Cottaging: A Truly Canadian Pastime

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Trent University Professor Julia Harrison Available for Expert Commentary on Cottaging and Cottage Tradition

Tuesday, July 14, 2009, Peterborough

At the height of the cottaging season, Trent University invites the media to contact Anthropology professor Dr. Julia Harrison for expert commentary on cottage life and tradition through a variety of lenses, including anthropological, literary and environmental.

Dr. Harrison is currently working on a new book entitled “It’s Just Good Times”: The Canadian middle class at the cottage, in which she explores cottage life, a quintessentially ‘Canadian’ activity, in the Haliburton, Ontario region.

In her research, Dr. Harrison is seeking to understand in more depth the role of the cottage as a second home plays in the lives of its residents, arguing that the cottage should be seen as an extension of the metropolitan space and examining how middle class suburban social and cultural values play out at the cottage, including class positioning, racial identification, and gender roles and behaviours. Dr. Harrison is also examining the cottage as a site of the inculcation of Canadian values, to fuel understandings of who the ‘real’ Canadian cottager is, and what “good times” at the cottage are all about.

At Trent University, Dr. Harrison teaches and conducts research on the nature of the tourist interaction and experience; and most recently on Ontario cottage culture. Her book Being a Tourist was published in 2003; in 2006 she co-edited the volume Historicizing Canadian Anthropology. She also recently guest edited a special issue of Tourist Studies, called “Engaging Ethnography: Research with Tourists” and she has published in a range of museum, tourism and anthropology journals. Prior to joining the Anthropology faculty at Trent in 1994, she had a 16 year career as a museum curator in Canada and Australia. 

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For more information, please contact Dr. Julia Harrison at 705.748.1011 x6049 or jharrison@trentu.ca