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Beyond the Nation?

Beyond the Nation?

Immigrants' Local Lives in Transnational Cultures

by Alexander Freund

Published by: University of Toronto Press

Imprint: University of Toronto Press

320 Pages, 161.00 × 237.00 × 27.00 mm, 10 Figures, 2 Maps

Hardcover
9781442642782
Published: October 2012

£53.00

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Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

Beyond the Nation? explores the lives of German-Canadian immigrants between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries — from the Moravian missionaries who came to Labrador in the 1770s to the German refugees who arrived in Canada after the Second World War. Internationally renowned historians of migration — including Dirk Hoerder and the late Christiane Harzig — detail these German-Canadians' experiences of immigration by investigating their imagined communities and collective memories.

Beyond the Nation? outlines how German-Canadians invented ethnicity under Canadian expectations, and provides moving case studies of how notable immigrant groups integrated into Canadian society. Other topics explored include literary constructions of German-Canadian identity, analyses of language use among these immigrants, and aspects of their lives that can be interpreted as transcultural and gendered. Transcending the master narrative of immigration as nation building, Beyond the Nation? charts a new course for immigration studies.

Introduction
Alexander Freund

Part I: Approaches: Transculturalism and Gender

Local, Continental, Global Migration Contexts: Projecting Life-courses in the Frame of Family Economies and Emotional Networks
Dirk Hoerder

Gender in German-Canadian Studies: Challenges from Across the Borders
Christiane Harzig

Part II: 18^th and 19^th Centuries: Religion, Politics and Culture

The Beginnings of the Moravian Mission in Labrador, 1771-1775
Kerstin Boelkow

Model Farmers, Dubious Citizens: Reconsidering the Pennsylvania Germans of Upper Canada, 1786-1834
Ross D. Fair

Germania in Canada – Nation and Ethnicity at the German Peace Jubilees of 1871
Barbara Lorenzkowski

A Weak Woman Standing Alone: Home, Nation and Gender in the Work of German-Canadian Immigration Agent Elise von Koerber, 1872-1884
Angelika E. Sauer

Part III: 20^th Century: Ethnicity and Nationalism

German-Quebecers, "German-Québécois", German-Canadians? The Double Integration of People of German Descent in Quebec
Manuel Meune

'What Church do you go to?' The Difficult Acculturation of German-Jewish Refugees in Canada, 1933-2004
Patrick Farges

'German Only in Their Hearts:' Making and Breaking the Ethnic German Diaspora in the 20th Century
Hans Werner

Germans into Europeans: Expellees in Post-war Canada
Pascal Maeder

Part IV: Literature and Language

Language Use and Language Acculturation: German Speakers in Kitchener-Waterloo
Grit Liebscher and Mathias Schulze

Re-Imagining German-Canadians: Reflections on Past Deconstructions and Literary Evidence
Myka Burke

Alexander Freund is an associate professor in the Department of History and the Chair in German-Canadian Studies at the University of Winnipeg.

‘This volume opens up important questions not just for the Canadian immigrant context and should be read by immigration scholars of different ethnic groups, periods, and world regions.’
- Stefan Manz (Society for German-American Studies, vol 47:2013)
‘Well written, grounded in solid research, and innovative in approach and perspective. Students in migration history, women’s and gender history, and in history of borders and borderlands would greatly benefit from reading this volume.’
- Yukari (Labour/Le Travail vol 77 spring 2016)