In the early modern period, poetic form underpinned and influenced scien- tific progress. The language and imagery of seventeenth-century writers and natural philosophers reveal how the age-old struggle between body and soul led to the brain’s emergence as a curiosity in its own right. Investigating the intersection of the humanities and sciences in the works of authors ranging from William Shakespeare and John Donne to William Harvey, Margaret Cavendish, and Johann Remmelin, Lianne Habinek tells how early modernity came to view the brain not simply as grey matter but as a wealth of other wondrous possibilities – a book in which to read the soul’s writing, a black box to be violently unlocked, a womb to nourish intellectual conception, a creative engine, a subtle knot that traps the soul and thereby makes us human. For seventeenth-century thinkers, she argues, these com- parisons were not simply casual metaphors but integral to early ideas about brain function. Demonstrating how the disparate fields of neuroscientific history and literary studies converged, The Subtle Knot tells the story of how the mind came to be identified with the brain. Lianne Habinek is assistant professor of English at Bard College. The North American entertainment industry is rapidly consolidating, and new modes of technological delivery challenge Canadian content regulations. An understanding of how Canadian culture negotiates its rapport with American genres has never been more timely. West/Border/Road offers an interdisciplinary analysis of contemporary Canadian manifestations of three American genres: the western, the border, and the road. It situates close readings of literary, film, and television narra- tives from both English Canada and Quebec within a larger context of Cana- dian generic borrowing and innovation. Katherine Ann Roberts calls upon canonical works in Canadian studies, theories of genre, and a wide range of scholarship from border studies, cultural studies, and film studies to examine how genre is appropriated and sometimes reworked and how these cultural narratives engage with discourses of contemporary Canadian nationhood. The author elucidates Guy Vanderhaeghe’s rewriting of the codes of the historical western to include the trauma of Aboriginal peoples, Aritha van Herk’s playful spoof on American western iconography, the politics and per- ils of the representation of the Canada-US border in cbc-produced crime television, and how the road genre inspires and constrains the Québécois and Canadian road movie. A reminder of the power and limitations of American genres, West/ Border/Road provides a nuanced perspective on Canadian engagement with cultural forms that may be imported but never foreign. Katherine Ann Roberts is associate professor of North American studies and French at Wilfrid Laurier University. 3 9 M Q U P S P R I N G 2 0 1 8 L I T E R A R Y C R I T I C I S M • M E D I C A L H I S T O R Y C A N A D I A N L I T E R AT U R E • C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S S P E C I F I C AT I O N S May 2018 978-0-7735-5318-7 $49.95A CDN, $49.95A US, £41.00 cloth 6 x 9 288pp 39 illustrations eBook available S P E C I F I C AT I O N S May 2018 978-0-7735-5322-4 $95.00S CDN, $95.00S US, £79.00 cloth 6 x 9 400pp eBook available The Subtle Knot Early Modern English Literature and the Birth of Neuroscience lianne habinek When and how did we come to think of the brain as the vehicle of the mind, and what role did literature play in forging a link so crucial to our understanding of ourselves? West/Border/Road Nation and Genre in Contemporary Canadian Narrative katherine ann roberts A captivating look at how recent Canadian fiction, film, and television appropriate and redefine American genres.