PhD Students
Ceilidh Auger Day
PhD Candidate
Supervisor: Dr. Erika Dyck
Dissertation Description: Canadian Healthcare Before Medicare. My research examines the options that were available to Canadians dealing with injury and illness in the early 1900s, from seeking out medical personnel such as nurses and doctors, to alternative strategies such as relying on neighbours. I trace the rise of insurance as a growing solution, first in the form of private life insurance and mutual societies, then in the form of worker's compensation (and finally Medicare).
Fields of Expertise: History of medicine, history of health and life insurance, Canadian health history, obesity history, American life insurance history, American eugenics
Conference Presentations (Select):
“Cultural values in Canadian health insurance,” International Conference on Risk and the Insurance Business in History, Sevilla 2019.
“No coverage for ‘…injuries caused by Indians’: Early accident insurance and the social and cultural world of late nineteenth-century Canada,” Canadian Society for the History of Medicine Annual Conference, Congress 2018.
“Insuring Canada: How the insurance industry shaped Canadian health options, and Canadians’ sense of self,” Healthcare before Welfare States Workshop, Prague 2018.
"Before the birth of Medicare: Government funding and insurance schemes in Saskatchewan," Canadian Society for the History of Medicine Annual Conference, Congress 2017.
Email: ceilidh.auger-day@usask.ca
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.
Email: amb784@mail.usask.ca
John Bird
PhD Candidate
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.
Email address: john.bird@usask.ca
Derek Cameron
PhD Student
Supervisor: Dr. Erika Dyck
Thesis Title:
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.
Email address: dhc115@mail.usask.ca
Michael Chartier
PhD Student
Supervisor: Dr. Erika Dyck
Dissertation Description: My proposed work explains how Saskatchewan Indian residential school teachers’ pedagogical practices were influenced by biases rooted in prevailing cultural, medical, and religious discourses.
Fields of Expertise: History of Canada, History of Education, History of Medicine, History of Labour.
Conference Presentations (Select):
“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, 2011.
“Foresight and Wisdom: A Whiteheadian Approach to Co-operative Management” Paper presented at the Applied Process Metaphysics Summer Institute, Paris, France, 2010.
“Adult Education and the Social Economy” Paper presented as part of the Centre for the Study of Co-operatives Seminar Series, 2009
Email: mdc809@mail.usask.ca
Michelle Desveaux
PhD Candidate
Supervisor: Dr. Keith Carlson
Dissertation Title: Engaging Historical Consciousness: The Coexistence, Convergence, and Counterpoint of Canadian and Indigenous Histories (working title)
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.
Email: michelle.desveaux@usask.ca
Christine Fiddler
PhD Student
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.
Email: cmf794@usask.ca
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.
Email: justin.fisher@usask.ca
Dasha Guliak
PhD Candidate
Supervisors: Dr. Ashleigh Androsoff
Dissertation Title: Breaking and Bracing Boundaries: Canadian Women Medical Missionaries in China and Korea, 1939-1945
Description:
Email: zex109@usask.ca
Letitia Johnson
PhD Candidate
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.
Email: lbj565@mail.usask.ca
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 current research investigates how the Wyandot Nation of Kansas drew upon their burial spaces and practices to preserve community culture and overcome generations of colonial threats during the 19th century. This project is a transnational study of the dispersed Wyandot Nations rooted in community-engagement, new ethnohistory, and GIS methodologies. Preliminary research demonstrates that the removal and erasure of Indigenous peoples from their lands have caused lasting historic trauma for contemporary communities like the Wyandots. Responding to this historic trauma, often Wyandot women drew on their relationships with the land to create spaces for community (and later protect these spaces from colonial conquest) to heal from the historic trauma of relocation. Through examining the specific experiences of Wyandot women in relation to burial spaces and other sacred places in Kansas, I will highlight matricentric traditions and female responsibilities to land, deathways, and community healing in protective strategies against removal.
Fields of Expertise: Indigenous North America, Ancient North America, Decolonization, Indigenous Women's History, History of Canada, History of Medicine
Conference Presentations (select):
Candice Klein
PhD Candidate
Supervisor: Dr. Valerie Korinek
Bio: Candice is working on several history and research projects, including queer and legal histories. Outside of her research, Candice takes pleasure in camping, hiking, thrifting for antiques, spending time with friends, and enjoying the company of her partner and their two cats, Melvin and Fitz. She also designs jewelry and goods under the label Fast Ghost, which you can find on Instagram or online at Fastghost.ca. She is committed to social justice issues and engages in various community events and organizations. Candice currently serves as Union President under the executive committee of PSAC Local 40004.
