PhD Students
Anne Baycroft
PhD Candidate
Supervisor: Dr. George Keyworth
Dissertation Title: Book Culture and Networks of Buddhist-Christian Exchange in East Asia
Dissertation Description: My dissertation examines the development of movable metal Chinese type undertaken by American Protestant missionary printers and traces how this technology was disseminated across East Asia, contributing to the production of printed vernacular language books in China and Japan during the nineteenth century. I use archival and data-based research methods to identify and trace the movement of both missionaries, books, and print technology. This research provides a useful way of identifying transnational networks of exchange between Asia and the West, while contextualizing China’s place within early globalization. The transnational approach of my research contributes to scholarship which re-examines the nature and nuance of colonialism within East Asia, orchestrates needed conversation between the fields of religion and print history, and furthers our understanding of the relationship between language and technology.
Fields of Expertise: Chinese History, Religion & Culture, History of Colonialism, North American Indigenous History
Publications: Baycroft, Anne. 2022. “Narratives of Religious Landscape: Reading Gender and Chinese Buddhism in the Travel Writing of Christian Women.” Religions 13 (11): 1–13.
John Bird
PhD Candidate
Defended 2023
Supervisors: Dr. Keith Carlson and Dr. Benjamin Hoy
Dissertation Description: By bridging the fields of community-engaged ethnohistory, cultural history, and Indigenous literary criticism, my dissertation explores the significance of historical writing for Anishinaabe historical consciousness from 1800 to the present. Beginning with the publication of works of history by nineteenth-century Anishinaabeg and ending with the influence of these works on the memories of their communities in the present day, this thesis explores the relationship between orality and literacy as well as Indigenous writers’ engagement with Christian, Masonic, and other Euromerican historical frameworks. This interdisciplinary approach reveals that nineteenth-century Anishinaabe history writing not only offered a challenge to the ideological foundations of settler colonialism by asserting the value and historicity of Indigenous peoples, but that it also presented its readers with radical visions of the future wherein the evils of colonialism could potentially be curbed and a new order established that combined Anishinaabeg and Euromerican ways of knowing and living.
Fields of Expertise: Anishinaabeg History, Community-Engaged Ethnohistory, Indigenous North America, Indigenous Writing in English, Coast Salish History, Canadian History, United States History, Intellectual and Cultural History, Indigenous Christianity, Indigenous Freemasonry, Decolonization and Indigenization
Publications:
“Settler Salvation and Indigenous Survival: George Copway’s Reconciliatory Vision, 1849–1851,” London Journal of Canadian Studies 35, no. 1 (November 2020): 138–53. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.ljcs.2020v35.007.
Conference Presentations:
“Roundtable on Community-Engaged Ethnohistory (CEE): Re-Routing Scholarship Within Communities and Through Academic Disciplines,” American Society for Ethnohistory, Pennsylvania State University, September 26, 2019.
“‘Jesus Christ, Keshamonedoo’s Son’: Survival and Salvation in George Copway’s Vision of ‘Reconciliation,’” Canadian Society of Church History, University of British Columbia, June 5, 2019.
Derek Cameron
PhD Candidate
Supervisor: Dr. Erika Dyck
Thesis Title: Manufacturing Dissent: Anti-Vaccination Networks in Canada.
Thesis Description: My dissertation expands the work I began in my master's interrogating the role of risk and choice discourse in anti-vaccine rhetoric. By following Edda West, founder of the Committee against Mandatory Vaccination, I trace how government actions galvanized the budding anti-vaccine movement in English Canada. I also show that West created a series of strategic alliances to generate new critiques of vaccination from marginalized Canadians.
Fields of Expertise: History of Medicine, History of Vaccine Rejection, History of Youth, Canadian History
Publications (Select):
“‘Imagine the Perfect Vaccine’: Homeopathic Vaccine Alternatives and Vaccine Discourse in English Canada,” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History. (accepted)
Conference Presentations (Select):
“The Homeopathic Vaccine and its Effect on Canadian Anti-vaccine Discourse from 1987-2016.” Paper presented at the 7th Manitoba Ontario Minnesota Saskatchewan History of Medicine Conference. Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 28-29, 2019.
Michael Chartier
PhD Candidate
Supervisor: Dr. Erika Dyck
Thesis Title: A1 Youth: Nationalism, Eugenics, and the Battle for Adolescent Identity in Western Canada, 1918-1939
Dissertation Description: Using primarily children’s correspondence, magazines, and judicial records, this project explores how Western Canadian youth navigated puberty and reproduction during a period when nationalism, the mental hygiene movement, and purveyors of medical quackery fought to shape the values of Canada’s post ‘Great War’ generation of children.
Fields of Expertise: Canadian History, Medical History, Canadian Labour History
Conference Presentations (Select):
Chartier, M. (2023). A.1 Youth: Exploring Nationalism, Eugenics, and Puberty in the Interwar Period through Children’s Letters to the Western Producer. Paper presented at Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences to the Canadian Society for the History of Medicine. York University, Toronto, ON.
Chartier, M. (2022). “The Teen Age”: Exploring the Inter-War Health Experiences of Children through their Letters to the Western Producer. Paper presented at the 8th biannual “Manitoba, Northwest Ontario, Minnesota, Saskatchewan (MOMS) Medical History Conference. October 21-23rd, Saskatoon, SK.
Dyck, E., Chartier, M., & Savelli, M. (2021) Just Say No, Eh?: Teens, Doctors, Drugs and the Battle over Healthy Brains. Paper presented at “Between Postwar and Present Day Canada: 1970-2000 Conference” University of Guelph, virtual conference.
Chartier, M. (2011). “The Rhythms of Education: The Role of Foresight and Wisdom in Co-operative Development” Paper presented at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Studies, Fredericton, NB.
Chartier, M. (2010).“Foresight and Wisdom: A Whiteheadian Approach to Co-operative Management” Paper presented at the Applied Process Metaphysics Summer Institute, Paris, France.
Chartier, M. (2009).“Adult Education and the Social Economy” Paper presented as part of the Centre for the Study of Co-operatives Seminar Series.
