PhD Students
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.
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. “Integration Before Isolation: Saskatoon’s Chinese Population in the Early 1900s.” Western Canadian History Conference, Wanuskewin, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. September 14, 2024
Harris Ford. “Decolonizing News Globally: Inter Press Service and the Third World, 1972-1985.” The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Conference, Toronto, Ontario. June 14, 2024
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: Complexities, Contradictions, and Complications: Canadian Protestant Missionary Families, Identities, and Legacies, 1900-1960
Description:
My research considers the identities, families, and legacies of Canadian Protestant missionaries who worked in the foreign missionary field in the early to mid-twentieth century. I do this by focusing on three missionary women and their families: the Kilborns, the Cunninghams, and Florence Murrary. I use a close reading of letters, informed by feminist and queer theories, to ascertain the lived experiences of these missionaries. In highlighting these missionaries’ lives over the duration of their careers I demonstrate the varied motivations for entering, staying, and leaving the missionary field and how their lives conformed to and/or challenged gender, family, and labour norms as representatives of Christian Canada abroad. In doing so, I challenge how national narratives of Canadian work abroad, best exemplified in the legacy of Norman Bethune, obscure the more common, but equally complex and contradictory, lifestyles of everyday missionary families and what it meant to be a Canadian foreign missionary.
Publications:
Accepted: Guliak, Dasha. “Prairie Photos and the Promise of Different Histories: The Everett Baker Collection.”Prairie History (2024).
Guliak, Dasha. “‘Curious or Quietly Hostile’: Saskatoon’s Churches and the Queer Community, 1980-1990.”Folklore 45, no. 4 (Fall 2024).
Guliak, Dasha. “Making Christian the Landscape: Banff; Alberta and the Construction of a Christian Wilderness, 1900, 1970.” EPOCH, 16 (June 2024). https://www.epoch-magazine.com/post/banff-and-the-construction-of-a-christian-wilderness
Guliak, Dasha. “Religion and Revolt: The Tithe War in Ireland, 1830-1838.” Pathways 4 no. 1 (2023): 1-14. https://doi.org/10.29173/pathways48
Bethany Knowles
PhD Student
Supervisor: Dr. Erika Dyck
Dissertation Title: A Drinking Problem: An Examination of Drug and Alcohol Activism and Education, 1874-1990
Dissertation Description: My dissertation examines the theme of abstinence through an examination of non-medical intervention and educational campaigns of the twentieth century, like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), and Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE). Examining abstinence education through the lens of social, medical, religious, and gender history complicates temperance history to trace the medicalization of addiction, religious and gendered consequences and roots of abstinence, and the role sobriety played in a person’s identity as the ideal citizen throughout the twentieth century in Canada and the United States.
Fields of Expertise: Alchohol History, First-Wave Feminist History, Medical History, Women’s/Gender History, Canadian History, Religious History, History of Activism
Conference Presentations (Select):
The “Saint of Science:” Darwin’s Impact on Protestant Leaders in the early Twentieth Century at the Manitoba-Northwest Ontario-Minnesota-Saskatchewan (MOMS) History of Medicine Conference, Oct. 19, 2024.
“Even and Equal with the wife of his Bosom”: Western Canadian Women’s Political Voice in Letters to Emily Murphy at the Western Canadian Studies Conference, Sept. 12, 2024.
“Remember Lives Not Numbers” at the Canadian Historical Association Annual Conference, May 29, 2023 (Co-Presented with Dr. Erika Dyck).
“Guardian of the Race?: The Career and Activism of Emily Murphy in Historical Context” at the Manitoba-Northwest Ontario Minnesota-Saskatchewan (MOMS) History of Medicine Conference, Oct. 23, 2022.
McKelvey Kelly
PhD Candidate
Defended 2024
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
Joseph Mays
PhD Student
Supervisor: Erika Dyck
Bio: Joseph Mays received his MSc in Ethnobotany from the University of Kent researching responses to globalization by the Yanesha of central Peru. Graduating with biology and anthropology degrees from Virginia Commonwealth University, he published a medicinal plant guide for the Jama-Coaque Ecological Reserve in Ecuador, and he also holds a certificate in Psychedelic Assisted Therapies from Naropa University. After serving as director of the Chacruna Institute's Indigenous Reciprocity Initiative for five years, he became the Program Advisor in 2024, where he continues to partner with Indigenous community organizations throughout Latin America. His current research focuses on the History of Indigenous Movements for Human Rights in the Americas, looking at struggles for community autonomy in the Great Plains, Mexico, and Amazonia. He is interested in how Indigenous political strategies integrate ideas of gift, reciprocity, and relational ontologies reflected in ritual and ceremony, with particular emphasis on their intersection with the psychedelics movement in the Global North.
