Someone of you may also know this already, but last November, I was invited to give a talk at the 10th Canada’s History Forum. The video of my talk, completed with captions, is now available! Check it out!
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Special thanks to Shannon Stettner for her help with this piece.
If you’ve spent any time either watching television or on social media in the past few months, there is a high likelihood that you’ve run into a commercial, blog post, or Youtube video featuring DNA ancestry tests. Companies like Ancestry.com and 23andMe have been pushing these tests as important ways to find out about your family history. Which sounds pretty cool. However, much like Canada150, many historians find themselves incredibly frustrated by the increasing popularity of these tests. I can neither confirm nor deny that some yell incomprehensibly at the television screen whenever one of the Ancestry.com commercials comes on. Now, there are numerous articles out there explaining the scientific limitations of these tests. For instance, this recent piece on Gizmondo talks about how the results of these tests aren’t always reliable, due to the limited availability of comparative data, which alleles are being used to access ancestry, and just plain error. However, there haven’t really been any detailed discussions about the limitations of these tests from a historical perspective. So, in today’s blog post, I’m going to talk about exactly that, with a particular focus on the complicated nature of historical populations, the “science” of race, the role of white privilege, and notions of belonging and community.
Ted Grant. “At Matilda Newman’s Store.” Africville Nova Scotia, c. 1964-1969. Library and Archives Canada / e002283006.
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:
- Urban History Review 45, no. 1 (Fall 2016)
- Canadian Military History 26, no. 2 (2017)
- Revue D’histoire de L’amérique Française 70, no. 4 (Spring 2017)
- Canadian Jewish Studies Journal 25 (2017)
- American Review of Canadian Studies 47, no. 4 (2017)
- Journal of Canadian Studies 51, no. 1 (Winter 2017), special issue on Destabilizing Canada
- Histoire Sociale/Social History 50, no. 102 (2017)
- Acadiensis 46, no. 2 (Summer/Autumn 2017)
- International Journal of Canadian Studies 54 (Fall 2016)
- Journal of New Brunswick Studies 8 (2017)
- Individual articles:
- Adam Barker, “Deathscapes of Settler Colonialism: The Necro-Settlement of Stoney Creek, Ontario, Canada,” Annals of the American Association of Geographers, prepublished January 23, 2018: 1-17.
- Darryl Leroux, “’We’ve Been here for 2,000 years’: White settlers, Native American DNA and the phenomenon of indigenization,” Social Studies of Science, prepublished January 9, 2018: 1-22.
Here are my favourites:
Gar Lunney, “One male and two female skiers in a class at a winter resort in the Laurention mountains of Québec,” February 1953, Library and Archives Canada. Copyright: Expired .
The latest in blog posts, news, and podcasts from the world of Canadian history.
By dave_7 from Lethbridge, Canada (Crowsnest Pass) CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Note from Andrea: Today we have a very special guest post from Laura Larsen on the adventure that is oral history! As a fellow oral historian, this is right up my alley. Enjoy!
Laura Larsen is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at the University of Saskatchewan. Her dissertation explores rail rationalization and agricultural policy under the Pierre Trudeau government. It focuses on the tensions between government, farmers, grain companies, and railways created by attempts to modernize the grain handling and transportation system as well as the substantial changes to the underlying structure of prairie agriculture caused by these changes.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that oral history changed my life. If I had not conducted oral histories I probably would be doing a different dissertation project than I am.
On paper, doing oral history sounds relatively straight forward. Do some background research. Come up with a list of questions. Find a person. Ask them your questions. However, in reality, oral history is a messy and complicated process that, while at times extraordinarily difficult, is immensely rewarding on both a professional and personal level. In this blog post, I’m going to talk about my personal experiences doing oral history, how the interviews I conducted for my master’s thesis shaped my doctoral dissertation, and, hopefully, convince you to integrate some into your future research.
Hey folks! Super excited to be co-editing a new series on best practices in teaching Canadian History with Krista McCracken. Check out the CFP at the link below!
Call For Submissions – Beyond the Lecture: Innovations in Teaching Canadian History
“Nepachee stretching a seal skin on a frame.” C. 1961. Cape Dorset, N.W.T. [Cape Dorset (Kingnait), Nunavut]. Rosemary Gilliat. Library and Archives Canada, e010799803. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Welcome back to our monthly series, “Upcoming Publications in Canadian History,” where I’ve compiled information on all the upcoming releases for the following month in the field of Canadian history from every Canadian academic press, all in one place. This includes releases in both English and French. To see the releases from last month, click here.
***Please note that the cover images and book blurbs are used with permission from the publishers.***
N.B. This list only includes new releases, not rereleases in different formats.
Signatures from the first deposition in the Anne Lamarque case. Fonds Judiciaire BANQ Vieux-Montréal, June 1682. Photo taken by author.
Note From Andrea: Today we have another special post by Stephanie Pettigrew! Enjoy!
When I first started doing my research, the biggest problem I encountered was simply deciphering my texts. As many of you already know, I work on documents from sixteenth and seventeenth New France. In North America, there are far more resources available specifically for English etymology and paleography, the study of historic handwriting and handwritten texts. Christopher Moore contends in a recent blog post that paleography is dying a slow and painful death, and I don’t completely disagree with him; the growing dependence on crowd-sourcing transcription projects is a huge concern. But even when sources are transcribed for you, as a historian you are still expected to consult the original source. Several universities offer undergraduate courses in medieval English and middle English. One school that I attended even had a course on reading medieval Scottish handwriting (complete with its own textbook!). Leah Grandy also has already done some fantastic blog posts introducing the issue of paleography, which I highly recommend (“What Does That Say?!”: Getting Started with Paleography is particularly helpful!) While all of these are valuable resources, they aren’t really helpful when it comes to dealing with my documents. So in today’s blog post, I’m going to talk about some of the main challenges of working with early modern French written texts and provide you with some tips and tricks that will hopefully make this work a little bit easier!