Michelle Desveaux
PhD Candidate
Defended 2023
Supervisor: Dr. Keith Carlson
Dissertation Title: Intersections of Historical Consciousness: The Meeting of Indigenous and Settler Histories in Canada’s Storied Places
Dissertation Descriptions: My research focuses on historical consciousness and the various manifestations of academic, public, and everyday history. Specifically, I investigate the influence of and on historical consciousness in places where Canadian and Indigenous histories meet, meld, and challenge each other. For my dissertation, three case studies will address this point of inquiry: the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site; the National Archives and Victoria Island; and Indigenous stand-up comedy.
Fields of Expertise: Canadian historiography; historical consciousness; comparative Indigenous history; orality and literacy.
Publications (Select):
Corresponding author with Patrick Chassé, Glenn Iceton, Anne Janhunen, and Omeasoo Wāhpāsiw. “Twenty-First Century Indigenous Historiography: Twenty-Two Books That Need to be Read.” Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d’histoire 50.3 (Winter 2015): 524-548.
Conference Presentations (Select):
“Intersections of Historical Consciousness at the Fortress of Louisbourg and the National Archives: Writing the Present by Contesting the Past.” International Conference on the Study of Canada, Trent University, May 2015.
Christine Fiddler
PhD Candidate
Supervisor: Dr. Cheryl Troupe
Dissertation Title: A History of Nēhiyawak(Cree) Health and Traditional Healing Practices in Northwest Saskatchewan
Dissertation Description: This project seeks to uncover Indigenous understandings of health and healing as practiced by Nehiyaw (Cree) peoples living in northwest central Saskatchewan from 1921 to the 1970s, with an aim to answer the question: How have understandings of traditional knowledge and cultural practices related to health and healing changed as a result of treaty signing and the colonial practices that followed? This research will use Elders’ narratives and stories to explore traditional healing knowledge and practices as understood before and after treaty signing and will employ an Indigenous research methodology and a community-engaged focus. Research will be conducted in Waterhen Lake First Nation with community members with a storytelling approach meant to ensure I build and maintain strong respectful and reciprocal relationships with Indigenous research participants (Wilson. 2008). I strongly believe that it’s important to validate Indigenous worldviews and perspectives in everything we do, whether in Indigenous or non-Indigenous communities, institutions, and organizations.
Fields of Expertise: Indigenous History, Colonial History, Native-Newcomer Relations, Indigenous knowledges, traditional medicines and health practices, treaty history.
Justin Fisher
PhD Candidate
Supervisor: Dr. Andrew Watson
Dissertation Description: My project explores Saskatchewan’s energy history in the postwar era, focusing in particular on alternative energy developments—specifically the history of renewable energy and energy conservation—that flourished during the 1970s and 1980s, even as the exploitation of fossil fuel resources was expanding rapidly. Researchers in the province were at the forefront of a number of influential developments in energy alternatives, particularly in wind energy and home energy design, supported by both provincial and federal governments focused on issues of energy security. Moreover, this period saw the establishment of a number of advocacy groups focused on energy issues and promoting in particular the adoption of renewable energy and stringent energy conservation. However, by the 1990s, it was clear that many of these alternatives were not being implemented on a broad scale. This project seeks to better understand these alternative efforts within their historical context, and to understand what led to their flourishing in this time period, despite their failure to become widely adopted.
Fields of Expertise: Environmental & Energy History, Canadian & Prairie History, Indigenous History
Publications:
Carlson, H., J. Fisher and R. Malena Chan (2018). "Bridging the Gap: Building bridges between urban environmentalists and coal-producing communities in Saskatchewan." Saskatoon: Climate Justice Saskatoon.
Conference Presentations (Select):
"Bridging the gap between urban environmentalists and coal-producing communities in Saskatchewan." Just Transitions Summit, SaskForward, Campus Regina Public, Regina, SK, October 27-28, 2018. With Hayley Carlson and Rachel Malena-Chan.
"Dirty pasts and clean futures? Coal cultures in southern Saskatchewan." Annual Meeting, American Society for Environmental History 2020, Ottawa, Ontario, March 25-29, 2020. (Cancelled.)
Harris Ford
PhD Candidate
Supervisor: Dr. Maurice Jr. Labelle
Dissertation Title: What is True in Paris Is Not True in Timbuktu: The Inter Press Service and the Third World, 1973-1985
Dissertation Description: This dissertation examines how the Inter Press Service (IPS) became an international ally of Third Worldist nations during the high age of decolonization. The non-profit cooperative of journalists joined transnational efforts challenging international communications structures and, in turn, facilitated the free flow of marginalized perspectives into the global media system. With Third World movements in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia, IPS played an important role in the decolonization of information and the democratization of world news. Ultimately, my doctoral project aims to unearth how IPS helped expand a planetary Third World imagination in the 1970s and 1980s.
Fields of Expertise: Decolonization, Third Worldism, United Nations history, Internationalization, Arab-West relations, Settler Colonialism
Publications:
Louise Racine, Harris Ford, Letitia Johnson, and Susan Fowler-Kerry. "An Integrative Review of Indigenous Informal Caregiving in the Context of Dementia Care," Journal of Advanced Nursing Vol. 78, No. 4 (2022): 895-917.
Harris Ford. "'I Won't Say I Wanted the Job': The United Nations' Search for a Special Municipal Commissioner in Jerusalem, 1948-1949." Jerusalem Quarterly No. 92 (2022): 12-33.
Conference Presentations:
Harris Ford: “‘We Have to Take Care of What We Have’: Skowkale, Hatcheries, and the Processes of Grappling with the Future Among the Stó:lō.” BC Studies Conference, University of the Fraser Valley, Abbottsford, British Columbia. May, 2021. (virtual)
Benjamin Hoy and Harris Ford. "Prison of the Prairies." Difficult Histories Conference. University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario. May, 2022.
Maglyn Gasteiger
PhD Student
Supervisor: Dr. Valerie Korinek
Dissertation Description:
My dissertation explores the development of second-wave feminism in Saskatchewan from the 1960s to the early 1980s. My research will highlight how local circumstances shaped women's experiences of feminism in the late 20th century. I am further interested in how the intersections of regional, racial, class, and gender identities informed relationships between the various and unique women's groups within the province. Thus, through a detailed study of these feminist groups and their engagement with one another, I will work to chart the landscape of second-wave feminism in Saskatchewan.