Fields of Expertise: Ethnobotany, Ethnography, Biocultural Conservation, Decolonization, Indigenous Human Rights, Psychedelic Plant Medicines, Cosmopolitics
Publications:
Mays, Joseph and McCleave, Christine. "From Extraction to Liberation: Re-envisioning Psychedelic Science through Indigenous Lenses." Future Humanities (Forthcoming).
Mays, Joseph, Peluso, D., & Labate, B. C. (2021). "Indigenous Reciprocity Initiative of the Americas: A respectful path forward for the psychedelic movement." MAPS Bulletin, 31(3).
Conference Presentations (select):
"Who benefits from the Psychedelic 'Renaissance'? Indigenous Reciprocity, Decolonization, and Plant Medicine Conservation." Interdisciplinary Conference on Psychedelic Research, 2024.
"Decolonizing Philanthropy and Indigenous Reciprocity by Supporting the Autonomy of Local Communities." National Autonomous University of Mexico, Rethinking Alcohol and Drugs Conference. Alcohol and Drugs History Society, 2022.
"Indigenous Responses to Globalization in Central Peru." University of Maryland. Center for Research and Collaboration in the Indigenous Americas, 2020.
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:
"From Partners-in-Beekeeping to Same-Sex Spouses: A Common Law Journey to Legally Recognize Unmarried Intimate Relationships." American Society for Legal History Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA. 26 October 2024 (Accepted/To Be Presented).
“Farm Folk Behind the Bronze Doors: Saskatchewan’s Impact on the Judgment of Rathwell v. Rathwell (1978) in The Supreme Court of Canada.” Western Canadian History Conference, Saskatoon, SK. 13 September 2024 (Accepted/To Be Presented).
““Done in by the very unliberated faults of trusting their men”: Murdoch v. Murdoch & Rathwell v. Rathwell in Canadian Media.” Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting, Montreal, QC. 9 June 2024.
"'The law is all right, until some clever lawyer drives a team of horses through it:' Alberta’s Legal and Cultural Impact on Irene Murdoch, Murdoch v. Murdoch (1973), and Canadian Matrimonial Property Law." The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History Workshop Series, 6 March 2024.
"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.
Helena Osei-Egyir
PhD Student
Supervisor: Dr. Jim Clifford
Dissertation Description: This dissertation contributes to African Environmental History by examining the cocoa trade within the British Empire through a global lens. The study spans three regions connected by the Atlantic: Asante in Ghana, where cocoa beans are produced; London, where the beans are processed into chocolate; and Saskatchewan, where the chocolate is consumed. The project begins in Ghana’s High Forest region where cocoa cultivation was introduced into Asante by migrant Akuapem farmers in the early 1900s. This sparked a boom in the industry, establishing the Gold Coast as a leading global producer of cocoa. In Asante, cocoa became known as the ‘golden pod’, generating lucrative returns that reshaped local economies and landscapes. Across the Atlantic, in London, cocoa beans became a vital trade commodity. Factories there converted the beans into chocolate, maintaining close communication with colonial authorities in the Gold Coast to ensure quality of the bean. This transformation of raw cocoa into chocolate represents a key link in the global supply chain, adding value to the commodity and preparing it for consumers. The story culminates in Saskatchewan, which during the same decades, emerged as a leading producer of wheat while simultaneously developing a taste for chocolate. The arrival of chocolate in this Canadian province demonstrates the far-reaching impact of colonial trade networks and changing consumer preferences where people worked diligently to afford this novel treat, illustrating how global trade influenced local economic behaviours and cultural practices. This project thus becomes a melting pot of interactions within the British Empire, highlighting the relationship between agriculture, commodity trade and environmental changes such as deforestation and land use transformation and also offering broader perspectives into colonialism, globalization and environmental change.
