962. Cloth 30/‐, Paper 18/‐) Constitutional Problems of Federalism in Nigeria, (Lagos, Times Press, 1961. 35/‐) The Nigerian Political Scene; Edited by Robert O. Tihnan and Taylor Cole (Duke University Press, Durham, N.C., and Cambridge University Press, London, 1962; 80s.). Racial Themes in Southern Rhodesia by Cyril A. Rogers and C. Frantz with a Foreword by Sir Robert C. Tredgold (Yale University Press, 1962, 54s) White Settlers in Tropical Africa by Lewis H. Gann and Peter Duignan (London, Penguin African Series, 1962, 3/6d.) Out in the Mid‐day Sun by Boris Gussman (London, George Allen and Unwin, 1962, 21s.) Zambia Shall Be Free by Kenneth Kaunda (London, Heine‐mann, 1962, I2s.6d.).

Humanities

"Bernard Shaw and Gilbert Murray, edited by Charles A. Carpenter." University of Toronto Quarterly, 85(3), pp. 512–513

Humanities

Humanities

Breughel’s Canada

Contested Communities

Reviewed by: Babies Without Borders: Adoption and Migration Across the Americas Laura Briggs Karen Dubinsky. Babies Without Borders: Adoption and Migration Across the Americas. New York: NYU Press, 2010; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. 204 pp. $21.95 sc. The two publishers of this excellent book on the politics of transnational and transracial adoption in the Americas—University of Toronto and New York University—gave it very different covers. The Canadian version has a baby stamped with a bar code, a provocative image used in a Guatemalan campaign against transnational adoption. The U.S. version of the cover is a photograph that is less readily identifiable—tiny colored glass figures of a roller skate, a cowboy boot with spurs, and a stylized cow’s skull. While the image invokes ways of life across the Americas, it turns out that these are children’s toys unearthed from one of the clandestine mass graves that marked Guatemala’s armed internal conflict, the aftermath of the massacres by military and paramilitary groups. On the one hand, these images reflect the very different political contexts of adoption debates in Canada and the U.S.—Canada, an early adopter of the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, halted adoptions from Guatemala in 2000, believing the country’s adoption system to be rife with abuse (shortly after Dubinsky adopted her son from there), while the U.S. has had [End Page 289] no comparable, forceful (or alarmist, to its detractors) discourse about human rights in adoption. Ironically, though, the two covers also figure two of the global symbols that Dubinsky says we need to avoid if we want to grapple honestly with the complexity of transnational adoption: the “kidnapped/rescued baby” and the “missing baby” who stands as a symbol of past wrongs or unrealized future hopes. Together with the transracially adopted “hybrid baby,” she argues, these figures organize fierce political discourses about nations, politics, multiculturalism, and children, but do little to help us understand the heterogeneous contexts in which individual children come to be adopted, and even less about the uneven distribution of the innocent, idyllic childhood that a handful of nations have, over the last century, come to believe themselves to be the guarantors. The book begins by exploring the kidnapped baby through stories about the United States and Cuba, from the Pedro/Peter Pan exodus of the Cold War to the Elían González conflict of 1999–2000 that arguably cost the Democrats the White House. From the end of 1960 until the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, about 1400 Cuban children came to the United States largely under the auspices of the Welfare Bureau of Miami. The strength of Dubinsky’s account of this event is her focus on its transnational nature, and she moves back and forth between Cuba’s account of Peter Pan and Miami’s Pedro Pan. Cuba saw parents duped by CIA rumors that their children would be nationalized, hence Peter—the important actors were in the United States. Lest that sound like Cuban Cold War hysteria or a bad movie plot, let us hasten to note that historian María de los Angeles Torres, through a Freedom of Information Act request, confirmed that the CIA really did spread rumors about Castro’s plans that sought to encourage Cuban parents to send their children to the United States. Pedro Pan, in contrast, emphasized Cuban parents’ decisions not to raise their children in a vastly changed Cuba. As one grown Pedro Pan émigré observed sadly, “They sent us away from Cuba so that we would continue to be like them” (38). Finally, though, as Dubinsky helpfully observes, neither kidnap nor rescue narratives really do justice to the complexity of the decisions in these families, much less nations, and these sweeping stories ultimately confuse more than they illuminate. The second section of the book contrasts two kinds of interracial adoption in Canada: that of Black children and that of Native children. Stories about both kinds of adoption were articulated within a narrative of Canadian national multiculturalism (in contrast to U.S. racism, at least with respect to Black children), but Dubinsky’s account suggests that they were not...