Dasha Guliak
PhD Candidate
Supervisor: Dr. Erika Dyck
Dissertation Title: Breaking and Bracing Boundaries: Canadian Women Medical Missionaries in China and Korea, 1939-1945
Description:
My proposed research seeks to highlight the experiences of female medical doctors who worked with Protestant missions in China and Korea during the Second World War. This research highlights the intersections of race, gender, and class within religious and medical institutions during a period in which race, class, and gender underwent restructuring, both nationally and internationally. Moreover, a focus on the construction of both femininity and masculinity within these spaces helps to illuminate the changing construction of gender and the unique advantages and limitations one's gender provided these doctors within the medical mission field. This topic builds on my master's research which investigated the reaction of Calgary's Protestant Churches to the Second World War.
Letitia Johnson
Defended 2023
Supervisors: Dr. Erika Dyck
Dissertation Description: My dissertation explores the forcible relocation of Japanese Canadians during World War II through a health care lens, with a geographic focus on British Columbia and Alberta. My research examines the government allocation of funds and personnel dedicated to providing medical care to the interned community, while emphasising the critical role Japanese Canadian physicians, nurses, nurse aides, medical secretaries, and more had in maintaining the health of their ethnic community during the 1940s. By focusing on the health aspects of internment, I argue that while health care was not a central concern of the Canadian government at the onset of internment policies it became central to the government’s propaganda surrounding internment, at home and in international settings.
Fields of Expertise: Canadian History, Medical History, Ethnic minority/Immigrant History, History of Nursing, Gender History, Cultural History, Indigenous History.
Publications (select):
Vandenberg, Helen, and Letitia Johnson. “Filling the Gap Between Metropoles and Peripheries: Insights about British Columbia’s Hospital Standardization Movement from the British Columbia Hospital Association Conferences, 1918-1930.” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History. [submitted, accepted]
Johnson, Letitia. ““The Case of Dr. Masajiro Miyazaki: Japanese Canadian Health Care in World War II” Medical Humanities 46, (2)(2020):135–143
Conference Presentations:
Johnson, Letitia. “Worthy of Providing Care: Japanese-Canadian Health Care Providers during Internment.” The Canadian Society for the History of Medicine (CSHM)/Canadian Association for the History of Nursing (CAHN) Joint Conference 2021. June 1-2, 2021. Virtual Conference. *winner of Vicky Bach Memorial Prize (presented by CAHN)
Johnson, Letitia. “Evidence of Sufficient Health Care: Medical Infrastructure in Japanese-Canadian World War II Relocation Centres.” The Minnesota, (Northern) Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan (MOMS) Medical History Conference. September 28-29, at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Johnson, Letitia. “A ‘Showplace’ of Forcible Relocation: The New Denver Sanatorium and Japanese-Canadian Health Care During the Second World War.” Perennial Problems: Histories of Health and Environment Across Borders Workshop. September 20-21, at the Wilson Institute for Canadian History at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario.
Johnson, Letitia. “Japanese Canadian Health Care in World War II.” The Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting. May 28-30, at the University of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan.
Johnson, Letitia. “Japanese Canadian Health Care in World War II” The Human Body and World War II Conference, Faculty of English, University of Oxford, England, March 23-24, 2018.
McKelvey Kelly
PhD Candidate
Supervisor: Dr. Kathryn Labelle
Dissertation Title: Landscapes of Love: Wyandot Women and the Politics of Removal, 1795-1914
Dissertation Description: My dissertation is a community-engaged history guided by an Advisory Council ofWandat/Wendat women including Chief Emeritus Janith Atrondahwatee English (Kansas), Principal Chief Judith Tronniaęnk Manthe (Kansas), Second Chief Louisa Yarǫnyewáʔe Libby (Kansas), Faith Keeper Catherine Taǫmęʔšreʔ Tàmmaro (Anderdon/Detroit), Faith Keeper Sallie Tewatronyahkwa Cotter Andrews (Oklahoma), andFaith Keeper and lawyer Barbara Datǫgya’ha Aston (Oklahoma). It examines structures of power and control within North American Indigenous removal and diaspora. I focus on the responses of Indigenous women to the historic trauma of removal in nineteenth century America. I argue that Wandat women protested removal and erasure of the Wandat from their lands in Tsaʔⁿduskeh, Uhížuʔ (now Sandusky, Ohio) and Wyandott City (now Kansas City, Kansas) in the wake of American expansion following the 1830s. These women fought for their land using petitions, letter-writing, affidavits, physical occupation, and, sometimes, violence, to preserve community culture and overcome generations of colonial threats. This research challenges settler myths that Indigenous peoples are timeless and only exist outside of city spaces on the edges of settler metropolises or on reserves. This includes challenging narratives of destruction and erasure of Indigenous peoples during American Indian Removal as many Indigenous peoples remained to develop the regions they had lived in for generations. Thus, my dissertation exemplifies the ways that Indigenous peoples resist(ed) colonization and shape(d) the making of cities, states, and countries reimaging spaces thought to be settler as Indigenous ones like Kansas City, Kansas.
Fields of Expertise: Indigenous History, Ancient North America, Colonization and Settler Colonialism, Indigenous Women’s History, Allotments, Treaties, Removal
Publications:
Kelly, M. “Enǫ́:trǫʔ (To Be Connected): Grief and Loss in Ethnohistorical Community-Engaged Research.”Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History (Under Review).
Kelly, M. “Community Engagement, Collaboration, and Advisory Councils: A Wendat/Wandat Case Study.”Engaged Scholar Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Learning (Under Review).
Conference Presentations (select):
Kelly, M. “Connecting with Community: Community Engagement as a Visiting Student Researcher.” Invited Talk.Visiting Student Researcher (VSR) Community Day. Fulbright Canada. Zoom Meeting, Winter 2023.
Kelly, M. “‘Bathed their Bones with Her Tears’: Women and the Wyandot of Anderdon Cemetery, 1790-1914.” Panel Presenter and Organizer, “Relationships and Resilience: Indigenous Families During Transitional Times.” Canadian Historical Association, Online, May 2022.