Fields of Expertise: Gender; Commodities; Environmental History; Historical GIS
Publications:
Adu-Gyamfi, Samuel. & Helena Osei-Egyir, “Redefining Indigenous Forms of Education: The Modelling of Technical/Vocational, Trade and Agricultural Schools on Indigenous Knowledge in Colonial Asante,” Amoako Gyampah, A. K. & Agyeman, E. A. (Eds.) Education in Ghana: History and Politics (Accra: Langaa RPCIG, 2023).
Adu-Gyamfi, S., & Osei-Egyir, H. A Decolonial History of African Female Education and Training in Colonial Asante, 1920-1960. ETropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 22(2), 2023: 218–238. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.22.2.2023.3949
Adu-Gyamfi, S., Osei-Egyir, H., & Darkwa, B. D. Ship technology, slavery, repatriation and air transportation: continuity and change. History of Science and Technology, 13(1), 121-148. https://doi.org/10.32703/2415-7422-2023-13-1-121-148
Conference Presentations (Select):
Voices from the Forest: Local Perspectives on Traditional Leadership and Forest Management in Ghana.” Paper presented at the Digital Transformation of Land Governance in Africa Conference held at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon. October 24, 2023.
“Indigenous Healers and Forests: Preserving Ghana’s Heritage through Roots and Herbs.” Paper presented at the Healers and Politics in Modern African History II Conference held at the University of Oulu, Finland, August 25, 2023.
“Stereotyping Indigenous Healers in Africa: A Focus on Ghana” Paper presented at the Stereotyping in Africa: Root Causes, Consequences, and Solutions Conference held at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi. November 11, 2022.
Workshops and Seminars
FAO, ECOWAS, Sverige. “Sub-Regional National Forest Inventory Capacity Development Workshop”. CSIR-Forestry Research Institute of Ghana. Kumasi. June 24-29, 2024.
Design for Change Espana, “Design for Change Methodology.” Department of Geography-University of Alicante, March 21 2024
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.
Erica Riley
PhD Student
Supervisor: Dr. Erika Dyck
Dissertation Title: Community Activism and Public Trust: The Impact of Thalidomide Victim Movements in Canada and the United Kingdom.
Dissertation Description: My dissertation research analyses the aftermath of the use of the drug thalidomide in the 1950s and 1960s, which resulted in thousands of children born with teratogenic congenital disabilities. The focus of my work is on the changing public perceptions of children born with thalidomide-related congenital disabilities and public trust in the medication. I show that this change was influenced by thalidomide victim activist groups led by both the parents and children affected by the drug. These started as support groups but evolved into activist groups that were instrumental in the agreement of legal settlements with government agencies and pharmaceutical companies. By using media sources published by these groups and correspondence between families and legal agencies, I track the change they made in the eyes of the public regarding their plight for reparations. I work at the intersection of the history of medical experimentation ethics, cultural history, and the history of disability advocacy to frame my research.
Fields of Expertise: History of Medicine and Health, Women’s Health History, History of Memory, History of Gynecology, History of Drug Experimentation, Cultural History.
Publications:
Riley, Erica. “Memory of James Marion Sims: The use of Cultural Sources Within Historical Memory Studies.” Strata: University of Ottawa Graduate Student’s History Review vol 13 (2024).
Conference Presentations:
“Digital Humanities and its Interaction within Medical History.” Colloque Pierre Savard Conference. University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, April 2024.
“Medical Memory in Digital Forums: The Continuing Online Legacy of James Marion Sims.” History in the Making Graduate Student Conference. Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, April 2024.
Will Rowe
PhD Student
Supervisor: Dr. Erika Dyck
Dissertation Title: From Scandalized Experiments to Standardized Therapy: MDMA and Race in Modern America.
Dissertation Description: My thesis analyses the racialized history of medicine in the United States in order to place the narrative of MDMA prohibition into the greater arc of the American history of drugs and drug prohibition. Some academics have claimed that MDMA is an all white drug. It may have been a -majority- white drug until after its prohibition in 1985, but minority users likely always existed. MDMA began its life as a therapeutic tool in the 70s before being deemed a public health issue. It subsequently received a schedule one controlled substance status even when the molecule had been used in therapy for nearly ten years. This placed MDMA alongside other dangerous substances like cocaine and heroin witnessing the arrest of more minority users and sellers for the first time. Through the prohibition of MDMA, MDMA arrests became another way to fuel the mass imprisonment of BIPOC America. This atmosphere has made it exceedingly difficult to induct this population into MAPS clinical trials. Trauma is prevalent in lower income BIPC communities, but this demographic represents less than 10% of MAPS participants. MAPS clinical trials began in 1996, and while the drug was becoming an elite white veteran therapy treatment for PTSD, it was simultaneously entering the realm of urban drug of the masses. Through increasing the BIPOC participants in these trials, the particulars of how MDMA can be used to treat racial trauma can be explored.
