History News

Drs. Ian Mosby and Catherine Carstairs of the Department are hosting a groundbreaking conference this June 23rd- 25th: Foodscapes of Plenty and of Want: Historical Perspectives on Food, Health and the Environment in Canada features new research from faculty and graduate students from the department and all over Canada. All are welcome to attend! Please register at: foodscapes2013@gmail.com. Get the program: .pdf

visit http://foodscapescanada.wordpress.com/

The Gay Pride parade in Toronto has often been seen as controversial, but in 2010 it was hit by an unusual controversy when the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid wanted to march in the parade with a banner. Others in the city, including some parade sponsors, argued against allowing the group to participate. The parade committee went back and forth between allowing the group and banning them, leaving many people puzzled and confused by the issue. The controversy still swirls as Toronto readies for this year’s Gay Pride parade on June 30. The Toronto Star reported last week that the activist group plans to participate in this year’s Pride festival. “It’s a really complicated issue and not easy to grasp,” says Guelph history student Nicholas Miniaci. He presented a paper on the topic last semester at U of G’s Middle Eastern Scholars Society (MESS), which is supervised by Prof. Renee Worringer.
Read the rest of the story @Guelph

She was looking for feminism, but what she found was fashion – fashion with a substantial dose of Canadian nationalism mixed in. Recent U of G history grad Elizabeth Gagnon chose to study fashion in Miss Chatelaine magazine for her master’s research project “Looking Good, Looking Canadian.” It’s a short history compared to the publication’s influential parent: Chatelaine magazine, which has been published since 1928, was the inspiration for launching Miss Chatelaine in 1965. “Miss Chatelaine was initially aimed at teens,” says Gagnon, who is currently working on a master’s degree in library and information science at Western University, “but by 1970 the target audience had shifted to young women in their 20s. In September 1979, the young Miss was rebranded as Flare: Canada’s Fashion Magazine.”
Read the rest of the story @Guelph.

On Wednesday, May 8, for the 2nd Annual St. Andrew's Society of Toronto Lecture, the Centre for Scottish Studies presents R. J. Morris:
"Patrick Geddes, Property Developer. Edinburgh 1890 to 1914."
Dr. Morris is Professor Emeritus at Edinburgh University.
The talk takes place in Mackinnon 227 at 3:00 pm. All welcome!! Get the flyer: .pdf

University Research Chair and Scottish History scholar Dr. Elizabeth Ewan will appear at the CommUnity Conversation on the Humanities this April 22. 
from @Guelph: Five of Canada’s leading humanities researchers – all holders of prestigious University Research Chairs at the University of Guelph – will take part in a free “CommUnity Conversation” April 22 on the role of the humanities in culture and community. The timing could not be better, organizers say. Almost every day brings newspaper columns, radio programs, debates or discussions about the “value” of a university education, especially degrees in the arts and humanities, say professors Sky Gilbert and Robert Enright. More and more, researchers are being asked to demonstrate how their work will add “value” to society, usually through commercialization. Read the rest of the story @Guelph. Get the event flyer: .pdf

Since she joined the University of Guelph’s history department several years ago, Prof. Renee Worringer has been “trying to put Middle Eastern studies on the map here, so students can find a cohort of other interested students and faculty. In fact, I think that’s an important part of university: finding people interested in similar topics, so that you can bounce ideas off each other.” There were plenty of “ideas bouncing” over the weekend of March 29 to 31 as Worringer hosted a Great Lakes Ottomanist Workshop (GLOW) at U of G, bringing in scholars from both Canada and the U.S. to discuss topics related to the history of the Ottoman Empire. “The workshop is important to me because nobody else at the U of G is doing Ottoman history,” she says. “It provides an opportunity to take the pulse of Ottoman studies, to see what direction we are going in and what direction we want to go. It’s a huge field – the former Ottoman Empire is now more than 30 countries – and we have a lot to offer.”
Read the rest of the story: @Guelph

For U of G history professor Catherine Carstairs, writing her recently-published journal article about Guelph author Jean Little had some fringe benefits. “I got to re-read some much-beloved books from my childhood, and I got to meet and interview an author I had always admired,” she says. Carstairs had tucked away her memories of enjoying Little’s books when she was a child until she realized that some of Little’s papers were in the U of G archives. “Some of my students were using these resources for papers,” she says, “and I thought there might be more that could be done with them.” She used various archived documents to explore the roots and expression of Little’s ideas about those with disabilities and their treatment by the society around them. As Carstairs explains in her article, published by the journal Histoire sociale/Social History in November 2012, Little was born in Taiwan with scarred corneas and limited vision (she is legally blind).
Read the rest of the story @Guelph

The 2013 Scottish Studies Spring Colloquium will be held on 6 April 2012 at Knox College, University of Toronto, from 10:30 am to 3 pm (doors open at 10 am)
Presentations Include:

- Dr. Kevin James (University of Guelph, History), “The McAutocrat of the Victorian Highland Inn”
- Dr. J. Andrew Ross (University of Guelph, History) and Melissa McAfee (University of Guelph, Archives & Special Collections), “Digitising Guelph’s Scottish Chapbook Collection”
- Rachel Redshaw (Independent Scholar), “The Virtual Voice of the Past: The Use of Online Oral Accounts for a Holistic Understanding of History”
- Movie Screening: Singing Against the Silence (2012) Directed by Dr. Michael Newton (St. Francis Xavier)

The Department of History and Dr. Renee Worringer host this year's Great Lakes Ottomanist Workshop (GLOW), a gathering of scholars of the Ottoman Empire from Canada, the US and beyond. The program is just out: .pdf  

Tri-University History Conference 2013: New Approaches to History
March 23, 2013 - Best Western Hotel, 716 Gordon Street, Guelph
The Tri-University Conference is a wonderful opportunity for students and faculty to get to know each other, to share ideas, and debate the latest developments in our field. This year, the Tri-University conference will take place at the Best Western Hotel in Guelph. Attached is the preliminary programme which will also be available on the Tri-U website shortly. The theme this year is “New Approaches to History” and our keynote panel features three fantastic historians from the Tri-University campuses:
- Ian Milligan, a recent hire at the University of Waterloo, who writes on youth and labour in the 1960s, and new digital technologies, will give a paper on “Preparing for the Infinite Archive: Social Historians and the Looming Digital Deluge.”
- Amy Milne-Smith, the author of London Clubland: A Cultural History of Gender and Class in late-Victoria Britain (2011) will be speak on “Queensberry’s Misrule: Exploring honour, duty, and the gentleman in late-Victorian Britain.”
- Norman Smith, the author of Resisting Manchukuo: Chinese Women Writers and the Japanese Occupation (2007) will speak on “Sources, Souses and the Writing of Manchurian History.”

Please register online to attend or email Laura Greaves directly lm2greav@uwaterloo.ca. There is no fee for registration. Get the conference program: .pdf