Unwritten Histories

The Unwritten Rules of History

Author: Andrea Eidinger (Page 9 of 38)

2018: A Year of Canadian History in Review

December 18, 2018 / / 0 Comments


This is an image of an outdoor lantern light with string lights, handing from the side of a building in the middle of a snowy landscape.

Welcome to our third annual Unwritten Histories year-end review and the last post of 2018! As  I did in the previous two years, I have divided this look back into two parts. The first is a month-by-month recap of some of the most important events in Canadian history over the past year.  In the second part of this blog post, Stephanie and I list some of our favourite reads from the past year.

A few quick caveats:

  1. In the interest of keeping this list to a manageable length, I’ve limited it largely to subjects that had national relevance. Otherwise this list would never end.
  2. With a few notable exceptions, I have not included anniversaries in this list. That’s mostly because anniversaries come around every year.
  3. I also have not included every single major digitization or new archival project. However, if you want, I can definitely do a separate post for those in the new year.
  4. I’m sure I’ve missed stuff. If I did miss an event that you think should be on the list, let me know in the comments below!

Without any further ado, enjoy!

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Historians in Public

December 14, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Note from Andrea: we have a very special blog post today, that is also being shared on Active History and Histories Engagée. This post was originally published in the “Word from the President” column in Intersections 1.3. Special thanks to Adele Perry, the CHA, and Jim Clifford for making this happen.

By Adele Perry

The CHA|SHC is one of the organizations involved with The|La Collaborative, a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council [SSHRC] of Canada-funded network dedicated to fostering Social Sciences and Humanities knowledge and skills in society at large.[1]  In part, this involves discussing and promoting a range of different ways of being a social science or humanities scholar outside of the formal academy: in elementary and secondary classrooms, in media both new and old, and wherever we might find opportunity and cause to demonstrate the capacity of scholarly practice.

What historians can contribute to this is a long and I think notable history of practising our scholarship in public. In 2010, Joy Parr explained that historical practice “attentive to contemporary concerns, engaged in policy and with an engaged citizenry has existed as long as historical scholarship has existed in Canada.”[2]  The causes, communities, and issues that historians engage with have changed, as have the tools and technologies that historians use to engage and communicate.  But the basic fact of historians’ willingness to connect their research to the present and to speak to communities beyond the archive and classroom is longstanding.

In the last decade, Canada’s historical community have seen a number of new initiatives that mobilize historical knowledge and expertise to contribute to wider discussions.  These are notable and worth discussing in a forum like Intersections unto themselves.  That these initiatives are significantly organized and maintained by junior scholars, many of whom who have done so without the resources of tenure-track or tenured appointments, should give us all additional pause.  As a profession, our capacity to engage robustly with wider conversations and publics is not threatened by scholarly disinterest as much as it is by a precarious condition that a generation of historians are compelled to navigate.

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Best New Articles from October 2018

December 4, 2018 / / 1 Comment

 

A woman wearing a cream sweater holds a cup of tea between her hands. The mud is white with a blue wavy pattern. The cup is the focus of the image.

 

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:

Here are my favourites:

 

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Active History and a Postponement!

November 29, 2018 / / 0 Comments

My latest blog post for Active History, co-written with Laura Madokoro, has just gone live! In it, we talk about the difference between words and actions, specifically in relation to the MS St. Louis Apology. Here’s a sneak peek:

On November 7th, 2018, Justin Trudeau stood up in the House of Commons and issued a formal apology to the families of passengers of the MS St. Louis as well as the entire Jewish Canadian community for the Canadian government’s decision to refuse to allow the ship to dock in 1939. As historians with expertise in these areas, both of us paid close attention to the apology. While we were pleased that to see the Prime Minister drew attention to this shameful event in our history and acknowledged the long history of antisemitism in this country, we felt that it ultimately rang hollow.

While the Prime Minister vowed to fight antisemitism and to learn from the past, the speech was short on specific details. As Trudeau noted in his apology, even today, Canadian Jews are the most frequent target of hate crimes in this country, at seventeen percent. In the wake of the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting, Christine Chevalier-Caron and Philippe Néméh-Nombré published a piece on Histoire Engagée, demonstrating how antisemitism is normalized in Quebec and Canada, as well as the prevailing belief that Canada was (and is) a place of refuge for those in need.

In our minds the contradiction is striking and not easily dismissed. How is it that antisemitism can be a quotidian part of life in Canada while the country is also associated with being a place of refuge? How did this fundamental contradiction come to be and what are the implications for the present and future? Part of the answer lies in the ease with which politicians can speak in morally righteous terms when apologizing for historical wrongs and the gulf that often exists between the symbolism of their words, their actions, and the lived experience of those most affected by the subject and substance of their apologies.

 

Check out the rest here: http://activehistory.ca/2018/11/24863/

Also, I know i said that tomorrow we were going to have a Stephanie’s monthly look at upcoming publications in Canadian history. But she’s coming down with something, so we’re going to postpone that post to next Friday. But don’t worry, everything is still on track! See you Sunday!

 

2018 Holiday Gift Guide for Historians and History Professionals

November 27, 2018 / / 1 Comment

In the centre of the image is a gift wrapped in white paper, with twine as a ribbon and accented with a pine sprig, pinecone, and a small card. The gift is being held by two hands above a table, covered in similarly-wrapped gifts, more pinecones, and some ornaments. On the right there is also a mug of hot chocolate, with a marshmallow with a snowman's face painted on.

Do you know a Canadian historian? (::nods::) Are they impossible to shop for because they already own all the books? (::nods vigorously::) Then have we got just the thing for you. Welcome to the Third Annual Unwritten Histories Holiday Gift Guide for Canadian Historians! Once again, I have compiled a list of gift suggestions for historians and other history professionals, with some extra help from  Kesia Kvill, Krystal Raven, Catherine Ulmer, Krista McCracken, Jenny Ellison, Michelle Desveaux, Danielle Lorenz, Matthew Hayday, Leah Wiener, Shannon Stettner, Gillian Leitch, Erin Millions, Maddie Knickerbocker, Carling Christina, Lee Blanding, and Stephanie Pettigrew. Since I didn’t want to just repeat myself, this is an entirely new list of goodies. That said, I do highly recommend checking out the 2016 Gift Guide and the 2017 Gift Guide for even more suggestions (including information on what not to give your Jewish friends).

As usual, two quick caveats:

  • Warning to loved ones of historians and history professionals: It is so lovely that you remembered that we love history and that most of us love reading. However, we strongly recommend against the purchase of history books for holiday gifts, unless they are specifically requested. If you are dead-set on buying a history book for your loved-one, at least make sure that it is: from an academic press (it will say the word University in the title of the publisher) and it is by a person with a Ph.D. in history (Google is your friend – just put their name and the word history to find out). You may also want to make sure that your loved-one doesn’t already own the book in question, or have easy access to it from their institutional library. We have provided a couple of suggestions for non-history books that might be a better fit.
  • While I am Canadian, and many of the recommendations I’ve included down below are specific to Canadian history, this list should be helpful to history professionals no matter their country of origin or residence.

 

Once again, I have cheekily divided this list according to academic rank, mostly because I think it’s funny. Enjoy!

 

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