Reviewed by: My Life in Crime and Other Academic Adventures Roderick A. Macdonald (bio) Martin L. Friedland. My Life in Crime and Other Academic Adventures. University of Toronto Press. xii, 514. $45.00 Some professors accomplish much in a short career. Some have a long career, but accomplish little. Fortunately for Canadian law and letters, Martin Friedland has enjoyed a remarkable half-century scholarly career during which he has continuously accomplished much. Even more fortunately, he has recorded and interpreted this career with his habitual insight, grace, and felicitous prose. This is no string of anecdotes, although there are anecdotes aplenty. Friedland weaves the personal, the professional, the scholarly, the descriptive, and the analytical into a seamless narrative of one extraordinary life in the law. I read this memoir with the passion of a forensic scientist, for my own career has often been punctuated by transformative encounters (both in person and mediated by text and context) with Marty. How, I thought, would he understand and articulate the broader circumstances of those encounters? The first time I ‘met’ Martin Friedland, the professor, was in late August 1969, when I acquired Cases and Materials on Criminal Law and Procedure, the assigned text for my first-year criminal law course at Osgoode Hall. Even before my initial class, I had thumbed the volume. The use of materials, including a police photograph, from a single case (R. v. Truscott) to illustrate the dynamics of the criminal trial process was only the first of Marty’s many innovative contributions over the years to law teaching. Five years later, Marty was ensconced as dean of Law at the University of Toronto, in which capacity he hosted a lunch for me and the other members of the LL.M. class of 1974. In turn we replied to his query as to how we had passed the summer. When I said that I had worked at a [End Page 449] summer camp north of Toronto, he left me with a quip about the peculiarities of institutional life (not least in universities) that I have often used since: ‘The whole world is just a big summer camp.’ This book bears testimony to the fact that, in the Toronto of our youth, summer camp is where we met many of the most important people in our lives (including our spouses) and where we learned about the world. A decade later I saw Marty in action again as a member of a committee he chaired that was meant to develop a project in law for the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. While I became formally involved with the project only some years later, that early setting gave me insight into why Marty has been asked so often to take on high-profile and highly sensitive committees of inquiry. Marty is a great listener, is highly organized, breaks projects into manageable stages, does not lose the thread, writes magnificently, and delivers what he undertakes to accomplish on time – all qualities reflected in the various chapters of this chronicle. The enrolment of his son Tom at the McGill Law Faculty during my deanship, and a visit to Montreal to promote his book, The Case of Valentine Shortis, gave me the opportunity to invite Marty to one of our faculty retreats. As professors and colleagues we benefited greatly from his insight into contemporary challenges of pedagogy and scholarship at the dawn of the electronic era. Few academics can match his knowledge, wisdom, and commitment to the noble enterprise that is legal education in Canada. Indeed, the further one gets in this memoir the greater is one’s admiration for the working methods of a scholar who, while truly committed to conventional law, has made an enormous contribution to interdisciplinarity in legal inquiry. As the above recital intimates, it has been an enormous privilege for me to have profited from Marty’s counsel in so many and such diverse settings. And in reading Marty’s own account of his career I realize that it is studded with dozens of like moments in every dimension, involving hundreds of students and colleagues whom he touched as deeply. In every chapter the reader catches a different glimpse of...