The years after Newfoundland's confederation with Canada were ones of rapid social and economic change, as provincial resettlement and industrialization initiatives attempted to transform the lives of rural Newfoundlanders. At Memorial University in St. John's, a new generation of faculty saw the province's transformation as a critical moment. Some hoped to solve the challenges of modernization through their rural research. Others hoped to document the island's "traditional" culture before it disappeared. Between them they created the field of "Newfoundland studies." In Observing the Outports, Jeff A. Webb illustrates how interdisciplinary collaborations among scholars of lexicography, history, folklore, anthropology, sociology, and geography laid the foundation of our understanding of Newfoundland society in an era of modernization. His extensive archival research and oral history interviews illuminate how scholars at Memorial University created an intellectual movement that paralleled the province's cultural revival.
- ISBN10 1442637412
- ISBN13 9781442637412
- Publish Date 17 December 2015 (first published 16 December 2015)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 25 January 2021
- Publish Country CA
- Imprint University of Toronto Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 432
- Language English