History Post-Doc hosts: "Bees to Beef: Animals in Environmental History" - CHESS 2012
History News
Alan Gordon: Amateur Historians Keep the Past Alive
Historical books, re-enactments and tourism capture public interest... By Teresa Pitman for @Guelph
The word “amateur” – meaning someone who engages in a pursuit for love, not money – often has negative connotations. A professional gets the job done right; an amateur may just be a bumbler. But history professor Alan Gordon is more positive about amateur historians than you might expect from someone who has made history his profession. “They play an important role in getting historical issues discussed and debated,” he says. Read the rest of the story @Guelph
Globe & Mail: Dr. Jacqueline Murray on the Recent Sex-Trade Worker Ruling
An opinion piece by history professor Jacqueline Murray about Monday’s Ontario Court of Appeal decision regarding sex-trade workers appears today in the Globe and Mail. Murray, the director of the First-Year Seminars program, is a medieval historian whose research focuses on sex, sexuality and gender. Her op-ed article discusses examines the history of the sex-trade industry and the legalization of brothels. The Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that many sections of Canada’s criminal code violated the rights of sex-trade workers.
History Department Events at College Royal
To coincide with College Royale, the Department of History also presents Dr. Janet Golden: "Message in a Bottle: The Making of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome". Janet Golden is Professor of History at Rutgers University - Camden and is the author of A Social History of Wet Nursing in America: From Breast to Bottle (Cambridge University Press, 1996) and Message in a Bottle: The Making of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (Harvard University Press, 2005). She is currently working on a book on the history of babies. Visit http://dept.camden.rutgers.edu/jgolden Get the flyer: (.pdf)
College Royal is a University open house featuring campus research and teaching in agriculture and animal science. It's a family-day with lots for kids and interested members of the public to see. See you there!
History Student Keeps Scottish Weaver's Patterns Alive
by Andrew Vowles for @Guelph
Once a month, Deborah Livingston-Lowe leaves her Toronto Beaches home, heads to the Ontario Science Centre (OSC) and steps back into the Victorian era. As with other occasional OSC volunteers, she spends a day recreating patterns of a prominent 19th-century Ontario weaver on a massive, one-of-a-kind loom now owned by the science centre. But Livingston-Lowe has a deeper connection to the loom and its maker. This fall she began a master’s degree in U of G’s history department studying Scottish immigrant weaver John Campbell, who spent almost four decades near London, Ont., turning out Jacquard coverlets and rugs, blankets and flannel items on that loom. Besides highlighting his early work, her research will likely help correct a few romantic misconceptions and stereotypes about 19th-century lives, says her adviser, Prof. Catharine Wilson, a specialist in Canadian rural history.
Read the rest of the story @Guelph
Campus Hosts War of 1812 Bicentennial Symposium
Some of Canada’s most respected and popular War of 1812 historians will gather at the University of Guelph Feb. 25 for a War of 1812 bicentennial symposium. The event, which is open to the public, will include re-enactors in period costumes, storytelling, public talks and battle re-creations. Uniformed “soldiers” will help direct people to the conference, to be held in Rozanski Hall. The event is sponsored by U of G’s Department of History and the Cambridge, Ont.-based 41st Regiment of Foot re-enactment group, as well as “living history” groups in London and Hamilton, the Wellington County Museum, the Guelph Historical Society and Guelph Museums.
Read the rest of the story and find registration details @Guelph
Soybeans and Guelph: Patricia Bowley on the History of OAC
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).
Read the rest of the story @ Guelph
Revolutionary History & Rivalry in Modern Iran: Middle Eastern Scholars' Society Workshops...
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