The 12th Annual McGill-Queen’s Graduate Conference in History
“The (im)Practical Past”
Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
March 6-7, 2015
Chair’s Welcome
Welcome to the 12th Annual McGill-Queen’s Graduate Conference in History!
The theme of this year’s conference, The (im)Practical Past, Dr. Logevall’s keynote
address, and the roundtable discussion on digital history all question the varied public
applications and misapplications of history. The far-reaching and interdisciplinary interests
represented at the conference are testament to the broad range of our field and to the
deep interest both in historical questions and in the relevance of historical inquiry to
current events.
The plans for this year’s conference have been executed by an awesome committee,
whose enthusiasm, ideas, and many hours of work have ensured its success. If you run
into a committee member during the conference, please do thank them: Pete Anderson,
Lorne Beswick, Anastasiya Boika, Georgia Carley, Taylor Currie, Angela Duffett, Emily
LeDuc, Heena Mistry, and Tabitha Renaud.
“Sapientia et
Doctrina Stabilitas”
In a period when cuts to university funding are all too common, I am especially grateful to
the following for providing funding and for making graduate research and student initiatives a priority at Queen’s: the Dean
of Graduate Studies Student Initiative Fund; the Department of History Bernice Nugent Bequest; the Graduate History
Student Association; the Principal’s Office Student Initiatives Fund; the SGPS Grants Program; and the Student Affairs Student
Initiatives Fund. Additional thanks to the Agnes Etherington Art Centre and to the Campus Bookstore.
The goal of the McGill-Queen’s conference has always been to provide a positive and collegial environment for emerging
scholars to test out their ideas, share their research, and build an academic community. With these goals in mind, a special
thank you to all of the presenters, chairs, and volunteers for lending your time, support, and research to the making of what
will be a thought-provoking investigation into the practical and impractical past!
Kendall Garton
Conference Chair
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Keynote Speaker
Schedule at a Glance:
Friday March 6th
11:00-13:00
We are pleased to have Dr. Fredrik
Logevall, Stephen and Madeline
Anbinder Professor of History and
Director of the Mario Einaudi Centre
for International Studies at Cornell
University, deliver this year’s keynote
address. Specializing in US foreign
relations, the Cold War, and the
Vietnam Wars, Dr. Logevall was the
recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in
History for his book Embers of War:
The Fall of an Empire and the Making
of America’s Vietnam. His address is
entitled “The Uses of History: Political
Leaders and the Past.”
Registration & Light
Refreshments
13:00-14:15
Panel Session #1
14:30-15:45
Panel Session #2
16:15
Keynote Address by
Dr. Fredrik Logevall,
17:45-19:00
Keynote Reception
Saturday March 7th
8:30-9:00
Registration & Light
Refreshments
9:00-10:15
Panel Session #3
10:30-12:15
Panel Session #4
12:15-14:00
Lunch & Roundtable
Discussion
14:15-15:30
Panel Session #5
15:45-17:00
Panel Session #6
19:00
Networking Mixer
Tir Na Nog Irish Pub
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Roundtable Discussion
“Conquering the Cloud: A
Roundtable
Discussion on the
Use(fullness)
of
Digital History”
features panelists Dr. George Bevan
(Classics), Mary Chaktsiris (History),
Heather Home (Queen’s University
Archives), and Dr. Andrew Jainchill
(History). The increasing popularity of
digital history asks us to consider the
future uses and implications of the
rise of digital history on our field as a
whole. Bringing different experiences
and opinions to the table, the
panelists will debate the relationship
between digital history and research
and scholarship, teaching and
pedagogy, and public history.
Location, Location, Location!
The 12th Annual McGill-Queen’s Graduate
Conference in History will be held on the Queen’s
University campus in Kingston, Ontario. Here’s a
handy little guide to help you find your way
around.
•
Registration (Friday and Saturday) and the
Roundtable Discussion (Saturday) will be held
in the Red Room (Rm 213) of Kingston Hall,
located at 103 Stuart Street.
•
Panel Sessions (Friday and Saturday) will be
held in Rooms 104, 108, 204 & 209. Please
check the schedule above to determine what
room each session is taking place in.