Kelly, M. and Principal Chief Judith Manthe (Wyandot Nation of Kansas). “Making Space for Grief: Grief, Loss, and Ethnohistorical Community Engaged Research.” Panel Presenter and Organizer, “Connection and Loss: The Effects of Death and Grief on Community Engaged Ethnohistory.” American Society for Ethnohistory, Lawrence, Kansas, September 2022.
Kelly, M. “Women, and the Wyandot of Anderdon Cemetery, 1790-1914.” Invited Talk. Ontario Genealogical Society. Essex County Branch, Fall 2022.
Kelly, M. “Emotion Work, Women, and the Wyandot of Anderdon Cemetery, 1790-1914.” Invited Talk. Detroit River Research Group. University of Windsor, Fall 2021.
“Emotion Work, Women, and the Wyandot of Anderdon Cemetery, 1790-1914.” Panel presenter and organizer. Canadian Historical Association, University of London, June 2020.
“Community-Engagement and Wyandot Burial Spaces.” MA Colloquium in History, University of Saskatchewan, November 2018.
“Crowfoot’s Omahksspaètsikoi: A History of Blackfoot Funerary Practices, 1850-1900.” Poster display. Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting, University of Regina, May 2018.
Candice Klein
PhD Candidate
Supervisor: Dr. Valerie Korinek
Bio: Candice’s research fields include queer, gender, legal, and Indigenous histories in Western Canada. Outside of her PhD research and teaching, Candice takes pleasure in camping, hiking, thrifting for antiques, jewelry design, spending time with friends, and enjoying the company of her partner and their two cats, Melvin and Fitz. She is committed to social justice issues and engages in various community events, public history lectures, and grassroots volunteer opportunities. She is the 2023 recipient of the Everett Baker Award for Saskatchewan Heritage for her thesis research and her work with the Neil Richards Collection of Gender and Sexual Diversity at the University Archives and Special Collections. She also received the Congress Graduate Student Merit Award for her conference presentation at the 2023 Canadian Historical Association.
Dissertation Title: “If my wife had been home this would never have happened’: Incest in Saskatchewan 1901 to 1931”
Dissertation Description: Candice’s dissertation looks at the history of incest in Saskatchewan from 1901 to 1931. She examines the ways that race, ethno-religious identities, gender, and class influenced judicial outcomes in these cases. Filial sexual assault was one part of a larger system of gender-based and domestic violence in Prairie families. Violence within settler and Indigenous families was not always limited to physical, psychological, or verbal assault – for 163 families, it was also sexual.
Expertise: Legal History, History of Gender and Sexuality, Prairie History, Indigenous Histories, Queer History, and Canadian History
Publications:
Klein, Candice. "'We thought we were the only lesbians in the world': 1971 Vancouver and the Rise of Lesbian and Transnational Feminist Identities between Canada and the United States." (Forthcoming)
Klein, Candice. “Sex and the City: Saskatoon was a Wide-Open Town.” Folklore: Saskatchewan’s Yesterday Personified 41 no 3 (Summer 2020): 24-30.
Klein, Candice. "'They Didn't Even Realize Canada Was a Different Country': Canadian Left Nationalism at the 1971 Vancouver Indochinese Women's Conference." Labour/Le Travail 84 (Fall 2019): 231-258.
Conference Presentations (select):
“If my wife had been home, this would never had happened:” Incest and Domestic Violence in Early 20th Century Saskatchewan. Canadian Historical Association, 2023.
“Sex and the City: Saskatoon’s Sexual Past.” Spark Your Pride, 2022
“Dusting Off Our Past for a Safer Tomorrow: Historical Context of Gendered Violence in the Prairies.” RESOLVE Network, 2021
“We thought we were the only lesbians in the world:” 1971 Vancouver and the Formation of Transnational Feminist Identities." Between Postwar and Present Day: Canada, 1970-2000 Conference, 2021
“They didn’t even realize Canada was a different country”: Anxieties about American Imperialism within Women's Liberation at the 1971 Vancouver Indochinese Women’s Conference.” History, Feminism, Theory: Reflections on Women, Gender, Labour, and Colonialism Conference, 2019
“Sisterhood is Powerful, but Not Easy: The Intersection of Women's Liberation and Anti-Imperialism During the 1971 Vancouver Indochinese Women's Conference.” Canadian Historical Association, 2018
“American Imperialism on Canadian Soil: The 1971 Vancouver Indochinese Women’s Conference.” Western Association of Women’s History Conference, 2017
Patrick Lee
PhD Candidate
Supervisor: Dr. Andrew Watson
Dissertation Title: The Golden Age of the Prairies: The Canadian Environmental History of Canola
Dissertation Description: My research investigates the creation of canola and its establishment in Canadian prairie agricultural production. It focuses on how canola has changed Western Canadians' relationship with the environment and what this means for agriculture in the 21st century.
Fields of Expertise: Environmental & Agricultural History, Canadian and Prairie History, Indigenous History, Early Ottoman History
Tarisa Little
Defended 2023
Supervisor: Dr. Kathryn Labelle
Dissertation Description: For my project I will focus on Indigenous Education; Treaty 7; Residential, Day Boarding, and Public Schools; the Wendat Confederacy; and the Wyandot of Anderdon Nation (Detroit/Windsor).
Fields of Expertise: Indigenous History, Colonial History, Native-Newcomer Relations, Treaty History, Education History, Canadian History, Alberta History
Publications (Select):
“Dr. Élénore Sioui (Huron-Wendat): Writing the Wrongs.” in Women and Social Movements in Modern Empires Since 1820. Edited by Kathryn Sklar and Thomas Dublin. Alexander Street: TBD, 2017. http://search.alexanderstreet.com/wasg
Accepted:
"Setting a Precedent: The Power of Public Protest at Blue Quills Residential School, 1970." in Bucking Conservatism. Athabasca, AB: Athabasca University Press, TBD.
Conference Presentations (Select):
“’Here we are:” Comics Combating Colonialism.” Western Historical Association, San Diego, CA, November 2017.
