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In the National Interest: Teaching About Canada and the Environment

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The Construction of Canadian Identity from Abroad

Part of the book series: Canada and International Affairs ((CIAF))

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Abstract

This essay focuses on the value of environmental history in teaching Canadian Studies abroad from Denmark and especially the United States; I also reflect on intellectual and emotional experiences of researching Canada from away. This suits thinking about “externality” by illuminating and challenging the frame of the national project. Environmental history asks us to consider how different ideas of the “national interest” have driven human actions and environmental transformation, and to acknowledge the development ethos so embedded in state-building. This pulls us beyond borders to consider continental ecologies and dynamics, particularly valuable in teaching the colonial era. This study affirms the need to examine precisely that country—Canada—where geography and history have been so entwined, and where so many of the issues of concern to sustainability can be found.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank especially the editors of this collection for the invitation to join this project, and for the opportunity to articulate my experiences, both personal and professional, as an emigrant, really for the first time. Thanks, too, to colleagues at the Robarts Centre at York University in Toronto, and the “Ongoing Conversation” writing group, for their thoughts on earlier drafts of this piece.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA, USA

    Claire Campbell

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  1. Claire Campbell
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Correspondence to Claire Campbell .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. State University of New York at Plattsburgh, Plattsburgh, NY, USA

    Christopher Kirkey

  2. School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Richard Nimijean

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Campbell, C. (2022). In the National Interest: Teaching About Canada and the Environment. In: Kirkey, C., Nimijean, R. (eds) The Construction of Canadian Identity from Abroad. Canada and International Affairs. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86574-0_3

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