History News

  by Teresa Pitman for @ Guelph
Remember when Rozanski Hall was a horse barn and Alumni House was home to a flock of sheep? History PhD student Patricia Bowley does. She grew up in Guelph, and when she was a child, her parents would often bring her to the campus, where she developed a lasting interest in agriculture and rural life. She’ll share some of her research and insights during a presentation on Tuesday, Feb. 7, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., entitled “Soybeans and Ontario Crop Agriculture, 1880s-1970s: Responding to a Century of Challenges on the Farm.” Bowley’s is the second talk in this year’s Rural History Roundtable, and will be held in the OAC Boardroom (Johnston Hall, Room 104). 
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The Middle East Scholars' Society workshop series is on again this year. Please join our informal workshop which begins Thursday, February 2 at 4-6pm in MacKinnon 230 with UofG Alum Daniel Bagheri-Savestani on "My Travels: Nomadic History of Islam." Get the flyer: (.pdf) Then, on Thursday February 9 from 4-6pm in MacKinnon 230, Dr. Shahram Kholdi of the University of Manchester (United Kingdom) will speak: "Fighting over the Past for the Sake of the Present: Revolutionary History and Factional Rivalry in the Islamic Republic of Iran." And Thursday, March 1, 2012, from 4-6pm in MacKinnon 230 Amir Locker-Biletzki, PhD candidate, University of Guelph: "Israeli, Jewish and Soviet elements in the Iconography of Israeli Communist Posters". All Welcome!

All Welcome!      
- Renee Worringer

After the success of last term, the History Essay Workshop Series is back! Our first session last term had over thirty participants and twenty students attended two or more sessions. Get the flyer: (.pdf)

The History Essay Workshop Series helps students know what to do to write stronger essays!
We are conducting two workshops this term that focus on the basics of essay writing. On completion of the full workshop series students will...

Quilting bees. Threshing bees. Barn-raisings. Friendly, hard-working neighbours gathering together to get things done. It’s one of those rural traditions that we tend to look back on nostalgically. But there’s another side to these “bees,” says history professor Catharine Wilson. Sometimes, everything went wrong. “There were serious, sometimes fatal, accidents and fights frequently broke out. Some turned into major brawls. I even found information about 16 cases of murder at the bees or right afterwards. She calls them “bees-gone-wrong.”

Read the whole story by Teresa Pitman @Guelph

Visit our job postings page to see the available positions and applications procedures:
http://www.uoguelph.ca/history/job-postings
Applications due by February 4, 2012.

The Department's famous Rural History Roundtable is ten years old! Congratulations to Dr. Catharine Wilson, Dr. Douglas McCalla and all the speakers and coordinators who have made the Roundtable a College of Arts institution over the years. The Winter 2012 Roundtable schedule will carry on this great tradition with speakers addressing tourism, consumer culture, rural amusements and more. Get the schedule (.pdf)

A University of Guelph economics professor belongs to a winning team in a prestigious humanities and social sciences research competition. Kris Inwood’s project in mining information from one of the largest population databases in the world was named one of the victors of the 2012 Digging Into Data Challenge today. Sponsored by Canada, the United States, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, the competition promotes innovative research using digital resources to learn about people and cultures and to develop multidisciplinary partnerships.

... is now available at http://www.uoguelph.ca/history/NewsletteroftheDepartment
The Newsletter of the Department is published each January and September. For more information or to send news, please contact Dr. Susan Nance, snance@uoguelph.ca  or visit www.uoguelph.ca/history

by Teresa Pitman

It was a trend that was promoted by the highest levels of government at the time. Pierre Elliot Trudeau had hitchhiked around Europe and the Middle East as a young man, long before he became prime minister. In 1970, apparently remembering his own experiences in a positive way, he publicly advised young Canadians to “Hit the road. Drive or hitchhike and see what Canada’s all about.” Many teens and young adults took his advice to heart, and hitchhikers with their thumbs stuck out became a familiar sight on Canadian highways. U of G history professor Linda Mahood never hitched across Canada, but she did hitchhike around her home in Saskatchewan and later on Vancouver Island. “When I mentioned this to some of the students in my women’s history class, they were horrified,” says Mahood. “That’s when I started to get interested in the history of hitchhiking.”

by Teresa Pitman

Which Christian denomination holds the most appeal for people in Africa? It’s not mainstream in Canada, but Pentecostalism is the largest and fastest-growing denomination of Christianity in Nigeria – in fact, it’s ranked number one in all of Africa and in much of Asia and South America as well. “Some estimates show that globally, it’s surpassed the Catholic Church,” says U of G history professor Femi Kolapo.