This week, History and Economics Post-Doctoral Researcher, Dr. J. Andrew Ross is featured on a New York Times panel investigating "Should Democracies Have Monarchs?" Dr. Ross weighs the pros and cons to explain how the monarchy works in Canada. Read the rest of the story at the New York Times.
Dr. Norman Smith's latest book, Intoxicating Manchuria: Alcohol, Opium, and Culture in China’s Northeast, has won the 2013 Gourmand Wine Books Award – Best Drink History Book, Canada (English).
For more on the award visit Gourmand International.
Congratulations from all of us!
Our own Dr. Renée Worringer, Associate Professor, has just published a new book: Ottomans Imagining Japan: East, Middle East, and Non-Western Modernity at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
From the dust jacket: The roots of today's "clash of civilizations" between the Islamic world and the West are not solely anchored in the legacy of the crusades or the early Islamic conquests: in many ways, it is a more contemporary story rooted in the 19th-century history of resistance to Western hegemony. And as this compellingly argued and carefully researched transnational study shows, the Ottoman Middle East believed it had found an ally and exemplar for this resistance in Meiji Japan. Here, author Renee Worringer details the ways in which Japan loomed in Ottoman consciousness at the turn of the twentieth century, exploring the role of the Japanese nation as a model for Ottomans in attaining "non-Western" modernity in a global order dominated by the West.
The volume is published by Palgrave/MacMillan. Congratulations from all of us!
Our own Dr. Catherine Carstairs, Associate Professor and new Department Chair (since July) has just published a new collection of essays with co-editor Nancy Janovicek of the University of Calgary:
Feminist History in Canada: New Essays on Women, Gender, Work, and Nation
From the dust jacket: This exciting new volume of original essays opens with a discussion of the debates, themes, and methodological approaches that have preoccupied women's and gender historians across Canada over the past twenty years. The chapters that follow showcase the work of new and established scholars who draw on the insights of critical race theory, postcolonial theory, and transnational history to re-examine familiar topics such as biography and oral history, paid and unpaid work, marriage and family, and women's political action.
The volume is published by UBC Press. Congratulations from all of us!
This semester, Dr. Elizabeth Ewan, University Research Chair and Professor of History, led a UNIV 1200, First Year Seminar course called Scotch Myths: Icons of a Small Country.
The course examines the history and uses of Scottish icons and stereotypes and looks at how they have represented the country both in the past and the present. Among the famous icons the class examined were bagpipes, whisky, William Wallace, Mary Queen of Scots, tartan, and the Loch Ness Monster. Students also used the research skills they developed in the course to look at how images and icons of Canada are used. Pictured here: A few of Dr. Ewan's students and the famous University of Guelph canon, decorated in honor of the course.
After completing a PhD in history at the University of Guelph, our own Kris Gies moved into publishing sales and marketing with University of Toronto Press. This week he writes in University Affairs about promising new ways in which PhD graduates are learning about all the great careers they can build with their degrees...
"The prevailing conditions of today’s academic job market bring pause. The number of PhDs awarded each year remains high despite comparatively few tenure-track positions. At the same time, university teaching is increasingly performed by contingent faculty for low pay and with little job security. These trends have led to a situation where scholarship and a stable career have become mutually exclusive...
Ruth Redelmeier and her late husband, Francis, travelled to libraries and archives across North America to find information about the original owners of their family farm near Richmond Hill, Ont.
In the University of Guelph’s McLaughlin Library, they found a wealth of archival material about the pioneering Patterson family and discovered a home for their own extensive farm records. Files accumulated during the 60 years that the Redelmeiers
The Middle East Scholars Society is excited to announce their new Facebook group! MESS will be using the page to advertise upcoming events, highlight ME faculty and students (both past and current), and keep people up to date on the general happenings in the group.
Please join our Facebook Group by searching: 'Middle East Scholars Society at the University of Guelph' on Facebook or going to: www.facebook.com/groups/169498816576914/
To have something posted on our Facebook page, contact Halette Wilson (wils8060@mylaurier.ca)
On Thursday, October 17, PhD candidate Jodey Nurse will speak at the Main branch of the Guelph Public Library from 7pm to 9pm on "Exhibiting Great Taste and Skill: Women's Work at Fall Fairs
Happily ever after? Not really, says Adrienne Briggs, a recent Guelph history grad. Fairy tale endings are for Disney. To learn about the original and often graphic stories of Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and the like, you might look over some of the hundreds of Scottish chapbooks in the U of G library archives.
That’s what Briggs and other students did earlier this year for a pilot project in their U of G history class that will see old-time chapbooks meet modern communications technology.
Chapbooks were popular booklets containing songs, ballads, poems and short stories written for the increasingly literate Scottish masses of the mid-1700s to mid-1800s, says history post-doc Andrew Ross. Between eight and 24 pages in length, they covered such topics as romance, travel, comedy, politics, fairy tales and social customs.
Read the rest of the story @Guelph.
