Richard Cavell is a Canadian of Italian heritage whose academic career has explored Italian culture through a number of vantage points, from the novels of Verga, to McLuhan's debt to Futurism, to the Italian element in Canadian literature. The first Canadian to teach our literature at the University of Padua (1979-81), Richard was instrumental to the success of Canadian Literature as an academic field in Italy. Founder of the International Canadian Studies Centre at UBC, Richard has devoted his career to an integrative approach to the study of culture. He is the author of McLuhan in Space: A Cultural Geography (2002), editor of Love, Hate and Fear in Canada's Cold War (2004), and co-editor of Sexing the Maple: A Canadian Sourcebook (2006), as well as more than 70 chapters, articles and reviews. He is currently Professor of English at UBC and founder there of MeRG.e, the Media Research Group enterprise.