News

Dr. Jennifer Bonnell, a 2011-2013 SSHRC Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department, is on the short list for the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize for her recent book, Reclaiming the Don: An Environmental History of Toronto's Don River Valley. Sponsored by the Canadian Historical Association, the Prize is one of the most prestigious for a historian of Canada, and awarded each year at the Governor General Awards for Excellence in Teaching Canadian History at Rideau Hall in Ottawa and at the CHA’s Annual Meeting. Visit the book at University of Toronto Press. For more on the Prize, visit the Canadian Historical Association

Congratulations from all of us!

from the jacket
With Reclaiming the Don, Jennifer L. Bonnell unearths the missing story of the relationship between the river, the valley, and the city, from the establishment of the town of York in the 1790s to the construction of the Don Valley Parkway in the 1960s. Demonstrating how mosquito-ridden lowlands, frequent floods, and over-burdened municipal waterways shaped the city’s development, Reclaiming the Don illuminates the impact of the valley as a physical and conceptual place on Toronto’s development.

Dr. Jennifer Bonnell, a 2011-2013 SSHRC Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department, is on the short list for the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize for her recent book, Reclaiming the Don: An Environmental History of Toronto's Don River Valley. Sponsored by the Canadian Historical Association, the Prize is one of the most prestigious for a historian of Canada, and awarded each year at the Governor General Awards for Excellence in Teaching Canadian History at Rideau Hall in Ottawa and at the CHA’s Annual Meeting. Visit the book at University of Toronto Press. For more on the Prize, visit the Canadian Historical Association

Congratulations from all of us!

from the jacket
With Reclaiming the Don, Jennifer L. Bonnell unearths the missing story of the relationship between the river, the valley, and the city, from the establishment of the town of York in the 1790s to the construction of the Don Valley Parkway in the 1960s. Demonstrating how mosquito-ridden lowlands, frequent floods, and over-burdened municipal waterways shaped the city’s development, Reclaiming the Don illuminates the impact of the valley as a physical and conceptual place on Toronto’s development.

University of Guelph Archival & Special Collections is excited to announce the launch of the Scottish Chapbook Digital Humanities site! This collaborative project between the University of Guelph Library and Centre for Scottish Studies will provide unprecedented free online access to a hidden collection of over 600 chapbooks housed in Archival & Special Collections, as well as essays and exhibits to interpret and contextualize them.
The site was made possible, in part, by undergraduate students in History in our Digital Humanities fourth-year seminar work-study project, who prepared the reproductions of the chapbooks that appear on the site. The digital archive will go live on March 26th, so stay tuned...

University of Guelph Archival & Special Collections is excited to announce the launch of the Scottish Chapbook Digital Humanities site! This collaborative project between the University of Guelph Library and Centre for Scottish Studies will provide unprecedented free online access to a hidden collection of over 600 chapbooks housed in Archival & Special Collections, as well as essays and exhibits to interpret and contextualize them.
The site was made possible, in part, by undergraduate students in History in our Digital Humanities fourth-year seminar work-study project, who prepared the reproductions of the chapbooks that appear on the site. The digital archive will go live on March 26th, so stay tuned...

Associate Professor Susan Nance is interviewed today about the unexpected, industry-shifting announcement by Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus that they will phase out elephants in their shows by 2018. Dr. Nance is featured on KCRW Public Radio in Los Angeles , WHYY Public Radio in Philadelphia, and 570 News Kitchener, and in Think Progress, The Atlantic, and The Guardian.

This week, Dr. Nance also contributes her insight on "The Troubling Origins of the Circus Elephant Act" on the Johns Hopkins University Press Blog.

Associate Professor Susan Nance is interviewed today about the unexpected, industry-shifting announcement by Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus that they will phase out elephants in their shows by 2018. Dr. Nance is featured on KCRW Public Radio in Los Angeles , WHYY Public Radio in Philadelphia, and 570 News Kitchener, and in Think Progress, The Atlantic, and The Guardian.

This week, Dr. Nance also contributes her insight on "The Troubling Origins of the Circus Elephant Act" on the Johns Hopkins University Press Blog.

  from the jacket

General stores are essential to the image of a colonial village. Many historians, however, still base their stories of settlement on the notion of rural self-sufficiency, begging the question: if general stores were so common, who were their customers?

To answer this, Consumers in the Bush draws on the account books of country stores, rich evidence that has rarely been used. Douglas McCalla considers more than 30,000 transactions on the accounts of 750 families at seven Upper Canadian stores between 1808 and 1861. In telling us about the goods colonists bought, this book explores what they were used for and the stories they allow us to tell about rural lives and experience. By seeing rural Upper Canadians as consumers, Consumers in the Bush reveals them as full participants in the rapidly changing nineteenth-century global world of goods.

Book Launch sponsored by The Rural History Roundtable: April 7, 3:30-5:00 - Grad Lounge/5th fl. UC

Visit the book at McGill Queens University Press