“’There are no shortcuts’: The Long Road to Treaty 7 Education.” American Society for Ethnohistory. Nashville, TN, November 2016
Kiera Mitchell
PhD Candidate
Supervisor: Dr. Valerie Korinek
Thesis Title: “Work Done by Any Ranch Wife”: Farm Women, Labour, and Divorce in Canada"
Thesis Description: My dissertation is a legal history project studying the origins and ongoing impact of three Canadian Supreme Court cases during the 1970s and 1980s: Murdoch v. Murdoch (1973), Rathwell v. Rathwell (1978), and Pettkus v. Becker (1981). Through applying legal and historical research methods to the study of these three cases, this project investigates how Canadian women’s experiences of property division at the end of marriage and common-law relationships significantly changed, legally and socially, beginning in the 1970s. Combining case law with popular publications like Chatelaine and The Western Producer, I’m interested in understanding how the ending of three relationships in rural, agricultural Canada impacted living, working, and loving under family property law for all Canadians in the latter twentieth century. I’ve co-authored articles on the histories of gendered labour in Canadian academia in the Canadian Historical Review and London School of Economics Impact Blog
Fields of Expertise: History of Gender and Sexuality, Canadian History, Legal History, Labour History
Publications:
Donica Belisle with Kiera Mitchell. “Mary Quayle Innis: Faculty Wives’ Contributions and the Making of Academic Celebrity.” Canadian Historical Review 99:3 (Fall 2018):456-486.
Conference Presentations:
"Poster Session: The Feminist Potential of Space: The Hone-James Studio.” Annual Meeting of the Canadian Historical Association, University of Regina, Regina SK, May 29, 2018.
"Roundtable: New Muslim Public Spheres in the Digital Age: Stages of Research, Methodology and Mentorship.” Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society for the Study of Religion, University of Regina, Regina SK, May 28, 2018.
"Fertile Clay: Beth Hone, Art and Activism in the Prairies West.” The Simone de Beauvoir Institute 40th Anniversary Conference, Concordia University, Montreal QC, May 9, 2018.
With Donica Belisle. “Creating Historical Canons: Mary Quayle Innis, Harold Innis, and the Production of Intellectual Authority.” Annual Meeting of the Canadian Historical Association, Ryerson University, Toronto ON, 29-31 May 2017.
Richard Oware
PhD Candidate
Supervisor: Dr. Simonne Horwitz
Dissertation Title: Witchcraft, Insanity and Culture: Women at the Crossroad of Modernity and Change in Ghana, 1900-1960.
Dissertation Description: My dissertation contributes to gender and medical history by exploring the historical factors that have shaped the lynching and accusations of older women in Ghana. By engaging a wide range of sources like colonial ordinances and missionary and anthropological discourses on witchcraft, this dissertation aims to examine how the historical evolution of the phenomenon has shaped the African understanding of mental diseases that affect older women.
I am particularly interested in how witchcraft became a contested system of knowledge within the Ghanaian colonial space and how this has affected its connotations and meanings for contemporary discourses and policy directions on Aging and Population Health in Ghana.
Fields of Expertise: African History, including Indigenous Medicine and Integration, History of Madness and Psychiatry, Witchcraft, Ageing and Population Health.
Publications:
Adu-Gyamfi, Samuel, Richard Oware, and Dennis Baffour Awuah. "Interest groups, issue definition and the politics of traditional medicine in Ghana." Nordic Journal of African Studies 28, no. 4 (2019): 19-19
Adu-Gyamfi, Samuel, and Richard Oware. "Economy and Health in the Gold Coast, 1902–1957." African Economic History 47, no. 2 (2019): 12-44.
Adu-Gyamfi, Samuel, and Richard Oware. "Wesleyan Mission Medicine in Asante (1901-2000)." Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Studies (2018): 335-376.
Adu-Gyamfi, Samuel, Razak Mohammed Gyasi, Richard Oware and Godwin Adu-Agyeman. "Skin Bleaching Narratives Responses from Women Bleachers and Stakeholders in Ghana (1950s–2015)." Ethnologia Actualis 18, no. 2 (2019): 100-117.
Conference Presentations:
"Colonial Laws or Fears? Healing Insanity in an Anti-Witchcraft Ghana, 1920-1940." Manitoba, Ontario, Minnesota and Saskatchewan 8th Annual Medical History Conference, University of Saskatchewan, 2022.
"Margret Joyce Field and Colonial Psychiatry in Ghana." Canadian Society for the History of Medicine, Joint Annual Online Conference 2021.
"A comparative analysis of the Akwesasne and Mapuche Nations". Canadian Studies Undergraduate Conference. University of Toronto, Toronto ON, March 2019.
Jack A. Raslich
PhD Candidate
Supervisors: Dr. Cheryl Troupe and Dr. Valerie Korinek
Dissertation Title: The Spirit Lives On: Gay American Indians and the Revival of North American Indigenous Gender and Spirituality
Description: My proposed research seeks to look at the work of the first ever Queer Indigenous social activist and wellness group in the United States, Gay American Indians, and where they fit in both in the broad spectrum of North American Indigenous history in their formation, but also where they grow as a national and international organization and effect contemporary Indigenous and Queer politics and the way Academia handles, addresses, reproduces, and includes Queer Indigeneity. I also believe in the importance of recording these stories and histories of Indigenous elders and allies who were involved with GAI to preserve their voices and worldviews for future Indigenous peoples, Queer or otherwise, much as they did with their landmark publication Living the Spirit.
Jessy Lee Saas
PhD Candidate
Supervisor: Dr. Erika Dyck
Dissertation Title: Stories of the West: The Agrarian Influence on Prairie and National Identities in Canada, 1867 – 1967
Description: My research reconsiders Canada’s historical identification with the “mild west” and rejection of the “wild west” to demonstrate the creation of the agrarian ideal. I look at how Canada’s “frontier” was built on an agrarian ideology which promoted a narrative of settler heroism while neglecting to recognize that agrarian development was grounded in acts of settler colonization. My research will explain how these homesteading-era frontier tropes have provided Canada as a whole with powerful and durable identity-shaping narratives. However, these identity narratives are highly problematic as they empower the “mild west” mythology in public spaces (such as museums and classrooms) which has made it difficult for many Canadians to recognize the negative and ongoing impact of settler colonization. Ultimately, my research hopes to “unsettle” Canada’s agrarian ideal and contribute to truth and reconciliation efforts.
