Canada is situated geographically, historically, and culturally between old empires (Great Britain and France) and a more recent one (the United States), as well as on the terrain of First Nations communities. Poised between historical and metaphorical empires and operating within the conditions of incomplete modernity and economic and cultural dependency, Canada has generated a body of cultural criticism and theory that offers unique insights into the dynamics of both centre and periphery. "The Reader" brings together for the first time in one volume recent writing in Canadian cultural studies and work by significant Canadian cultural analysts of the postwar era. Including essays by Anglophone, Francophone, and First Nations writers, the "Reader" is divided into three parts, the first of which features essays by scholars who helped set the agenda for cultural and social analysis in Canada and remain important to contemporary intellectual formations: Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, and Tony Wilden in communications theory; Northrop Frye in literary studies; George Grant and Harold Innis in a left-nationalist tradition of critical political economy; Fernand Dumont and Paul Emile Borduas in Quebecois national and political culture; and, Harold Cardinal in native studies. The volume's second section showcases work in which contemporary authors address Canada's problematic and incomplete nationalism; race, difference, and multiculturalism; and, modernity and contemporary culture. The final section includes excerpts from federal policy documents especially important to how Canadians conceive of their social, political, and cultural circumstances. "The Reader" opens with a foreword by Fredric Jameson and concludes with an afterword in which the Quebecois scholar Yves Laberge explores the differences between English-Canadian cultural studies and the prevailing forms of cultural analysis in Francophone Canada.