Koan Walker-Titus
Candidate, M.A. History
| Degrees: | B.A. of Arts (Saint Thomas University 2020-24) |
| Email: | Koanwalkertitus@cmail.carleton.ca |
Current Program (including year of entry): M.A. History (2024)
Supervisors:
Prof. Matthew Bellamy
Academic Interests:
My academic interests largely lie in understanding the nature of Canadian Identity through history. I am also interested more generally in the role sport has played in developing national identities particularly in a post-colonial setting.
Teaching Experience:
Employed as a Teaching Assistant at Carleton University (Early Medieval World).
Description of Research:
Over the past fifty years, star Canadian athletes have been venerated as national heroes through multiple forms of media and their achievements celebrated as unifying endeavours. With this said, my research aims to answer the question: How do sports evoke such a powerful sense of “Canadianness” amid the diverse and often conflicting interpretations of what it means to be Canadian?
Canada’s ambiguous identity has many roots. For some, the key fissure is regionalism. Others point towards the longstanding linguistic divide between the country’s French and English populations. Many Canadians today are keen to define themselves and their country in contrast to its colonial past, but Canada’s slow and gradual acquisition of independence makes this difficult, especially compared to the United States.
In effect, Canadians are experiencing an extended identity crisis. The only agreed upon defining Canadian characteristic, it would seem, is a non-identity. Canadians are far more willing to accept the constructed narrative of a unified identity when they are presented with a competing external national identity, namely through news articles and commercials. Hence, the key role of sport. Over the past 50 years, sport appears to have acted as a temporary binding agent for Canadians within a post-colonial context.
My project examines this phenomenon by focusing primarily on two of the Olympic Games held in Canada in 1976 and 1988 with the necessary attention given to its presentation through media outlets. My project draws upon important examinations of sport and identity in Canada that focus on, for example, commercialism, Indigenous resistance and resilience and gender and class dynamics, as well as it offers new insights by explicitly comparing French Canadian and English Canadian perspectives through my own experiences as a bilingual Canadian.
Overall, my study aims to understand the rhetorical strategies employed by settler Canadians at key moments throughout the past 50 years by examining the relationship between sport, national identity and media such as commercials, newspapers, and promotional ads.