Jessy Lee Saas
PhD Candidate
Supervisor: Dr. Erika Dyck
Dissertation Title: Stories of the West: The Homesteader’s Influence on Prairie and National Identities in Canada, 1867 – 1967
Description: Canadian prairie history is interwoven with heroic narratives of ordinary men. Whether the voyageur, the homesteader, the farmer, or the soldier, these white, Christian protagonists become – much like the “cowboy,” the “outlaw,” and the “pioneer” in the American west – a form of national identity in Canada. However, unlike in American stories where the west is often characterized as “wild,” in Canadian stories the west is “mild.” My doctoral research explains how narratives about the “mild west” and the “heroic” characters that populate these stories helped to create Canada’s “peaceful frontier” in the prairie region. These popular understandings of prairie history have provided Canada with powerful, durable, but above all problematic, identity-shaping narratives. My work challenges these settler nation-building identities and narratives found within private memory and public spaces by repositioning them within the context of settler colonialism and Indigenous displacement.
Fields of Expertise: Canadian History, Prairie History, Indigenous Histories, Decolonization.
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 “Land-Based Histories: Reappraising Ownership of the Prairies,” Western Canadian History Conference. September 2024. Presentation title: “‘They Were Often in Our Kitchen’: Indigenous Presence in Saskatchewan Settler Family Memoires, 1880-1910”
Public Lecture. “Revisiting Ukrainian Settler Stories in the Context of Colonialism” at Ukrainian Museum of Canada, 13 February 2024.
Panelist for “Identity and Movement in Canadian History,” New Frontiers Conference, York University. March 2022. Presented on “Queen of Lady Farmers” research.
Other:
Coordinator for the Co-Lab for Community Engaged Research (2022-present).
Contributor. Wrote and researched three historical characters (Maria Latham, Arthur LeMesuier, and Nick Kowalyk) for Homesteaders board game created by Dr. Benjamin Hoy.
Project Lead for "Our History is Our Foundation" (2022-2023), an oral history research project in partnership with Ilarion Residence Retirement Home.
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
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.
Amanda Dawson
MA Student
Supervisor: Dr. Frank Klaassen
Thesis Description: My thesis aims to explore the legal fate of cunning women post-restoration in England. By examining ecclesiastical and secular legal records, I will determine if there was any noticeable change in the number of women who practiced popular magic following the witch trials, in the types of magic they practiced, or how they framed their practices—particularly I want to discover if the church continued to regulate magic practice among the common people following the trials as it had done before.
Fields of Expertise: Magic, Witchcraft, Early Modern British history, Women's and Gender History.
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.
Thomas Haslam
MA Student
Supervisors: Dr. Frank Klaassen and Dr. Sharon Wright
Thesis Title: Pandering and the Parish: Patterns in the Aiding and Abetting of Illicit Sex in a 15th Century Church Court.
Thesis Description: My thesis investigates the relationship between communities and institutions, through the example of a 15th century church court. Using a primary source base of legal manuscripts, I analyse cases of lenocinium—sexual pandering—prosecuted in the diocese of Hereford, England. As a vague and malleable charge, lenocinium encompassed diverse modes of aiding/abetting: from parents permitting adolescent fornication; to spouses consenting to adultery; to remunerated pimping and procuring. I argue that these diverse cases reflect an ongoing, gendered discourse between court and community over 3rd party responsibility. Through a comparative study of sessions held in two rural communities between 1440 and 1480, I aim to demonstrate how such 3rd party responsibility enabled court and community to negotiate with one another and satisfy their respective jurisprudential and social needs. In effect, I argue that cases of lenociniumreflect a conceptual lynchpin needed to sustain the “court-community symbiosis” previously established in legal and social church court historiography.
