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Annual History Lecture/Vigod Memorial Lecture

Friday, September 9, 2011

Dr. Edward Kissi, Associate Professor of History at the Department of Africana Studies at the University of South Florida, will present “Beyond the Holocaust: A Comparative Interpretation of Genocide and Mass Murder in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Darfur.”

Monday 3 October at 7:00-9:00pm, in Ted Daigle Auditorium

This public lecture is jointly sponsored by the History Department at St. Thomas University and the Atlantic Human Rights Center. The Annual History Lecture/Vigod Memorial Lecture will offer an opportunity to reflect on interdisciplinary themes central to liberal arts education. The Vigod Memorial Lecture, named in honor of Dr. Bernie Vigod, focuses on Human Rights issues, while the Annual History Lecture explores World History themes. Dr. Kissi’s presentation will bring together both of these important topics.

For scholars of genocide, the tragedies in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Darfur are particularly instructive. The genocide in Cambodia was ideological,  Rwanda’s was ethnic, and in Darfur is a convergence of factors in which desertification, government counterinsurgency and policy of “Arabism” have undermined the traditional coexistence between pastoralists and farmers. Dr. Kissi’s lecture will shed light on the need to go beyond a Holocaust-based typology for the study of contemporary genocides, as well as on the need to approach each genocide in terms of its global as well as distinctly local dimensions.  A nuanced analysis of the three case studies will demonstrate a fine line between the crime of genocide and other forms of mass atrocities, a critical distinction at a time when genocide and mass murder have become interchangeable words in many circles.

 

Dr. Edward Kissi is historian of comparative genocide, who has published widely in the leading genocide journals and Africanist journals. His well-received book, Revolution and Genocide in Ethiopia and Cambodia, was published in 2006 by Lexington Books.

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Dr. Rusty Bittermann wins Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Kudos to Professor Bittermann whose Sailor’s Hope: The Life and Times of William Cooper, Agrarian Radical in an Age of Revolution was awarded this year’s Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing.

Through this prize, the Atlantic Book Awards wish to “recognize an author (or authors) who excels at illuminating the Atlantic region’s vibrant history and acknowledges the work of the publisher who makes the book available.”

Earlier in the month, Dr. Bittermann had been asked to give a lecture on his book at the Province House in Charlottetown, PEI, as his work had also received the Publication of the Year Award from the Prince Edward Island Museum and Heritage Foundation.

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History Department Awards

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

At the end of each year, the History Department awards a number of prizes to its best students.

This year, one student consistently showed top-notch historical inquiry in her courses, and has taken three prizes.  Christina Entz deserves high praises for the quality of her work, and will receive the Connolly Prize for History in Third Year; the Desmond Prize for Medieval History; and the Dr. Tony Rhinelander Exploring History Prize.

Congratulations also to Sam Bourgoin who is awarded the Chuddy McCarthy Memorial Prize for History in Fourth Year.

 

The Chuddy McCarthy Memorial Prize for History in Fourth Year is awarded annually to the fourth year student with the highest average in a minimum of six (6) full-year History courses.

The Senator John J. Connolly Prize for History in Third Year is awarded annually to the third year student with the highest average in a minimum of three (3) full-year History courses.

The Desmond Prize for Medieval History is awarded annually to a student who has excelled in a Medieval History course (6 credit hours).

The Dr. Tony Rhinelander Exploring History Prize is awarded annually to the student with the highest average in “Exploring History” (History 2003).

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New History courses offered in the Fall

Monday, May 9, 2011

Two more history courses have been posted on Web Advisor in the past few days.  They are:

HIST 2433: Comparative History of North America –         TTH      8:30 am      Semester 1  (Dr. Bonnie Huskins)
This course is designed to acquaint students with broad developments in the history of North America. In the course of studying the North American continent, we will examine the experiences of contact between indigenous and immigrant cultures; the transmission of European ideas and institutions to the American hemisphere; the influence of the Atlantic system of commerce on regional economies; and the struggles of various peoples in the Americas to define themselves and others. Students will be asked to draw connections between major events and occurrences, and to try and find coherence in distant, contemporaneous events.

HIST 3153: The Sahara World –         TTH      4:00 pm           Semester 1     (Dr. Jennifer Lofkrantz)
This course is designed to introduce students to the main events and themes that unite the societies and cultures of the Sahara, North Africa, and the Sudan/Sahel, from the earliest times to the present with a particular focus on the 15th-19th centuries.  The African continent has been central to the development of world history (the Americas, Europe, Middle East, and beyond) and for much of that time, the Sahara has been a key crossroads of trade and intellectual exchange. Key themes to be addressed include trade, intellectual thought, the environment, political change, religion, gender, and colonialism.   We will also explore how Saharan societies have affected both European and sub-Saharan African societies and were themselves impacted with this contact.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

Dr. Karen Robert  (robert@stu.ca)
Dr. Brad Cross  (bcross@stu.ca)

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Dr. Carey Watt’s “Civilizing Missions” Published by Anthem Press

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Dr. Carey Watt’s second book was recently published by Anthem Press.

