College News

Speaking two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in a increasingly globalized world.

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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.

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

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

The Tri-University Graduate Program in History Annual Conference takes place Saturday, March 3.
The Preliminary Program is available here: (.pdf)
Or visit: http://www.triuhistory.ca/conference/

  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

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...

Jerrard Smith (of the School of English and Theatre Studies) and his wife, Diana, are internationally renowned theatre designers.  The Design Gallery of Waterloo’s School of Architecture  (in Cambridge) will host an exhibition of the Smiths’ sets, costumes, masks and puppets from their thirty-year collaboration with R.