Dissertation Title: "If my wife had been home this would never have happened:" Sexual Violence and Deviancy within Prairie Families, 1890 to 1940
Dissertation Description: Candice’s dissertation looks at sexual violence and deviancy in the Prairies including incest, child sexual assault, and zoophilia. Saskatchewan has one of the highest rates of domestic and sexual violence in Canada, and Candice interrogates the historical context for these statistics. The experience of colonization was a violent and traumatic experience for Indigenous people. Many racialized settlers were also traumatized by the effects of colonization, although for different reasons comparatively – even so, their assimilation into Whiteness had long-lasting and devastating effects. The trauma of colonialism, relocation, displacement, assimilation, and isolation resulted in the manifestation of sexual, domestic, and institutional violence across Saskatchewan and Alberta. Candice examines how and why sexual violence was so prolific in the Prairies, and the ways the judicial system punished – or exonerated – perpetrators of sexual violence against family members, children, and animals.
Fields of Expertise: The History of Gender and Sexuality, Prairie History, Indigenous History, Queer History, Legal 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): “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
Email: cmk572@mail.usask.ca
Patrick Lee
PhD Student
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
Email: prl091@mail.usask.ca
Tarisa Little
PhD Candidate
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
Email: tarisa.little@gmail.com
Jason Locke
PhD Candidate
Supervisor: Dr. Robert Englebert
Thesis Title: Tentatively Called "The Occupied City: Collaboration, Resistance, and Accommodation in Eighteenth-Century North America"
Thesis Description: In the course of warfare in the eighteenth century, the British took and held, sometimes for years, many cities and forts. By focusing upon two French towns (Detroit and Quebec), two American towns (Philadelphia and New York) and two Spanish towns (St. Augustine and Havana) I am examining patterns of resistance, accommodation, and collaboration in those places by locals to the arrival of the British.
Fields of Expertise: Latin American History (Modern and Colonial), Colonial North America, Indigenous History, British Imperial History, US History, Cultural History
Conference Presentations (Select):
"City as Symbol in Nahua and Spanish Thought" (2008) "John Bull in Buenos Aires." (2009)
Email: jason.locke@usask.ca
Kiera Mitchell
PhD Student
Supervisor: Dr. Valerie Korinek
Thesis Title: Regulating Relationships: The State, Marriage, and Marginalization between 1950-2000
Thesis Description: My dissertation studies key legal cases about marriage, divorce, and the family unit in order to analyze and historicize social changes in Canada between 1950-2000. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between intimacies, the state, and social movements.
Fields of Expertise: History of Gender and Sexuality; Prairie History; Canadian History; Canadian Feminist Activism; Woman and Academia; Faith and Community Building
Fields of Expertise: Western Canadian History; Gender History; Canadian Feminist Activist Movements; Woman and Academia; Faith and Digital Community Building
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.
Email address: kpm166@mail.usask.ca
Jack A. Raslich
PhD Candidate
Supervisor: Dr. Cheryl Troupe
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.
Email: jar894@usask.ca
Alessandro Tarsia
PhD Candidate
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)
Email address: alt989@mail.usask.ca
Dimitry Zakharov
PhD Candidate
Supervisor: Dr. Erika Dyck
Dissertation Title: Cancer and the Limits of Surgery: The Changing Practice of Cancer Surgery, 1890-1930.
Dissertation Description: In my dissertation I propose to investigate how changes in basic biological science as well as changing understandings of disease and the human body were both facilitated by, and then brought about changes in, the practice of surgery.
Areas of Expertise: History of Medicine, History of Science, 20th Century Social Theory, Continental Philosophy.
Conference Presentations:
“‘The Certain Cure:’ Quackery and the Regulation of Scientific Cancer Treatment in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.” Conference Presentation. Canadian Society for the History of Medicine Annual Meeting at the Congress for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Vancouver, British Columbia.