Co-edited by Watt and Dr. Michael Mann, professor at Humboldt University in Berlin, Civilizing Missions in Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia: From Improvement to Development is a collection of essays that highlight the complexities and contradictions of British and Indian civilizing missions in South Asia.

Dr. Watt describes the gestation, purpose and relevance of this new publication as follows:

My interest in “civilizing missions” comes out of my longstanding fascination with the social, cultural and political history of colonialism.

The term “civilizing mission” has commonly been used in relation to European colonialism in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially regarding French or British attempts to justify their colonial regimes by claiming a duty or “burden” of  “improving” the supposedly “backward” or “savage”  people of the world to make them more modern and “civilized” – according to self-serving “Western” definitions of the word.

Sadly, however, the civilizing mission theme is still relevant today, whether in the context of the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq since 2003, NATO’s ongoing war in Afghanistan, or the treatment of aboriginal peoples in Canada and around the world (as can be seen in Residential Schools issue and its place in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada). This makes the book an important read for historians, but it has much wider relevance too.

The first twelve pages of my introduction to the book actually start off with a discussion of these kinds of global current affairs issues – especially Afghanistan – before focusing on civilizing missions in South Asia during the 19th and 20th centuries.

My own chapter (#9) covers the period from 1820 to 1960, and it looks at how the British colonial state, Indian NGOs and the postcolonial “Nehruvian” state of the 1950s tried to use philanthropic initiatives to “civilize” Indians. Ironically, such civilizing efforts tended to put excessive emphasis on the need for discipline, obedience, austerity and asceticism. This was even true of Gandhi’s NGOs and their “constructive work” in the 1920s and 1930s.

We used the term “civilizing missions” in the plural because we brought together nine essays by scholars from Canada, India, Germany, the United States and Great Britain that look at the complexities of civilizing missions in colonial and postcolonial South Asia – from roughly 1800 to 2010. We wanted to show how the civilizing project wasn’t restricted to the officials and institutions of the British Raj. “Western” missionary societies and NGOs were also implicated in the civilizing mission, and élite Indians internalized many assumptions of the British colonial civilizing mission and applied them to their fellow Indians from the lower classes and castes as well as adivasi (tribal) groups.

In addition, a couple of the book’s chapters explore civilizing missions in postcolonial India (after the attainment of independence in 1947), and several employ a world history perspective that works well with the kind of history we do at STU.

 

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History seminar students hold video conferences with distinguished scholars

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

This year, students who are taking Dr. Robin Vose’s History seminar “Inquisition/Histories” have had the opportunity to converse in person, via telephone and Skype video conferencing with prominent international scholars selected for their expertise in topics chosen by the students for their research projects.

Accordingly, Louisa Burnham (Middlebury College, VT) participated in a seminar discussion addressing “Franciscans and heretics in the medieval inquisition”;
Jennifer Deane (University of Minnesota at Morris) shared her work on “Medieval heresies—the case of Germany”;
Cristian Berco (Bishop’s, QC) provided insights into “Sodomy, sexuality and inquisition”;
while Ron Surtz (Princeton) discussed “Inquisitorial evidence for female mysticism and agency in Spain”;
finally, Christine Caldwell Ames (University of South Carolina) gave an overview of “Inquisition in religious history”;
and Gary Waite (University of New Brunswick) introduced the class to “Late medieval inquisitions in the Netherlands”.

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Information for students choosing History courses for next year

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Pre-Registration is on for 2011-2012!

Some information for students choosing History courses for next year:

— Look to the Department’s webpages and WebAdvisor for information about courses being offered in 2011-2012.

— The University Calendar lists courses that will be taught at some point over the next three years. We have to rotate the courses on a 3-year cycle, so some courses are offered yearly, but others come up only every 2 or 3 years. Email the relevant instructor if you know there’s a course that interests you and you’d like an idea of when it might be offered next.

— More courses will be posted in the coming weeks. Contact the Chair (robert@stu.ca) if you would like to receive email updates about additional courses.

— If you would like more information about a specific course you see in WebAdvisor, email the instructor directly with your questions.

