History News

Thanks again to editor Dr. Femi Kolapo (and everyone who contributed to our very productive Fall semester) the January 2014 edition of the Newsletter of the Department is now available!

(by Deidre Healey for @guelph)

Recent graduate Wade Cormack garnered international media attention when he was selected by Scottish golf experts to research the origins of their culturally sacred sport. The 25-year-old is the recipient of the Royal Dornoch Ph.D. Studentship, a unique one-time doctoral research program funded by Royal Dornoch Golf Club and the University of the Highlands and Islands in Inverness.

Read the rest of the story @guelph

This year's Tri-University History Conference is on Saturday March 22 at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo. The conference provides an opportunity for students and faculty at the University of Guelph, Wilfrid Laurier and University of Waterloo. This year's theme is Histories and Communities in celebration of the conference's 20th anniversary.

Call for Papers: the online submission form due February 7, 2014 - we invite individual submissions or panels - or you may indicate your availability to participate as Chair. Please apply and register at: www.triuhistory.ca/conference/

We look forward to your submission and registration and to seeing you in March! Please direct questions to susan.roy@uwaterloo.ca

Professor Emerita Dr. Donna Andrew has just published a new book: Aristocratic Vice: The Attack on Duelling, Suicide, Adultery, and Gambling in Eighteenth-Century England. The book is published by Yale University Press. Congratulations from all of us!

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...