•
The Keynote Address (Friday) will be held at
the Agnes Etherington Art Centre located on
the Queen’s campus at 36 University Avenue.
The Keynote Reception will follow in the same
location.
•
The Networking Mixer will be held off campus
at Tir Na Nog, a nearby pub in downtown
Kingston. Tir Na Nog is located at 200 Ontario
Street.
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Conference Schedule:
Friday March 6 – Panel Session #1
13:00 – 14:15
Panel A (Room 104): Gendered Colonial Lives
Chair: Dr. Jane Errington
Emily Macgillivray, University of Michigan (American Culture) – “A Network of Waterways: Native Women’s Mobility,
Prosperity and Property in the Great Lakes, 1770 to 1840”
Valerie Martin, Queen’s University (History) – “Gender and the Language of Politics in Quebec’s Public Sphere, 1764-1830”
Erin Elizabeth Schuurs, University of Guelph (History) – ““The varieties and unsettled habits of this new land”: The Journals of
Mary O’Brien, 1828-1838”
Panel B (Room 108): The Public Nation
Chair: Angela Duffett
Kieran Delamont, Queen’s University (History) – “Showcasing the Mexican Miracle: Changing Attitudes in Mexico’s Culture
of Tourism Towards the 1968 Olympic Games”
Pete Anderson, Queen’s University (Geography) – “Researching in Public”
Danielle Siemens, Carleton University (Art History) – “Public Art and the Dialogic: The Rutherford Library Murals”
Panel C (Room 209): First Nations Foreign Policy
Chair: Dr. James Carson
Cathleen Clark, Queen’s University (History) – “Contesting Realities and Historical Consciousness at the Six NationsCaledonia Land Reclamation”
Nick Vani, Queen’s University (History) – “The First League of Nations: Haudenosaunee Sovereignty Claims, the League of
Nations, and Canadian Liberal Internationalism”
David MacMartin, University of Calgary (History) – “Daniel George MacMartin and His 1905 Treaty 9 Diary: A Case Study in
Source Triangulation and the Accommodation of Conflicting Influences, Interests and Cultures”
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Friday March 6 – Panel Session #2
14:30 – 15:45
Panel A (Room 104): Ambivalent Identity & Allegiance Chair: Dr. Awet Weldemichael
David More, Queen’s University (History) – “When is a neutral not a neutral? Exploring mythology around the role of
Québecois during the American Revolution”
Mark Nardi, Queen’s University (History) – “The Paradox of Singular Loyalty: Irish Class and Irish Religion within a British
Army”
Panel B (Room 108): Politics and Celebrity
Chair: Dr. Asa McKercher
Ahlam Taboun, Carleton University (Political Science) – “Gaddafi’s Libyan Identity and the Role of History in the Arab
Spring”
Sarah King, Binghamton University (History) – “Celebrity Activism and Social Movements Then: Popular Culture Icons Who
Opposed the Vietnam War”
Ashley Neale, Trent University (History) – “Memory and Archives: The Historiography of Richard Nixon”
Panel C (Room 209): Subversive Imaging
Chair: Prof. Alicia Boutilier
Marlie Centawer, Queen’s University (Cultural Studies) – ““The Camera Gets a Studdered Shot”: Liz Phair and the
photostrip as subversive indie media”
Krista Broeckx, Carleton University (Art History) – “History Re-distanced in Kent Monkman’s The Triumph of Mischief”
Anne Cibola, York University (Art History and Visual Culture) – “Records Impact Objects: Photographic Works by Michael
Snow, A Case Study”
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Saturday March 7 – Panel Session #3
9:00 – 10:15
Panel A (Room 104): Practical and Impractical Toronto Chair: Dr. Barrington Walker
Branden Pare, Queen’s University (History) – “Klan Activity in 1920s Ontario: Oshawa, Ontario Caught in a Divide”
Michael Akladios, York University (History) – ““We Give Christ and Make Him Indigenous in Everything”: Ecumenism
Networks and Coptic Church Leadership in Cairo and Toronto, 1962-1978.”
