The Unwritten Rules of History
Welcome back to our regular favourite series, Historians’ Histories! This week we have a very special guest, fellow UVic alumna and one of my favourite people, Anne Dance! Not only is she brilliant, but she is extremely generous for agreeing to be interviewed despite her insanely busy schedule! So without any further, ado, here’s her Historians’ Histories:
Dr. Anne Dance is the Academic Director of the Parliamentary Internship Programme and a Visiting Researcher at the University of Ottawa.
Welcome back to one of my favourite series, Historian’s Histories, where we learn about the historiography of historians! This week, we have a very special guest, Maxime Dagenais! As you all know, Maxime is the research coordinator for the Wilson Institute, and manages their social media accounts as well as their blog, Beyond Borders: The New Canadian History. But what you may not know is that in addition to being a fellow Montrealer, Maxime also did his Master’s degree with my husband! That pretty much makes us family in my book, so I’m super excited to feature his work this week!
Maxime Dagenais is the Research Coordinator at the Wilson Institute and was, until recently (2014-2016), a SSHRC post-doctoral fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He received a PhD in French and British North American history from the University of Ottawa in 2011 and was a L.R. Wilson post-doctoral fellow at the Wilson Institute for Canadian History (2012‒14). He has published in several academic journals, including Canadian Military History, Bulletin d’histoire politique, Quebec Studies, and American Review of Canadian Studies, and co-authored a book entitled The Land in Between: The Upper St. John Valley, Prehistory to World War One. He has also written over a dozen articles for The Canadian Encyclopedia. Max is also presently editing a volume on the Canadian Rebellion and the United States – Revolutions Across Borders: Jacksonian America and The Canadian Rebellion – currently under consideration for publication with the Rethinking Canada in the World Series published by McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Welcome back to our regular series, Historian’s Histories, where we examine the historiography of historians! If you’ve spent any time on the internet lately, then you’re likely already familiar with our next victim historian, Krista McCracken! Krista is well known as one of the fantastic editors behind the Canadian history powerhouse blog, Active History, and is a model for how to do public history in a socially responsible way. So I am exceptionally grateful and pleased to feature her work here! Enjoy!
Krista McCracken is a public history professional currently working as an Archives Supervisor at Algoma University’s Arthur A. Wishart Library and Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre. Krista’s research primarily focuses on community archives, residential schools, access, educational outreach and Northern Ontario. She lives and works on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe and Métis people.
It’s 2017 and we’re back! I’ve got tons of exciting blog posts and projects planned for this year, and I can’t wait to show them to you! But right now, we’re going to start off with a brand new post in our series, Historians’ Histories, the series where we do the historiography of historians! (You can see the previous post in this series by clicking here.) I’m excited to announce that the latest post comes from another dear friend of mine and my supervisor-sibling, Sarah Van Vugt!
Without any further ado, here’s her bio:
An Ajax, Ontario native and happy west coast transplant, Sarah Van Vugt has degrees from York University and recently completed her doctorate at the University of Victoria. In her academic life, she’s a historian who studies Canadian, gender, and beauty/body history (including war worker beauty pageants!) Sarah is also a Learning Strategist at UVic, where she is lucky enough to work with and around students in all disciplines. For fun, Sarah knits, bakes, reads, avidly participates in her local food swap, hangs out with her husband and her cat, and produces rather a lot of jam.
In the discipline of history, one entire field is devoted to the study of how the study of history has evolved over time. We refer to this field as “historiography.” But while we tend to devote a great of study to the evolution of historical theories and methods, not much attention is paid to the personal evolution of historians themselves. Historians, like many academics, can seem to be figures that are larger-than-life, intimidating, and aloof. However, the reality couldn’t be farther from the truth. So, in this new series, “Historians’ Histories,” I’m going “behind the scenes” to talk with actual practicing historians about why they decided to devote their lives to history, their thoughts on the profession, and their work as historians. Think Stephen Colbert’s “Better Know a District,” without the biting political satire. 😉
My dear friend Peter Scales has kindly volunteered to be my first guinea pig in this new series. 😉 Peter is a family historian and lay chaplain with the Capital Unitarian Universalist Congregation, who currently lives in Victoria, British Columbia. Originally hailing from Salmon Arm, BC, he has degrees in both history and philosophy, and spent most of his career in the Canadian Forces Air Command (now known as the Royal Canadian Air Force). In his spare time, he likes to repair and refurbish old vehicles, especially Volkswagens, and sing in a number of local choirs, including the Linden Singers of Victoria. Peter and I first met in 2006 in graduate school at the University of Victoria.
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