Fields of Expertise: Canadian History, Prairie History, Indigenous Histories, Decolonization, Gender
Publications:
"The 'Queen of Lady Farmers' and Married Women as Landowners on the Canadian Prairies.” Prairie History, no. 9 (Fall 2022): 5-17.
Conference Presentations:
Panelist for “Identity and Movement in Canadian History,” New Frontiers Conference, York University. March 2022. Presented on “Queen of Lady Farmers” research.
Other:
Coordinator of the Co-Lab for Community Engaged Research (2022-present).
Project Lead for "Our History is Our Foundation" (2022-2023), an oral history research project in partnership with Ilarion Residence Retirement Home.
Alessandro Tarsia
Defended 2023
Supervisors: Dr. Keith Thor Carlson and Dr. Kathryn Labelle
Dissertation Title: Tobacco in Stó:lō Historical Consciousness: Change and Continuity Through Intersectional Stigmas and Honours.
Dissertation Description: This is a multi-faceted Community-engaged Scholarship (CES) project which synthesizes diverse research aspects of mine along with bridging past projects with a completely new population – various indigenous groups of Canada – focusing on food studies, community and geographical space and illness. The introduction of extensive cultivation of grain, rye and barley in the Canadian prairies took place gradually after the arrival of the colonizers and therefore is properly considered a material manifestation of the colonization itself. It implies a radical transformation of territory, economy and nutrition and hence, a revolution of the same native culture as landscape, since wildlife, flora and fauna are essential elements of their culture. Since the cultivation of these cereals is carried out on the initiative of settlers, when colonization is already taking place among indigenous peoples, studying ergotism can be done through the lens of post-colonial scholarship which recognizes the process of assimilation, mimicry and agency of indigenous peoples. The present research aims to situate ergotism within the context of Indigenous history and the history of Canadian settler colonialism. It will accomplish this by investigating the material conditions of life, the geographical landscape, the agriculture, the epidemic that affected both men and animals and the pests that afflicted the vegetation, climate, flora and fauna as a complex cultural system over the period stretching from the beginning of the 18th century to the end of the 19th century.
Fields of Expertise: Community Engaged Scholarship, History of Medicine, History of Ancient Mediterranean cultures, History of Southern Italy, Historical Anthropology, Ethnography of the Italian Organized Crime.
Publications:
Alessandro Tarsia, Perché la ‘ndrangheta: Antropologia dei calabresi [Why the ‘Ndrangheta. Anthropology of Calabrians] (Gioiosa Marea (ME) Pungitopo: 2015).
Alessandro Tarsia, Il pane e il fuoco: L’ergotismo nel meridione d’Italia [Bread and Fire. Ergotism in Southern Italy] (Roma, Aracne: 2011). ISBN 978-88-548-4318-9 (Book)
Alessandro Tarsia, “The Devil in the Sheaves. Ergotism in Southern Italy”, in Semiotica. Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies, 2013; 195:357-371. DOI 10.1515/sem-2013-0002. (Article)
Lucky Tomdi
PhD Student
Supervisor: Dr. Simonne Horwitz
Dissertation Description: My PhD dissertation explores the professionalization of African health labor within colonial and Christian missionary biomedical health infrastructures over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This project examines the silenced roles, agency, and contributions of Africans who across various intersectional categories worked to sustain biomedical healthcare in Ghana. It also interrogates the intersection of gender, race and class in the recruitment and training of local labor into the biomedical health service. This project challenges the dominant Eurocentric narratives which place foreign agencies at the center of development and sustenance of biomedicine in Africa. I argue that the work of African labor was central to the success and organization of biomedicine in Ghana. Understanding the type of work, the skills learned, the resilience and limitations of local health workers, all of whom contributed to the success and organization of biomedicine adds to our understanding of global health within local contexts.
Fields of Expertise: African history; history of medicine and health; race, gender and science; history of hospitals, health professions, and patient care; medical humanities
Publications (Select):
Tomdi, Lucky. “Gender, Race and Class at Work: Enlisting African Health Labour into the Gold Coast Medical Service, 1860–1957.” Medical Humanities Published Online First: 17 April 2023. doi:10.1136/medhum-2022-012468
Adu-Gyamfi, Samuel, and Lucky Tomdi. “Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) and Epidemic Diseases Vulnerabilities in Ghana: A Reflection on the Influenza Epidemic of 1918-1920.” Thesis 12, no. 1 (2023): 101-122.
Adu-Gyamfi, Samuel, Lucky Tomdi, and Kwasi Amakye-Boateng. “Discourse on Non-Communicable Diseases Interventions in Ghana, 1990-2018.” Journal of Basic and Applied Research International26, no. 2 (2020): 17-26.
Adu-Gyamfi, Samuel, Mariama M. Kuusaana, Benjamin D. Darkwa, and Lucky Tomdi. “The Changing Landscape of Mission Medicine and Hospitals in Africa.” Christian Journal for Global Health7, no.5 (2020): 6-22.
Conference Presentations (Select):
Tomdi, Lucky. “African Medical Orderlies and the Evolution of Attendant Care in Ghanaian Hospitals, 1860-1957.” Paper presented at the Canadian Society for the History of Medicine and Canadian Association for the History of Nursing joint conference held at York University, Toronto, Ontario (May 29, 2023).
Tomdi, Lucky. “Gender, Race and Class in the Enlistment of African Health Labour in the Gold Coast, 1860-1957.” Paper presented at the 28th Annual University of New Brunswick Graduate Research Conference (May 06, 2022).
Adu-Gyamfi, Samuel and Lucky Tomdi. “Politics of Saving Lives: Race, Inequality, and Quarantine from Spanish Influenza to COVID-19 in Ghana.” Paper presented at the African Studies Association of Africa (ASAA), 4th Biennial Conference co-hosted by HUMA – Institute for Humanities in Africa at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Panel 42.A: De-Humanising Health? Responsibilisaton and Racialised Space in Times of Corona, Hybrid Event, Cape Town-South Africa (April 15, 2022).