Publications:
Haslam, Thomas Joseph MacPhee. “Piety And Propriety: The Mediaeval Imagination and The Book of Hours,” Charlottetown, PE: University of Prince Edward Island, 2023. https://islandscholar.ca/islandora/object/ir%3A25354?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=18dcc31ae8c2ddeb4336&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=0&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=2
Certifications: August 2024, Advanced Proficiency Pass of Level 1 MA Latin Exam. Centre for Medieval Studies, Toronto.
Bethany Knowles
MA Student
Defended 2024
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 thesis aims to explore the life and philosophy of Aleister Crowley, and his influence on countercultural, new age, and sexual revolution movements. I provide an in-depth analysis of selected erotic poems, sex magic ritual texts, and personal letter correspondence from Crowley’s collections, using a queer theory and gender performative 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.
Funding: Social Science and Humanities Research Council Canada Graduate Scholarship (CGS-M Scholarship)
Fields of Expertise: Cults and New Religious Movements’ Studies, 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. *Honorable Mention by the University of Regina Author Recognition Program 2023.
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:
“Abjection, Gender and Ritual in the Life and Thought of Aleister Crowley.” The Northeast Conference on British Studies (NECBS) at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, USA, 2024 [accepted/to be presented].
“Illusion, Abjection and Gender Performativity in the Life and Thought of Aleister Crowley.” Illusion/Disillusion Comparative Literature Graduate Conference at The City University of New York (CUNY), New York, NY, USA, 2024 [accepted/to be presented].
“Star in the East: The Queer Masculinity of Aleister Crowley.” Northeast Popular Culture and American Association (NEPCA) Conference at Nicholas College, Dudley, Massachusetts, USA, 2024 [accepted/to be presented]
“Rhetoric, Religious Syncretism and the Role of the Devil in the Writings of Anton Szandor LaVey.” Devil 2024 Conference at the University of King’s College, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, 2024.
“Star in the East: The Queer Masculinity of Aleister Crowley.” H-Grad Lightning Talk Series at Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA, 2024.
‘“Let there be Light:’ NRM politics, Religious Toleration and Aleister Crowley in Popular Culture.” Hello, Darkness, My Old Friend: Darkness in the American Imagination Conference PopMeC Association for US Popular Culture Studies at the Universidad de Alcalá, Madrid, Spain, 2023 [accepted/to be presented].
“Darkness in the American Imagination: The Legacy and Influence of Aleister Crowley in Popular Culture.”Northeast Popular Culture and American Association (NEPCA) Conference at Nicholas College, Dudley, MA, USA, 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, at the CINiBA University Library and Scientific Information Centre, Katowice, Poland, 2023 [accepted/withdrawn].
“Love, Mysticism, and Islam in the Personal Reflections of Aleister Crowley.” 8th Annual International Gender and Sexuality Studies Conference at the 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 Conference at the 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 at the New Mexico Tech University, Socorro, New Mexico, USA, 2023. *nominated for the Carol Mitchell Prize and the Amos St. Germain Prize.
“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.
Julia-Rose Miller
MA Student
Supervisor: Dr. Cheryl Troupe
Thesis Description: My thesis aims to explore the role of Metis women in early Canadian commerce via the examination of material culture. In particular, I hope to investigate the role of Metis women's productive labour, with a focus on bead work, in what is now Canada during the Nineteenth Century. Through my research, I seek to shed light on the unique and impactful role of Metis women in trade through the lens of their interactions with material culture.
Fields of Expertise: women and gender history, early modern British history, British imperial history, pre-Confederation Canadian history, and fashion and material culture history.
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.
Jacob Polay
MA Student
Supervisor: Dr. Jim Clifford
Thesis Description: My thesis seeks to explore the eighteenth-century trans-Atlantic commodity trade, highlighting the lesser know commodities which have been largely overshadowed by the importance of sugar and cotton. Using Historical GIS to focus on the trade of dry ginger between the Caribbean islands and Britain, I will be able to highlight the importance of non-sugar Caribbean commodities in increasing consumption in Britain, and ultimately laying the foundation for the industrial revolution.
Fields of Expertise: Commodities, Environmental History, Early Modern British History, Historical GIS, Digital History, Riot and Rebellion.
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.
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
Defended 2024
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.
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