Gillian Forth, University of Guelph (History) – ““From the Closet to the Mainstream”: The Evolution of Toronto Pride”
Panel B (Room 108): Aftermath of War
Chair: Dr. Allan English
Alan Maricic, University of Waterloo (History) – “German and Austrian Quality Daily Press and Croatia's Road to
Independence”
Katelyn Arac, Queen’s University (History) – “Judicial Responses to War Criminals in Canada: the Shifting Definition of War
Crimes within the Canadian Legal System”
Susan Colbourn, University of Toronto (History) – “From Munich to the Iron Curtain: Historical Lessons and the Trieste Crisis of
May 1945”
Panel C (Room 204): Challenging Narratives
Chair: Dr. Richard Greenfield
Sarah Keeshan, University of Toronto (History) – “The New will be Made Old: Appeals to the Past During the Peasants’
Revolt (1381)”
Mope Ogunbowale, State University of New York (Transnational Studies) – “Osun in Transit: A Transnational Re-reading of
Mythologies on a Yoruba Goddess”
Grant Schrama, Queen’s University (History) – “The Varangian Dilemma: Scandinavian Cultural Integration and Byzantine
(In)Tolerance c. 840-1200”
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Panel D (Room 209): “Savagery” and “Civilization”
Chair: Patrick Corbeil
Sanjana Roy Magee, Queen’s University (History) – “Savagery and Survival: Travel Literature during the French Wars of
Religion”
Allison Smyth, University of Windsor (History) – “The Friend of India and the Evolution of the Anti-Sati Campaign, 1818-1828:
From Ambiguity to Revolutionary”
Nicolas Haisell, Queen’s University (History) – ““Savagery and Civilization”: British- Canadian Study of the Beothuk, 18591892”
Saturday March 7 – Panel Session #4
Panel A (Room 104): Regulating Deviance
10:30 – 12:15
Chair: Dr. Jeffrey Brison
Emma Hunter, Queen’s University (History) – “Wayward Children and Irreligious Teens: Wartime Anxiety and Youth
Delinquency in Ontario, 1939-1945”
Erin Gallagher-Cohoon, University of Saskatchewan (History) – “Race, Gender and Sexual Behaviour: Venereal Disease
Prevention in the American Military, 1939-1945”
Kathleen Stankiewicz, Binghamton University, SUNY (History) – ““Selection, not censorship": Hollywood and the National
Board of Review, 1930-1941”
Panel B (Room 108): Pageantry and Spectacle
Chair: Dr. Peter Price
Sarah Dougherty, Queen’s University (History) – “The Founding Stories of the Stratford Shakespearean Festival”
Erin Wall, Queen’s University (Art History) – “Canadian Objects, Conflicting Identities: The Canada Court at the Great
Exhibition of 1851”
David Leonard, York University (History) – ““This Was Expo” – Ephemeral and Utopian Spaces at Expo 67”
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Panel C (Room 204): Situating Race
Chair: Dr. Joan Schwartz
John Merritt, Laurentian University (History) – “The Oro Black Settlement: Black Realities, White Interpretations, 1819-1949”
Kyle Hammer, Queen’s University (History) – “Meritocratic Space: The Suburb and Whiteness during the Cold War”
Alexandra Giancarlo, Queen’s University (Geography) – “Creole Trail Rides: Race, Space, and Belonging in Louisiana”
Panel D (Room 209): Insiders and Outsiders
Chair: Dr. Peter Campbell
Daniel Meister, Queen’s University (History) – “Bee-ing White: Representations of Race in 1830s Pictou”
Elliot Hanowski, Queen’s University (History) – “Against the Theory of “Brute Ancestry:” A Textbook Controversy in 1930s
Nova Scotia”
Leila Lee, Queen’s University (History) – “The 1911 Election and the Role of Canadian Nationalism in British Columbia”
Katherine Wilson, University of Toronto (Masters of Museum Studies and Master of Information) – “The Problem with
Aboriginal Recruitment during the First World War”
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Saturday March 7 – Panel Session #5
14:15 – 15:30
Panel A (Room 104): (Re)Visiting the Past
Chair: Dr. Jeffrey Collins
Stefan Brown, Queen’s University (History) – “Changing the Context: How Reception Presents a Challenge to the
Cambridge School of Intellectual History and the Enlightenment”
Maggie McGoldrick, Queen’s University (History) – “Fictive Kin?: Long Nosed God Masks, Oral Tradition, and the Adoption