Tomdi, Lucky. “Worse Than Being Infected? Approaching A History of Non-Communicable Diseases and Epidemic Diseases Vulnerabilities in Ghana.” Paper presented at the 21st Annual University of Maine-University of New Brunswick International History Graduate Student Conference (March 27, 2022).
Tomdi, Lucky. “A Historical Review of Immigrant Health Labour in Canada, 1950-1970.” Paper presented at the 19th Annual McGill-Queens History Graduate Conference (March 11, 2022).
MA Students
Sarah Benson
Defended 2023
Supervisor: Dr. Cheryl Troupe
Thesis Title: “Taken in hand by Indians”: Jewish-Indigenous Relations in the Qu’Appelle Valley
Thesis Description: My research explores the nature and duration of interactions between First Nations and Métis communities, and Jewish settlers of the Lipton Agricultural Colony in the File Hills region during the early twentieth century.
Rhianne Billard
MA Student
Supervisor: Dr. Cheryl Troupe
Thesis Title: “A part of our Heritage”: Indigenous representation in Saskatoon's commemorative sites.
Thesis Description: My thesis will examine the evolution of commemorating Indigenous historical sites within the city of Saskatoon between 1980 and 2015 to demonstrate how Indigenous activism propelled early commemoration efforts and paved the way for the establishment of commemorative sites resulting from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the 94 Calls to Action.
Alex Flaman
MA Student
Supervisor: Dr. Simonne Horwitz
Oliver Friesen
MA Student
Supervisor: Dr. Ashleigh Androsoff
Thesis Title: Choosing Ethnicity or Religion: Mennonite and Doukhobor Language Preservation, 1872-1971
Thesis Description: My project considers the arguments Saskatchewan Mennonites made in favour of and against language assimilation over a one-hundred-year period from their arrival in 1872 to Canada’s adoption of multiculturalism as policy in 1971. I compare the Mennonite experience to that of Saskatchewan’s Doukhobors who experienced similar identity dilemmas surrounding the retention of the Russian language.
Taryn Goff
MA Student
Supervisor: Dr. Cheryl Troupe
Thesis Title: Genocide in the Garden: Indian Residential School Food Production in Western and Northern Canada, 1890-1944
Thesis Description: My thesis considers vegetable gardens as sites of botanical colonization at Canadian Indian Residential Schools prior to the Second World War. It is interested in the symbolic importance of relationships between plants and people, including ways in which Eurocentric gender roles and ideals were reinforced in systems of food production. My research explores how school agriculture contributed to Indigenous children’s alienation from traditional foodways and land-based relationships, reflecting broader colonial transformations of human interactions with the natural world.
Fields of Expertise: Environmental history, gender history, British empire, settler colonialism, garden history.
Bethany Knowles
MA Student
Supervisor: Dr. Erika Dyck
Thesis Title: “Christ or Chaos”: Authoritative Voices on Mental and Social Hygiene in Canada from 1910–1969
Thesis Description: My thesis engages with ideas of mental hygiene and family values to consider big contests in the public sphere regarding who held authority. It examines how Protestant religious leaders discussed, promoted, and participated in the eugenics movement from the pulpit, making the church a political space. Moreover, it explores how religious discourses inflected feminist attitudes towards (and appropriations of) eugenicist ideas. This thesis aims to contextualize women in these religious conversations about them but not by them. By examining sermons, speeches, and writings of religious leaders, religious people, and feminists, I explore how pastors tackled hygiene issues, how those debates moved into the public sphere, and how women entered that space and discussion.
Fields of Expertise: Medical History, Women’s/Gender History, Canadian History, Religious History
Fangyu Liu
MA Student
Supervisor: Dr. Mirela David
Thesis Title: All-China Women's Federation and the Burden of Double Oppression: A Study of Rural Women in Twentieth Century China.
Kiegan Lloyd
MA Student
Supervisors: Dr. Frank Klaassen and Dr. Mark Meyers
Thesis Title: “A Malignant Heart: Religious Syncretism, Erotic Poetry and the Mystical Peregrinations of Aleister Crowley (1875-1947)”
Thesis Description: My proposed thesis aims to explore the life and philosophy of Aleister Crowley, and his influence on countercultural, new age, and sexual revolution movements. I intend to provide an in-depth analysis of selected poems and personal letter correspondence from Crowley’s collections, utilizing a moderate, holistic, and imaginative-centered lens. By contextualizing the thesis within the history of sexuality, I believe it offers a unique opportunity for scholars to reflect on twentieth-century paradigms of morality, spirituality, anarchism, and libertarianism.
Fields of Expertise: Cults and New Religious Movements’ Studies, Satanism, New Age Movements, Demonology, Magic, Witchcraft, Eroticism, Sexuality and Gender Studies
Publications:
Petry, Yvonne, and Kiegan Lloyd. ‘“What do they mean by a potent man?:’ Medical Views of Impotence in Early Modern France.” In The Fluidity of the Male Body: Masculinity in Premodern Europe (93-112). Edited by Jacqueline Murry. Toronto: Centre of Renaissance and Reformation Studies, 2022.
Lloyd, Kiegan. ‘“Blessed is the man who has a virtuous wife:’ A Historiographical Analysis of the Malleus Maleficarum and the Question of Gender.” Saber and Scroll Historical Journal 11, no. 6 (2022), 1-31.
Lloyd, Kiegan. ‘“My love is as a fever:’ Medical Discourse on Lovesickness, Imagination and the Emotions in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century France.” The Mirror: Undergraduate History Journal 42, no 1 (2022), 106-118.
