The Unwritten Rules of History

Tag: agricultural history

Reflections on Made Modern

Made Modern Cover Image

When I found out last year that Tina Adcock and Edward Jones-Imhotep were working on a new edited collection about modernity, science, and technology in Canadian history, I was immediately excited. I don’t like to talk about it, but once upon a time I was enrolled in engineering sciences. Earlier this year, I had the chance to speak with Adcock and Jones-Imhotep about their book, Made Modern: Science and Technology in Canadian History, and this blog post is the result of that conversation. Enjoy!

 


Edward Jones-ImhotepEdward Jones-Imhotep is a cultural historian of science and technology and an associate professor of history at York University. He is the recipient of the Sidney Edelstein Prize in the history of technology for his book The Unreliable Nation: Hostile Nature and Technological Failure in the Cold War. He has held visiting fellowships at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, and was the Northrop Frye Visiting Fellow at the University of Toronto.

 

Tina Adcock

Tina Adcock is a cultural and environmental historian of modern Canada and an assistant professor of history at Simon Fraser University. She has published work in Swedish, Norwegian, Canadian, and American scholarly journals and volumes. She is an associate of the L.R. Wilson Institute for Canadian History at McMaster University.

 

 

 

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Upcoming Publications in Canadian History – October 2018

Image featuring six covers from this month's upcoming publications

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.

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Project Preview: Excavating Canadian Soil Science History

 

file boxes in an archive containing documents related to land management

Everyone once in a while here on Unwritten Histories, we like to show you how historians develop and design historical research projects. Today we have a special guest post by Peter Anderson previewing a new collaborative project with on the history of Canadian soil scientists and their work. Pete is one of the nicest historians that I know, and a big help on my blog post on lilacs, so I’m really excited to be able to share his research with you! Enjoy!

 

Peter Anderson

Photo by Will Knight

Peter Anderson is a historical geographer and science. He runs History Applied, a historical research consultancy in Ottawa, Ontario. His personal research examines the confluence of the agricultural sciences, politics, and landscape change in Canada and his doctoral thesis explored the early history of Canada’s Central Experimental Farm from the 1880s through the 1930s. He is a member of the Coalition to Protect the Central Experimental Farm and can be found on Twitter @dairpo.

 

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Guest Post: Checking Cows to Find the Crow: How Oral History Influenced my PhD Research

An image of Crow's Nest Pass, during the spring or summer. There are rocky outcroppings in the foreground, a green valley in the middle, and the Rocky Mountains in the distance, with some cloud cover.

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

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.

 

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Best New Articles from November 2016

Best New Articles November 2016

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, in no particular order:

 

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