Hi folks. So apparently April 2018 is going for worst month ever, because we’re back in the hospital with my husband. And adding to the fun is the fact that Stephanie has also been ill, and I’m still sick. So there won’t be a roundup this week, and likely no blog post either. Hopefully next Sunday we’ll back back up and running. I’m really sorry about this. Either Stephanie or I will post updates as soon as we can! Thanks for your understanding!
Author: Andrea Eidinger (Page 15 of 38)
Hi folks — Pro bono editor/husband here …. Andrea seems to have come down with a cold, and so the next blog post will be delayed by a day or so. I’m feeding her soup, tea, and lozenges. She feels guilty for not posting. Send good vibes. Cheers, L
A young boy holding lollipop. Gar Lunney. April 1961. Library and Archives Canada. Copyright: Expired
The latest in blog posts, news, and podcasts from the world of Canadian history.
Because, let’s face it – who has time to catch up on all the journal articles published in Canadian history?
Welcome back to the Best New Articles series, where each month, I post a list of my favourite new articles! Don’t forget to also check out my favourites from previous months, which you can access by clicking here.
This month I read articles from:
- Canadian Historical Review 99, no. 1 (March 2018)
- Historical Studies in Education 30, no. 1 (Spring 2018)
- Bulletin d’histoire politique 26, no. 2 (Winter 2018)
- Mens: Revue d’histoire intellectuelle et culturelle 16, no. 2 (Spring 2016)
- Individual articles:
- Kristin Burnett, Travis Hay, and Lori Chambers, “Settling the Table: Northern Food Subsidy Programs and the (Re) Colonization of Indigenous Bodies, Critical Race and Whiteness Studies, 11, no. 1 (2015): 1-18.
- Elise Chenier, “Love-Politics: Lesbian Wedding Practices in Canada and the United States from the 1920s to the 1970s,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, 27, no. 2 (May 2018): 294-321.
- Asa McKercher and Timothy Andrews Sayle, “Skyhawk, Skyshield, and the Soviets: Revisiting Canada’s Cold War,” The Historical Journal, First View.
Canadian Red Cross – Human Suffering is Greater. ca. 1939-1944. Library and Archives Canada, R1300-1190. Copyright expired.
The latest in blog posts, news, and podcasts from the world of Canadian history.
Note from Andrea: I’m super excited to bring you a special guest post this week, written by Ronald Rudin, on his fantastic initiative, the Lost Stories Project! Enjoy!
All photos provided courtesy of their respected owners. Please do not reproduce.
Ronald Rudin is a Professor of History at Concordia University. Author of seven books and producer of seven documentary films, he carries out research that touches upon Canadian cultural and environmental history, with a particular focus on Atlantic Canada and its Acadian population. He is most recently the author of the prize-winning: Kouchibouguac: Removal, Resistance and Remembrance at a Canadian National Park (University of Toronto Press, 2016), and its connected website Returning the Voices to Kouchibouguac National Park.
Since 2012, I have been the director of the Lost Stories Project, which collects little-known stories about the Canadian past, transforms them into pieces of public art on appropriate sites, and documents the process through short films that are available from the project’s bilingual website. I have long had an interest in the tools that are used to tell stories about the past — monuments, sculptures, murals, and the like –and I have pursued this interest through both publications (Remembering and Forgetting in Acadie,) and documentary films (Life After Ile Ste-Croix). I often find myself wondering about the choices behind such markers, particularly what story should be told and how best to tell it? These may seem like trivial concerns, but if last summer’s Monument Wars and the American debate over Confederate monuments is anything to go by, the choices made have long term repercussions. What’s more, they often tell us more about the people who built them than the history itself.
Dorothy Stotesbury and Harry Thomson, winners of the Easter Egg and Spoon Race, stand together for a portrait. Shilly Shally Lodge, Gatineau Park. 1957-1958. Rosemary Gilliat Eaton / Library and Archives Canada, No. R12438
The latest in blog posts, news, and podcasts from the world of Canadian history.
Young woman reading by the light of a kerosene lamp. Shilly Shally Lodge, Gatineau Park. N.D. Rosemary Gilliat Eaton / Library and Archives Canada, No. R12438
Can you believe that it is already Unwritten Histories’ second anniversary? I can’t. I remember the days when this was a wee little baby blog that only my friends read. 🙂 So of course, Stephanie and I wanted to do something special for the occasion. But saying nice things about this blog is pretty boring. So instead, we are going to use this opportunity to highlight the work of women-identified, who are either graduate students or recent graduates, who are making history. We are obviously fans of men-identified scholars and the work that they do. However, we recognize that women continue to be underrepresented in senior academic ranks and leadership positions, face widespread gender bias in student evaluations, and perform a disproportionate amount of service work and emotional labour. We also recognize that there is incontrovertible evidence of bias against female scholars and the fields of women/gender/feminist history in Canada.