Conference Presentations:
‘“Let there be Light:’ NRM politics, Religious Toleration and Aleister Crowley in Popular Culture. Hello, Darkness, My Old Friend: Darkness in the American Imagination PopMeC Association for US Popular Culture Studies/Universidad de Alcalá, Madrid, Spain [accepted/to be presented], 2023
“Darkness in the American Imagination: The Legacy and Influence of Aleister Crowley in Popular Culture”Northeast Popular Culture and American Association (NEPCA) Conference, Nichols College, Dudley, MA, USA [accepted/to be presented], 2023
“The Peregrinations of Aleister Crowley: Anti-Colonialism, Sovereignty,Religious Syncretism and Erotic Poetry as Resistance”. V International H/Story Conference Sense and Sexuality: Erotic Discourses in/of History, CINiBA University Library and Scientific Information Centre, Katowice, Poland [accepted/withdrawn], 2023
“Love, Mysticism, and Islam in the Personal Reflections of Aleister Crowley”, 8th Annual International Gender and Sexuality Studies Conference, University of Central Oklahoma, Oklahoma, USA [accepted/withdrawn], 2023
“Decadence, Sexuality, and Sin in the Poetry of Aleister Crowley”. Global Decadence, Race and the Future of Decadence Studies Conference, University of Virginia/University of Toronto/University of Utah, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, 2023
“Christianity, Sex, Sin, and Apocalypticism in the Literary Thought of Aleister Crowley”, Ends and Afterlives: Death, Apocalypse and Rebuilding Through History, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA, 2023
“The Peregrinations of Aleister Crowley: Religious Syncretism and Erotic Poetry as Resistance”, Northeast Popular Culture and American Association (NEPCA) Conference, New Mexico Tech University, Socorro, New Mexico, USA, 2023
“What do they mean by a potent man?:’ Medical Views of Impotence in Early Modern France,” (co-authored with Dr. Yvonne Petry), Masculinities in the Premodern World: Continuities, Change, and Contradictions Conference, Toronto Renaissance and Reformation Colloquium, Toronto, Ontario, 2023 *nominated for the Carol Mitchell Prize and the Amos St. Germain Prize
Adaugo Gift Odionu
MA Student
Supervisor: Dr. Jim Clifford
Thesis Title: Rural-Urban Migration in Lagos and its Hinterlands: Perspectives on the Period before and after Decolonization, 1946-1976
Thesis Description: My thesis will explore twentieth century demographic trends in Lagos, a Nigerian megacity that emerged from the status of a small fishing community to become a megacity by global standard. I will examine the interaction between pull-push forces that influenced migration in the city before and after decolonization.
Katrina Phippard
MA Student
Defended 2023
Supervisor: Dr. Robert Englebert
Thesis Title: Settler Colonialism in Illinois Country: Migrations and Village Interconnectivity, 1699-1763
Thesis Description: My thesis will examine the impact of social networks on the formation of villages in the Illinois Country during the French colonial period, 1699-1763. More specifically, it will analyze how interconnectivities between settlers, Indigenous Illinois and Osage peoples and both black and Indigenous enslaved peoples contributed to a complex process of cultural hybridity that rejects simplistic conclusions about the character of the region. It will help to shed light on the process of colonization, as well as the nature of early settler colonialism at the edge of empire.
Fields of Expertise: French colonial history, settler colonialism
Conference presentations:
“Webs of Kinship: Migration Patterns and Community Building in Illinois Country 1730-1815” Student Undergraduate Research Experience Summer Symposium. University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK. August 2020. Supervised by Dr. Robert Englebert.
Carrie Slager
MA Student
Supervisor: Dr. Zac Yuzwa
Thesis Title: Harmony in Crisis: The Shifting Imagery of Concordia in the Later Roman Empire.
Thesis Description: My project seeks to examine the imagery of the goddess Concordia and how it changes during the later Roman Empire from 235-350 CE.
Abby Vadeboncoeur
MA
Defended 2022
Supervisor: Dr. Jim Clifford and Dr. Andrew Watson
Thesis Title: Remembering the Great War in Southern Saskatchewan
Thesis Description: In the aftermath of the First World War, Canadians across the country mourned their lost friends and family members. Meanwhile, grand memorials were being constructed overseas to commemorate the war dead. My thesis examines how communities in South Saskatchewan remembered and mourned their lost loved ones, from small local projects to large international efforts.
Fields of Expertise: memory, First World War, prairie history
Jennifer Wilcox
MA Student
Supervisor: Dr. Valerie Korinek
Thesis Title: The Prairie Play Party: A History of Kink Communities in Saskatoon and Edmonton, 1995-2020
Thesis Description: My thesis aims to explore the role of women and non-binary folk who are integral to the working, vetting and building of these oft misunderstood communities. Unlike popular media can suggest, these communities can be empowering spaces that embrace a diversity of bodies, genders and sexualities. I hope to understand their historical development on the prairies and the connection to the wider sexual revolution at the end of the twentieth century.
Fields of Expertise: Women's and Gender History, History of Sexuality
Alan Wobeser
MA Student
Supervisor: Dr. Ben Hoy
Thesis Title: You Do Not Leave Civilization Behind: Vietnam, The Draft, and Canada"
Thesis Description:My research examines American draft dodging to Canada during the Vietnam War. It focuses on better understanding how the physical movement across the border by war resisters could take on larger political meanings beyond individual motivation. It also seeks to expand our understanding of who constitutes a war resister by attempting to illuminate all the populations affected by the American draft. This research utilizes HGIS practices to allow for unique analysis and draws on not only key historical collections of both anti-draft and government sources identified by earlier works but also a newly opened private collection and numerous new media sources.
Caitlin M. Woloschuk
MA
Defended 2023
Supervisor: Dr. Jim Clifford
Thesis Title: The Enduring Symbolism of the Canadian Lumberjack: From Big Joe Mufferaw to the Log Driver’s Waltz
Thesis Description: The Canadian lumberjack is an iconic symbol of Canadian nation-building, industrial expansion, and taming of the wilderness that continues to persist, even in the face of growing environmental concerns. My master’s research will focus on representations of lumberjacks in historical popular culture as well as how the changing labour regimes in the Ottawa Valley, caused by Britain's demand for Canadian timber, assisted in producing the symbolic and folkloric nature of the Canadian lumberjack.
Qixin Zhang
MA Student
Supervisor: Dr. Mirela David
Thesis title: Wildness and Mildness: 1900-1949 Sichuan-Chongqing Region Feminism and Modernity
Thesis description: It was a turbulent time from 1900 until 1949. Threatened by invasion from imperialists, the abolition of feudalism, the infusion of Western ideals, and democratic movements, progressive intellectuals attempted to find a way to save China. Many turned to feminism. My thesis will illustrates the awakening of feminism and modernity in the early twentieth century Sichuan-Chongqing region by comparing the different classes of women struggling for their identical rights with males