Contacts:

For general advice on choosing History courses, contact:

Dr. Karen Robert, Department Chair: robert@stu.ca
or
Dr. Brad Cross, Majors Advisor: bcross@stu.ca

If you are interested in applying for History Honours or learning more about the Honours program, contact:

Dr. Carey Watt, Honours Advisor: cwatt@stu.ca

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Important shifts in power dynamics in the Western hemisphere

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Dr. Greg Grandin (NYU) delivered the department’s Annual History Lecture last night (March 22nd). A leading scholar of Modern Latin American history, Dr. Grandin has written widely on U.S. foreign policy, Cold War politics, human rights, and truth commissions. His acclaimed book Fordlandia (2009), about Henry Ford’s quixotic visions of progress in the Amazon jungle, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award.

Dr. Grandin’s talk, “The Empire and the Elephant: Reading U.S.-Latin American Relations in the Age of Wikileaks” offered an audience of students, faculty, and community members a crash course in the workings of U.S. power in the region since the end of World War II.

While noting that the thousands of Wikileaks documents pertaining to Latin America did not contain any sensational ‘smoking guns’, Grandin argued that when read carefully, they do reveal important shifts in power dynamics in the Western hemisphere. In particular, they show a loosening of U.S. power in South America, where Brazil has risen as a regional counterweight. They also illustrate a retrenchment of U.S. power in the northern half of the region, from Colombia through Mexico. Privately, U.S. diplomats even acknowledge that U.S. anti-narcotic and anti-terrorist policies are fueling the extreme violence that grips these countries — especially Mexico. In the talk and the discussion afterwards, Dr. Grandin also reflected on some of the lessons that the Latin American experience offers us as we try to understand current U.S. actions in the Middle East and North Africa.

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Annual History Lecture: Reading U.S.-Latin American Relations in the Age of Wikileaks

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Dr. Greg Grandin, professor of Latin American History at New York University will present “The Elephant and the Empire: Reading U.S.-Latin American Relations in the Age of Wikileaks”

Tuesday, March 22 at 7:00pm in Kinsella Auditorium.

One of the world’s leading scholars of modern Latin America will deliver this year’s Annual History Lecture at St. Thomas University.

In his lecture, Dr. Grandin will discuss what exactly the hundreds of so-far released Wikileaks diplomatic cables concerning Latin America tell us about U.S. foreign policy in the region, particularly in relation to Washington’s response to the rise of the New Latin American Left.

Dr. Grandin contends that in this age of civic society democracy promotion, opaque corporate power, and Pentagon diplomacy, State Department documents are actually the last place one would look to try to understand US foreign relations. But when it comes to exercising U.S. power in the world, separating the parts from the whole has always been key to the smooth functioning of the whole.

Reading Wikileaks cables against the grain, says Dr. Grandin, shows how this has been the case and why, perhaps, it is no longer so.

“It is a great honour for the department to host Dr. Grandin, one of the world’s leading experts on U.S.-Latin American relations and an extremely engaging public speaker,” says Dr. Karen Robert, Chair of the History Department at St. Thomas.

“This talk is one example of the history department’s efforts to introduce our students and the broader STU community to global perspectives on the past and present.”

Greg Grandin has been a frequent guest on Democracy Now! and has appeared on The Charlie Rose Show.  He is a prolific writer covering US foreign policy, Latin America, genocide and human rights, and has been published in The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The London Review of Books, The Nation, The Boston Review, The Los Angeles Times, and The American Historical Review. His latest book, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City (2009), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

To learn more about Greg Grandin and his research, visit www.greggrandin.com.

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Dwitney Bethel ’10 pursues graduate studies at Brock University

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Dwitney Bethel, who graduated with History Honours last spring, sends us an update on her academic achievements, and the fascinating research that she has started to work on in St. Catharines.

“I am currently attending Brock University for an M.A. in History (specialization in digital history). I was recently awarded the Dr. Raymond and Mrs. Sachi Moriyama Graduate Fellowship to carry out a local research project. My thesis project will examine free African American women in the northern Unites States and their travel experiences in the mid-nineteenth century. My tentative argument is that travel served as a metaphor of empowerment and identity formation for Northern black women who struggled not only against racial subjugation but gendered exclusion as well. This research is focused on the experiences of Mary Shadd Cary (emigrated to Canada), Nancy Prince (Russia and Jamaica), and Sara Reymond (England). Unlike their black female contemporaries, these women  traveled outside of the United States, and wrote extensively on issues of sexuality, abolition, emigration, and identity. Sadly, these writings have been overlooked historically and labeled as “easily forgotten,” because they do not fit within the context of traditional nineteenth century travel writings or slave narratives due to their overtly political nature. Therefore, my research is secondarily arguing for their historical significance by framing these women as “colored tourist”.  Beyond mere observation and leisure, there is an angle of community/racial uplift and gendered politics that is associated with their travel and major works abroad that this paper will hopefully bring to light.  In sum, my research will highlight the importance of these three black women, as not only complicated heroines, but community builders who relied on their gendered mobility abroad to assert themselves in a manner in which they could not within antebellum America.”

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