The central focus of Reclaiming Canadian Bodies is the relationship between visual media, the construction of Canadian national identity, and notions of embodiment. It asks how particular representations of bodies are constructed and performed within the context of visual and discursive mediated content. The book emphasizes the ways individuals destabilize national mainstream visual tropes, which in turn have the potential to destabilize nationalist messages.
Drawing upon rich empirical research and relevant theory, the contributors ask how and why particular bodies (of Estonian immigrants, sports stars, First Nations peoples, self-identified homosexuals, and women) are either promoted and upheld as “Canadian” bodies while others are marginalized in or excluded from media representations. Essays are grouped into three sections: Embodied Ideals, The Embodiment of “Others,” and Embodied Activism and Advocacy. Written in an accessible style for a broad audience of scholars and students, this volume is original within the field of visual media, affect theory, and embodiment due to its emphasis on detailed empirical and, in some cases, ethnographic research within a Canadian context.

Karen McGarry is an assistant professor of anthropology at McMaster University, Hamilton. She previously held positions in the anthropology departments at Trent and York universities. Broadly speaking, her research focuses upon two areas of interest: the anthropology of sport, with an interest in high-performance and competitive sport; and educational anthropology. She is a co-author of Cultural Anthropology: A Problem-Based Approach (2013), and her work has appeared in Genders, The Gendered Society Reader, Reviews in Anthropology, The Sport Journal, and elsewhere.

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Lynda Mannik is the author of Canadian Indian Cowboys in Australia: Representation, Rodeo and the RCMP at the Royal Easter Show, 1939 (2006) and Photography, Memory and Refugee Identity: The Voyage of the S.S. Walnut, 1948 (2013). Additional scholarship has appeared in Visual Studies, Memory Studies, and Journalism Studies. She has been a visiting assistant professor at Trent University, Peterborough, and Memorial University, St. John’s. She currently teaches anthropology at York University in Toronto. Her research focuses on visual media, memory, and affect in various photographic realms.

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