College News

Brad Crawford is a MA student in the Department.
He studies conflict in modern Africa and the
Rwandan Genocide. - Susan

Land of a Thousand Lessons:
Reflections on a Tour of Rwanda
By Brad Crawford

Scattered throughout Kigali, the capital and largest city in the small East African nation of Rwanda, are massive billboards that read “Learning from our history to build a bright future.” The billboards evidently refer to the nearly one million Tutsis and Hutu moderates that were slaughtered during the one hundred days of the Rwandan Genocide in the spring of 1994. These billboards most likely lead some to wonder why a nation would promote the worst event in their national history so explicitly. As historians, we often cite “learning from our history to avoid the same mistakes in our future” as one of the main purposes for studying the subject. In Rwanda, this notion is consistently and actively put into practice. (click title to read the whole story)

Congratulations to History's Departmental Manager, Barb Mitterer, who was awarded the University's Exemplary Service 'Hidden Hero' Award today - a much deserved recognition of Barb's crucial work in the Department. Kudos! We don't know what we'd do without you!

Jacqueline Murray, Professor in the Department and Director of First Year Seminars at the University of Guelph, has published a new edited collection: Marriage in Premodern Europe: Italy and Beyond (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2012).

from the jacket...
The articles in this volume provide an overview of the issues and complexities that informed marriage in the premodern West. They provide a series of ...

by Teresa Pitman
Canada’s Food Guide has gone through a number of transformations since the creation of its predecessor – the more sternly named Canada’s Official Food Rules – 70 years ago. In comparison to the original Food Rules, the current Food Guide has fewer food groups, no specific recommendations about eating four to six slices of “Canada Approved Vitamin B Bread” per day, and definitely no rifle-toting milk bottles marching off to war on the posters and pamphlets promoting it. As post-doc Ian Mosby found in his doctoral research on the history of food and nutrition in Canada during the Second World War, the original Food Rules document certainly bore the mark of its wartime origins.
Read the rest of the story @Guelph

Our own Graeme Morton has written a new book: Ourselves and Others: Scotland 1832-1914, published by Edinburgh University Press just last month.

From the dust jacket:
What does it mean to be a Scot and what forged that identity?

This revised and updated volume of the New History of Scotlandseries explores a period of intense identity formation in Scotland. Examining the 'us and them' mentality, it delivers an account of the blended nature of Scottish society through the transformations of the industrial era from 1832 to 1914.

 

You’re Invited! The School of Languages and Literatures invites you to a "cinq à sept".
Saturday, September 22, 2012 - 5 to 7pm
Alumni House Atrium

 Enjoy refreshments and light finger foods as you re-connect with former classmates and faculty. Spouses and partners are welcome to attend.

A new book on Lucy Maud Montgomery edited and introduced by retired University of Guelph professors Mary Henley Rubio and Elizabeth Hillman Waterston has received positive reviews in the Winnipeg Free Press and in the Globe and Mail.
The Complete Journals of L.M. Montgomery The PEI Years, 1889-1900 presents the full text of Montgomery’s journals of that period along with a selection of photographs, clippings and captions. The book is considered "a welcome addition to our knowledge of Montgomery’s life and legacy" and supplements the first volume of The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, published in 1985.
Read the story @Guelph.

Today one of our very own Post Doctoral Researchers, Dr. Ian Mosby, is interviewed in the Globe and Mail for a story about aboriginal food culture: "According to food historian Ian Mosby, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Guelph, Canadians typically think of aboriginal food as only consisting of precontact ingredients due to ignorance about native people’s lives. The idea that aboriginal food has been frozen in time from an era before European settlement also sidesteps some unpleasant historical facts."
Read "Bannock tacos, fried baloney – this is aboriginal cuisine?"

History professor Matthew Hayday will be featured on the CTV News Channel program Afternoon Express today at 2:30 p.m.
He will be discussing about the continued relevance of bilingualism and the official languages policy of the federal government. Hayday, who studies official languages in education, was a contributor to the book Life After Forty: Official Languages Policy in Canada. It examines the country’s Official Languages Act and discusses why, despite the act, bilingualism in English Canada is only slightly higher than it is in the United States.
     Watch the clip here
Hayday is currently researching the history of bilingualism in English-speaking Canada. He is also the author of Bilingual Today, United Tomorrow, which was a finalist for the Harold Adams Innis Prize, awarded to the best Canadian book in English in the social sciences. The award is administered by the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences.

read the rest of the story...

 Two official languages affirm pride in our past, prepare us for the future. BY SHIONA MACKENZIE, FRIDAY, JUNE 29, 2012

Along with national pride, controversies over bilingualism in Canada often surge around July 1. History professor Matthew Hayday frequently attends the annual “birthday party” on Ottawa’s Parliament Hill, where celebrations include the noontime playing of “O Canada” and flights by the Snowbirds aerobatics team. But he isn’t there just for fun; he is a keen observer of the symbolism connected with Canada’s identity, a researcher who focusses on issues of public policy, English-French relations, and federalism and identity politics in Canada. 

Read the rest of the story @Guelph