Buchanan, Roberta 1937-

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Buchanan, Roberta 1937-

PERSONAL:

Born May 18, 1937, in Uitenhage, South Africa; daughter of Robert C. (a civil engineer) and Dorothy Jeanate (a homemaker) Buchanan. Education: University College of North Staffordshire (now Keele University), B.A. (with honors), 1960; University of Birmingham, Ph.D., 1981. Politics: New Democratic Party. Religion: Anglican. Hobbies and other interests: "Performance poetry."

ADDRESSES:

Home—St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. Office—Department of English, Memorial University of Newfoundland, P.O. Box 4200, St. John's, Newfoundland A1C 5S7, Canada; fax: 709-737-4528. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Academician. University of Birmingham, Shakespeare Institute, Birmingham, England, research assistant, 1962-64; Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada, lecturer, 1964-70, assistant professor, 1970-76, associate professor, 1976-86, professor of English, 1986-2002, Women's Studies Programme supervisor, 1988-91, professor emeritus, 2005—.

MEMBER:

St. John's Status of Women Council (member of steering committee, 1983-85, 1989-90), Provincial Advisory Council on the Status of Women, Popular Culture Association (area chair, 1988-89), Newfoundland Writers' Guild (vice president, 1993-95), Writers Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador (founding member), Memorial University of Newfoundland Women's Studies Council, Writers' Union of Canada, Newfoundland Historical Society, Champlain Society.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Government of Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Competition, prize for non-narrative poetry, 1971, prize for nonfiction prose, 2006; Writers' Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador, prize for poetry, 1988.

WRITINGS:

(Editor and author of introduction) Ars Adulandi, or, The Art of Flattery, Ulpian Fulwell, Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik (Salzburg, Austria), 1984.

I Moved All My Women Upstairs, Breakwater (St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada), 1998.

(Editor and author of introduction, with Bryan Greene and Anne Hart) The Woman Who Mapped Labrador: The Life and Expedition Diary of Mina Hubbard, biography by Anne Hart, McGill-Queen's University Press (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), 2005.

(Editor, with Georgina Olivere Queller and Geraldine Chafe Rubia) A Charm against the Pain: An Anthology of All New Writing from Newfoundland, introduced by Joan Clark, Pennywell Books (St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals and journals, including Canadian Dimension, St. John's Status of Women Newsletter, Arts Information, Culture and Tradition, Web, Water Lily, Women's Policy Office Newsletter, Newfoundland Quarterly, Them Days, Cum Grano, Scythe, Atlantis, Sage Woman, TickleAce, Word, Canadian Literature, Newfoundland and Labrador Studies, and Spokeswoman.

SIDELIGHTS:

Roberta Buchanan is an academician and poet. Buchanan completed her undergraduate studies in English literature and philosophy in 1960 at University College of North Staffordshire (now Keele University). Buchanan worked as a research assistant at the University of Birmingham's Shakespeare Institute from 1962 to 1964. She then accepted a position as a lecturer at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. Buchanan remained at the university until retiring in 2002 and becoming professor emeritus.

Buchanan wrote and edited a number of books of literary criticism, poetry, and anthologies throughout her career, her first being Ars Adulandi, or, The Art of Flattery in 1984. She also published I Moved All My Women Upstairs in 1998 and A Charm against the Pain: An Anthology of All New Writing from Newfoundland. Her 2005 publication, The Woman Who Mapped Labrador: The Life and Expedition Diary of Mina Hubbard, was written with Bryan Greene and Anne Hart. It highlights the life of Mina Hubbard, a Canadian explorer who became the first white woman to cross Labrador.

Writing in Arctic, Joanna Kafarowski called The Woman Who Mapped Labrador an "impressive and beautifully designed volume." Kafarowski added that with its publication, "Mina Hubbard has rightfully earned her place amongst the most daring and resourceful of explorers." Alison Dyer, writing in a Beaver: Exploring Canada's History review, found the diary of Hubbard's expedition "carefully annotated by Buchanan and Greene." Dyer concluded: "Handsomely produced, The Woman Who Mapped Labrador is a fertile cross-disciplinary collaboration that keeps within the boundaries of academic accuracy. It is also, more importantly, highly readable. In crystallizing Mina Hubbard's achievements it rightfully places her in the annals of important Canadian explorers."

Roberta Buchanan told CA: "My writing, both creative and academic, has been strongly influenced by the feminist movement. The vibrant feminist community in St. John's (Newfoundland) in the 1970s and 1980s, revolving around the Women's Centre, gave the impetus, encouragement, and enthusiastic audience for my first forays into performance poetry, and the publication of a very feminist book of poems, I Moved All My Women Upstairs. My academic work moved into researching and teaching women writers, and, in particular women's autobiographical writing, and the recovery of ‘herstory.’ This led me to edit Mina Hubbard's diary of her extraordinary expedition to Labrador in 1905; with four native guides, travelling in two canoes, she was the first to map the Naskaupi and George Rivers.

"I believe that every woman should bear witness to her life and times, and I encourage women to ‘break the silence’—using the methods and techniques of journal workshops. After retiring, I started to facilitate a mixed (male and female) memoir workshop for pensioners. In a period of war, prejudice, and violence, perhaps reading about others' lives might lead to more understanding and tolerance in the world. For a moment we can see through someone else's eyes, and recognise the universality of human suffering."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Americas: A Quarterly Review of Inter-American Cultural History, April, 2007, Christina Leece, review of The Woman Who Mapped Labrador: The Life and Expedition Diary of Mina Hubbard, p. 658.

Arctic, March, 2006, Joanna Kafarowski, review of The Woman Who Mapped Labrador, p. 100.

Beaver: Exploring Canada's History, June 1, 2006, Alison Dyer, review of The Woman Who Mapped Labrador, p. 47.

Books in Canada, March, 2007, Andrew Atkinson, review of A Charm against the Pain: An Anthology of All New Writing from Newfoundland, p. 14.

Canadian Historical Review, September, 2006, Margaret Conrad, review of The Woman Who Mapped Labrador, p. 517.

Journal of Canadian Studies, winter, 2007, Wendy Roy, review of The Woman Who Mapped Labrador.

Newfoundland Studies, fall, 2000, review of I Moved All My Women Upstairs,

Times Literary Supplement, February 3, 2006, Andrew Taylor, review of The Woman Who Mapped Labrador, p. 24.