Course Synopsis:
Would you like to read old diaries, enter into the lives of individuals and find out what daily life was like in “horse and buggy days”? Then join HIST4620 and learn about rural life across Canada. You will develop your detective, narrative analysis, mapping, tabling and graphing skills as you reveal the meanings found within these texts and relate diarists’ lives to their communities and larger themes in the scholarly literature. These themes will include the changing nature of work, food production, marketing, material objects, animals, property, social order, family strategies, the environment, gender and leisure as we move from the early days of settlement into the 20th century.
This year you’ll be able to work with diaries written in 1867 to celebrate Canada’s sesquicentennial!!!
Methods of Evaluation and Weights:
Seminars & Seminar Leadership: 50%
Research Paper & Related Assignments: 50%
Texts and/or Resources Required:
No required textbooks.
The Department awards the Heaslip Prize to a 3000 or 4000 paper on rural history which best exemplifies primary source based research.
*Please note: This is a preliminary web course description only. The department reserves the right to change without notice any information in this description. The final, binding course outline will be distributed in the first class of the semester.
