College News

Recent graduate Katie Anderson (MA '14) is giving a presentation on July 4th at Doon Heritage Village of the Waterloo Regional Museum on her Master's Thesis research, completed here in the Department last year. Katie's talk is part of the "History Under the Trees" event sponsored by the Waterloo Historical Society, which this year is themed: "Barnyard Genealogy: Livestock in Early Twentieth Century Ontario." Katie's excellent thesis, “'Hitched Horse, Milked Cow, Killed Pig': Pragmatic Stewardship and the Paradox of Human/Animal Relationships in Southern Ontario, 1900-1920" contributes to the Department's strengths in Canadian rural history. Katie is also currently a teacher-interpreter at Joseph Schneider Haus, and just finished a Bachelor of Education. 

For more on "History Under the Trees" visit Doon Heritage Village.

Belly dance is an art form celebrated and practised among many cultures and regions of the world — including Canada, new research shows. University of Guelph history PhD student Anne Vermeyden, a dancer herself, is investigating the rich but largely unwritten past of belly dance in Toronto, and why it has flourished there. So far, most research on belly dance history in North America has been largely focused on the United States. Vermeyden says the art form's presence in Canada should be recognized, too. ...

read the rest of the story at the Guelph Mercury

Belly dance is an art form celebrated and practised among many cultures and regions of the world — including Canada, new research shows. University of Guelph history PhD student Anne Vermeyden, a dancer herself, is investigating the rich but largely unwritten past of belly dance in Toronto, and why it has flourished there. So far, most research on belly dance history in North America has been largely focused on the United States. Vermeyden says the art form's presence in Canada should be recognized, too. ...

read the rest of the story at the Guelph Mercury

With sadness we report the sudden passing of our colleague, Professor Brian Wetstein, on June 5, 2015. Brian had faced health challenges for some time and retired from the University in 2014.

Brian completed his PhD work in Philosophy (“The Role of Dialectic in Nietzsche’s Thought”) in 1994 at the University of Guelph, and had taught as a Lecturer at both UG and Guelph–Humber since that time. He was appointed as Assistant Professor in 2003.

PhD candidate Sarah Shropshire's article "What’s a Guy To Do?: Contraceptive Responsibility, Confronting Masculinity, and the History of Vasectomy in Canada" has recently been awarded the Canadian Historical Association's Jean-Marie Fecteau Prize for the best article published in a peer-reviewed journal by a PhD or MA-level student. In exploring the history of vasectomy, Sarah's article consciously challenges the gendered paradigm that scholars have applied to the history of contraception while also discussing how evolving surgical techniques and social constructions of masculinity have affected the popularity of the procedure. Sarah's article appeared last year in the Canadian Bulletin of Medical History.

Congratulations from all of us!

This year's winner of the J. W. Skinner Medal is recent graduate Steven Rai. The medal is the most prestigious University Convocation award for an undergraduate student at the University of Guelph and is awarded by the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences to a student for exceptional achievement in both academic and extracurricular activities.

Steven is an International Development major who has taken many courses with the Department. He is also familiar to the History Department through his fine work on the 1861 Census Project and the People in Motion research team, supervised by Drs. Kris Inwood and J. Andrew Ross. Congratulations from all of us!

We recently received the excellent news that Dr. Andrew Ross, who has served as a postdoctoral fellow in our Department for many years, has accepted a job with Disposition and Discoverability Task Force at Library and Archives Canada. We all congratulate Andrew and wish him well at his new appointment in Ottawa.

Andrew, we will miss you!

Rural History at Guelph is proud to host the Artifacts in Agraria Symposium October 17 and 18, sponsored by the Francis and Ruth Redelmeier Professorship in Rural History.

Join historians, archaeologists, sociologists and museum professionals from across North America as they explore the material artifacts of everyday life. Observe how these historical sources gather meaning when understood in the context of surviving written records, family history and international commerce. Join the discussion on how artifacts reflect aesthetic and cultural beliefs, symbolize self-identity, affirm values, tell stories, purvey heritage and change meaning over time. Celebrate the new methods and ways of viewing artifacts that deepen our understanding of rural life.

Admission is free when you register before August 3rd, contact Jodey Nurse - jnurse@uoguelph.ca
For more information contact Dr. Catharine Wilson - cawilson@uoguelph.ca or visit Rural History

Get the final schedule .pdf        Get the poster .pdf

This week, Dr. Susan Nance's research on historical circus elephants is featured on the Research Matters blog, sponsored by the Council of Ontario Universities.

After more than a century of parading in pink tutus with dogs balancing on their backs, elephants in the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey’s circus are preparing to take their final bow. By 2018, the star performers will retire from the spotlight to live out their lives in an elephant conservation centre. 

These days, fewer and fewer circuses use elephants and their stage exit mirrors the public’s increased empathy toward these animals. But studying their heyday as performers reveals important insights about their audience, in other words, about us as consumer of entertainment. 

Enter Susan Nance, an associate professor of U.S. history at the University of Guelph whose research concentrates on entertainment, from vaudeville to street performers. Her interest in circus elephants was piqued after she uncovered “shocking things that circus historians don’t like to talk about,” says Nance, who set out to change the way historians look at animals. ... read the rest of the blog

Congratulations! Our own Professor Catharine Wilson is the 2014 winner of the Canadian Historical Review Prize for her article: “A Manly Art: Plowing, Plowing Matches, and Rural Masculinity in Ontario, 1800-1930," which appeared in the June 2014 issue of the Review. Dr. Wilson is Francis and Ruth Redelmeier Professor of Rural History in the Department.

praise from the CHR board: This article contributes to a now substantial body of literature on changing forms of masculinity in the context of industrial capitalism; unlike most existing work, however, this article considers farm men. Thus, it simultaneously contributes to rural history, and the history of rural work. It examines what is probably the activity most frequently associated with rural men, plowing, over a long period of time. In so doing, it is able to examine the intersections between technological change and intergenerational identity formation. Wilson makes use of an impressive diversity of sources including visual and audio-visual sources. Her attention to iconography is especially commendable and makes for a rich, multifaceted analysis. Her evocative writing conveys the physical and aesthetic pleasures of plowing. It is an exemplary piece of historical writing and argumentation, one that will have wide appeal and value for anyone interested in rural history, technological change, and/or masculinity.