While Unwritten Histories can’t solve these problems, but what we can do is to highlight the amazing work being done by by these scholars. The scholars we have listed below have all made substantial contributions to the field of Canadian history. The list is organized alphabetically. Each profile contains a short biography and a list of selected publications. The name of each scholar is also linked to their Twitter accounts, in the event that you would like to keep up with their work.
A couple of quick caveats. First, the term “woman-idenfied” basically refers to all scholars who identify as female. The use of this term is deliberate, so as to include both cis-gendered and trans women. Second, we limited this list explicitly to graduate students or recent grads who are engaged in the field of history specifically. Finally, we would like to point out that this is a partial list at best. Since, we can only include so many people in one blog post, we had to limit our list to ten. But hopefully we can do a part two!
So without further ado, here are the profiles:
Young woman wearing an orange coat smells maple sap in a bucket hanging off a maple tree. Shilly Shally Lodge, Gatineau Park. April 1963. Rosemary Gilliat Eaton / Library and Archives Canada, No. R12438
The latest in blog posts, news, and podcasts from the world of Canadian history.
Note from Andrea: I’m super busy this week, plotting for Unwritten Histories’ two year anniversary (next week!). So today we have a special guest post from Kesia Kvill about the history of Jell-O, and her experience recreating a vintage Jell-O recipe. The results are hilarious and vaguely terrifying! Enjoy!
Kesia Kvill is a PhD Candidate at the University of Guelph. Her dissertation focusses on food control in Canada during the First World War and the relationship between government and women. She received her MA from the University of Calgary where she wrote about public dining and Western Canadian identity. Kesia’s research interests include food, cultural, rural, gender, domestic, and public history. She also maintains a personal food history research blog, Potatoes, Rhubarb, and Ox.
Over the past year I have been spending some of my time listening to old radio comedy programs. Television sitcoms have always been one of my favourite ways to relax and disconnect from my day-to-day life and old radio comedies have offered me a way to wind down and relax my brain with the added benefit of being more portable as I get ready for bed. Listening to these programs has made me very aware of how many jokes rely on a culture and context that is tied to the time of their creation. While some jokes are timeless and some can regain their humour with a bit of context, other jokes that rely on racial or gender-stereo types will (thankfully) never be funny again. Besides enjoying the simple and formulaic nature of the comedies, I have also enjoyed how the largely food product sponsored commercials of these old programs offer further insight into our cultural history. While I love listening to a variety of old radio comedies, I’ve found a particular fondness for the JELL-O sponsored programs of the Jack Benny Show and the radio predecessor to Lucille Ball’s I Love Lucy television show, My Favorite Husband. It was while I was listening to these programs that I heard the following ad:
Here’s a letter from Alberta, Canada written by a young wife who asks me not to mention her name but gives me full permission to read this experience of hers: ‘My husband came home the other day with a gelatin dessert not manufactured by the JELL-O Company. Being a dutiful wife, I mumbled something about having just purchased three packages of JELL-O and let the matter drop. But I knew that this was my opportunity to prove that I know food values and quality in purchasing. So I made the gelatin dessert my husband brought home and I also made JELL-O. JELL-O gave me a more richly flavoured, firmer dessert that set in half the time. And now friend, husband is thoroughly convinced that I know my business.’ Well, we’re grateful to you young lady for sending us that letter. It bears out what I’ve so often said, ‘That JELL-O’s fine, fresh fruit flavour is tops in taste. No other gelatin dessert can equal the famous extra rich fruit flavour of genuine JELL-O. But remember, there is only one JELL-O! So always be sure to ask for it by name. Look for the big red letters on the box! They spell JELL-O!’ [1]
Today, JELL-O is most associated with the Baby Boom era, particularly with its focus on convenience foods, and a bizarre obsession with gelatin “salads.” Of course, if you’ve spent any time on social media in the recent past, you’ve likely come across the latest generation of DIY projects, often in the form of a 60-second montage on Instagram, which often feature JELL-O in a starring role (particularly if you are making galaxy gummy bears!). But the history of JELL-O, and its relationship with domesticity, is much older.