Complex in the Upper Mississippi Valley 1400
– 1560”
Megan Thurston, Queen’s University (History) – “The Idyllic Greece: A Slavic “Destruction” of Greek Identity”
Panel B (Room 108): Consumption & Production Anxieties Chair: Christo Aivalis
Edward Dunsworth, University of Toronto (History) – “Green Gold, Red Threats: Tobacco Farmworkers in Depression-Era
Ontario”
Dinah Jansen, Queen’s University (History) – “The Russian Famine and Images of Disaster in Liberal Russian Thought, 192122”
Ceilidh Auger-Day, McGill University (History) and Dian Day, Queen's University (Cultural Studies) – “Super-sized fears:
Tracing the roots of a moral anxiety”
Panel C (Room 204): Contesting Borders
Chair: Dr. Laura Carlson
Sandra Curley, Saint Mary’s University (History) – “‘Pontifical’ robes”: The Use of Islamic Textiles in Early Modern Spanish
Christian Settings”
Kerim Kartal, Queen’s University (History) – “Rescuing the Eastern-Roman Empire from Eurocentrism”
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Panel D (Room 209): Engineering the Ideal Future
Chair: Dr. Emily Hill
Aprajita Sacar, Queen’s University (History) – “The idea of the nuclear family as envisioned in the first Masterplan of Delhi,
1962”
Heena Mistry, Queen’s University (History) – “A Practical Past Becomes Impractical: Pan-Indianism and PanAnticolonialism”
Jun Wang, Queen’s University (History) – “Social Darwinism in Modern China: An Idea for Modernization, or an Instrument
for Revolution?”
Saturday March 7 – Panel Session #6
15:45 – 17:00
Panel A (Room 104): Urban and Exurban Spaces
Chair: Dr. Laura Cameron
Anastasiya Boika, Queen’s University (History) – “Translating Garden Cities: The Influence of the English Garden City
Concept within Russia”
Mikayla Cartwright, Concordia University (School of Canadian Irish Studies) – “Moyens Visibles D’Existence: Policing Young
Womanhood in 1913 Montreal”
Panel B (Room 108): Contesting Mythologies of War
Chair: Mary Chaktsiris
Sonia Dussault, Queen’s University (History) – “Transcending War: Uncovering the Hidden History of Interdisciplinary
Research on the Origins of War Since the Nineteenth Century”
Matt Barrett, Queen’s University (History) – “Died on the Field of Honour?: Soldier Suicide in the Canadian Military”
Bronwyn Jaques, Queen’s University (Cultural Studies) – “Canada at Peace and Soldiers at War: The Mythology of
Canadian “Peacekeeping” in Korea, Egypt, and Vietnam”
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Panel C (Room 204): Riots and Rebellions
Chair: Kailey Miller
Jeremy Milloy, Simon Fraser University (History) – “‘Fights and Knifings are Becoming Commonplace’: The Risk Environment
and Violence at Work in North American Auto Plants, 1950-80.”
Jason Butters, Concordia University (History) – “Politicisation of Language and Education in Quebec: An analysis of the
causes and effects of the September 10, 1969 riots at St. Leonard, a turning point in Quebec history”
Panel D (Room 209): Controlling the Message
Chair: Dr. Blaine Allan
Jennifer Redler, University of Waterloo (History) – “Representing the Contested East German Past through Film”
Taylor Alexandra Currie, Queen’s University (Cultural Studies) – Businessmen to the Rescue: Cavalcade of America and
the Making of Liberal Consensus in 20th Century America
Colin Gilmour, McGill University (History) – ““We kindly request a Knight’s Cross winner.” The Role of Decorated Soldiers as
Propaganda Speakers in Germany during the Second World War”
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The committee of 12th Annual McGill-Queen’s Graduate Conference in History
would like to thank you for joining us this weekend. We hope that you have a
wonderful experience and enjoy many opportunities to share your work, learn from
the ideas and projects of others, and make lasting connections with fellow
academics. We also hope that you will come back and visit us here in Kingston in
the future!
Queen’s University – Department of History
49 Bader Lane
Queen's University
Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6
http://mcgillqueens2015.wordpress.com; www.queensu.ca/history