“The Limits of Surgery: The Puzzle of Cancer and the Transformation of Cancer Etiology, 1890s.” Conference Presentation. Canadian Society for the History of Medicine Annual Meeting at the Congress for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Regina, Saskatchewan, 29 May, 2018.
“Surgical Treatments, Experimental Solutions: John Allen Wyeth and the use of Fowler’s Solution in the Treatment of Sarcoma, 1884-1898.” Minnesota, Northern Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan (MOMS) 6th Bi-Annual History of Medicine Conference, Winnipeg, MB, September 25, 2017.
Email: diz284@mail.usask.ca
MA Students
Sarah Benson
MA
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.
Email: yir561@mail.usask.ca
Oliver Friesen
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.
Email: oliver.friesen@usask.ca
Harris Ford
MA (defended August 2021)
Supervisor: Dr. Maurice Jr. Labelle
Thesis Title: In The Beginning: Jerusalem, The United Nations, and the Genesis of the Israeli/Palestinian Peace Process
Thesis Description:
My project will look at the origins of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict with a focus on the city of Jerusalem. It will be focused on a United Nations Palestine Conciliation Commission which ran from 1948 (when the state of Israel was founded) until the early 1950s. While this commission was ultimately unsuccessful, it set the precedent for what the process of peace would look like for Israel and Palestine moving forward and still has relevance into today. My thesis will look to Jerusalem as a microcosm of what early peace efforts looked like and how the practices of the late 1940s have carried into unsuccessful ventures despite many, many iterations over the past decades.
Fields of Expertise: Arab-West Relations, Israeli-Palestinian Relations, Post-Colonialism, Settler Colonialism, Orientalism
Email: hff233@mail.usask.ca
Taryn Goff
MA
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.
Email: taryn.goff@usask.ca
Matthew Kunkel
MA
Supervisor: Dr. Benjamin Hoy
Thesis Title: Historical GIS Analysis of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Thesis Description:The focus of my thesis is to examine the interactions between the Corps of Discovery and the Mandan-Hidatsa, Nez Perce, and Chinookan tribes during the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804 to 1806. My research will feature the perspectives of expedition members and Indigenous people on issues of diplomacy and trade, social customs, and cultural practices. Furthermore, I will use GIS to include spatial representations of the interactions such as mapping trade networks, political alliances, hunting parties, and day to day movements.
Fields of Expertise: Historical GIS, Western American History, Pre-Civil War American History, Borderlands History
Conference Presentations (Select): "A comparative analysis of the Akwesasne and Mapuche Nations". Canadian Studies Undergraduate Conference. University of Toronto, Toronto ON, March 2019.
Email: mak361@mail.usask.ca
Adaugo Gift Odionu
MA
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.
Email: adaugo.odionu@usask.ca
Richard Oware
MA
Supervisor: Dr. Simonne Horwitz
Thesis Title: British Colonial Impact on Mental Health Development in Ghana, 1902-1957
Thesis Description: My research examines British Colonial Rule and Mental Health policies adopted in Ghana formerly Gold Coast. I seek to understand how the understanding of indigenous Ghanaian culture from the colonial perspective influenced the mental health policies adopted in the region.
Fields of Expertise: Indigenous Medicine and Integration in Ghana, Social History of Medicine and Environmental History.
Email: rio802@mail.usask.ca
Katrina Phippard
MA
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.
Email: k.phippard@usask.ca
Jessy Lee Saas
MA
Supervisor: Dr. Ashleigh Androsoff
Thesis Title: The Myth of the Homesteader: Challenging the Saskatchewan Settler Narrative, 1880s to 1920s
Thesis Description: My thesis will challenge the common prairie narratives of the settler – a legacy that presents settlers as “brave” and “courageous” – in order to reposition these stories of heroism into acts of colonialism. By focusing on Treaty 4 and Treaty 6 lands in southern Saskatchewan, my project will investigate the different experiences of Indigenous communities, British settlers, and Ukrainian settlers. When studied together, these experiences allow for a broader, and more personal, complication of the colonial prairie narrative.
Fields of Expertise: Western Canadian History; Settler Colonialism.
Email: jes569@mail.usask.ca
Abby Vadeboncoeur
MA
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
Email: aov407@mail.usask.ca
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.
Email: cmw035@usask.ca
Qixin Zhang
Supervisor: Dr. Mirela Violeta 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
Email: wro182@usask.com