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Topia: A Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies 1, No. 1 (Spring). Montreal: McGill University, 1997. 110 pp.
A recent posting on the cultural studies listserv regarding Ken Finkelman's television programs suggested a need for a separate Canadian cultural studies listserv, then reflected that Canadians, Australians, and other "non-U.S.-ans" have much in common in their respective relationships to "American" culture. In reply, someone suggested that Topia serves as an excellent print forum for Canadian cultural studies. On the basis of the first issue of Topia, this last point seems accurate. Amidst a flurry of cultural studies journals over the last few years Topia offers greater visibility to academics who are normally subsumed under "American" scholarship, with "a positive but not" exclusive commitment to work on Canadian perspectives, issues and traditions."
Two of Topia's original editors were Jody Berland and Will Straw, whose names are well known to cultural studies scholars everywhere (although their nationality may not be), which suggests that we are not talking about a minor publication from the intellectual periphery. Moreover, Topia's aims are not merely provincial: its editorial aims "to create a dialogue among researchers in other Commonwealth countries and the Americas, who share a concern with cultures, nationalities, technologies, and the politics of space."
But herein lies the dilemma for a journal which aims to foster "Canadian perspectives" and the transnational exchange of contemporary cultural studies, an ambivalence captured in the listserv debate. On the one hand, there is the desire to foreground a specifically Canadian cultural studies; on the other, there is a recognition that national experience is not so specific. On the one hand, there is a need to foster local academics; on the other, there is a desire to be...