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COURSE TAUGHT:
Hist 3443 - Canadian Youth and University in Comparative Perspective
AREAS OF RESEARCH:
Women's and Medical
History in Relation to Higher Education, 1900-1960s
Higher Education
and Secularization in Twentieth-Century Canada
University Professoriate
and Student Radicalism in the 1950s and 1960s
Gender and Moral
Regulation
RESEARCH IN PROGRESS:
“Shaping the Modern Self: Youth, Health, and the Rise of the Modern University, 1900-1960.”
Funded with the aid of two postdoctoral fellowships, this study examines the supply of, and demand for, student health services as well as ideals of bodily health at Canadian universities from the 1900s to the 1950s. As a result of a variety of concerns -- including the reproductive health of female students, the impact of increasingly sedentary lifestyles, and the poor health of military recruits -- university administrators gradually initiated compulsory medical examinations and physical training for students. As part of this process they hired a variety of health professionals, including doctors, nurses, physical instructors, and dietitians. I use health services to examine a number of themes: the gendered nature of both physical examinations and physical education; the role of female health professionals and their contribution to fostering women’s space on campus; the role of health services as part of the moral formation of the university; and the university’s role in the creation of adolescent culture in the twentieth century.
“Branding the Classroom: The History of Commercialism in Canadian Schools, 1920-2000.”
Funded through a SSHRC Standard Research Grant, the aim of the project is to provide an account of commercialism in Canadian schools, focusing specifically on the history of in-school corporate advertising and marketing. The project explores a number of interrelated questions: When and how did advertisers gain entry to the classroom? How has commercialism changed over time? What messages has corporate material imparted? Why has commercial material appealed to school boards, teachers, parents, and students? How, and to what extent, has commercialism been resisted? To answer these questions I focus on four main topics: corporate teaching aids, fundraising and vending machines, the introduction of full-service cafeterias and hot lunch programs, and the attempt to introduce commercial television into the classroom.
PUBLICATIONS:
Books:
A Long Eclipse:
The Liberal Protestant Establishment and the English-Canadian University
Campus, 1920-1970. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University
Press, 2004. Pp. xxvi + 240.
Recipient of Founders'
Prize, 2004-2006 (awarded for the best book in the history of education
in Canada by the Canadian History of Education Association).
Peer-Reviewed
Articles:
with M. Dawson, “Persistence and Inheritance: Rethinking Periodization and English Canada’s ‘Twentieth Century’,” in Contesting Clio’s Craft: New Directions and Debates in Canadian History, ed. C. Dummitt and M. Dawson (London: Institute for the Study of the Americas, 2009): 47-74.
with R.D. Gidney, “Branding the Classroom: Commercialism in Canadian Schools, 1920-60,” Histoire sociale/Social History XLI, 82 (Nov. 2008): 345-79.
"Institutional
Responses to Communicable Diseases at Victoria College, University of
Toronto, 1900-1940," Canadian Bulletin of the History of
Medicine (Forthcoming Fall 2007).
"Dating and
Gating: The Moral Regulation of Men and Women's Residences at University
and Victoria Colleges, University of Toronto, 1920-60," Journal
of Canadian Studies 41, 2 (Spring 2007): 1-23.
"The Athletics-Physical
Education Dichotomy Revisited: The Case of the University of Toronto,
1900-1940," Sport History Review 37 (Nov. 2006): 130-49.
"The Dredger's
Daughter: Courtship and Marriage in the Baptist Community of Welland,
Ontario, 1934-44," Labour/Le Travail 54 (Fall 2004): 121-49.
"Under the President's
Gaze: Sexuality and Morality at a Canadian University During the Second
World War," Canadian Historical Review 82, 1 (March
2001): 36-54.
Reprinted in People,
Places, and Times: Readings in Canadian Social History, Volume 2 - Post
Confederation, ed. Cynthia Comacchio and Jane Errington ( Thomson
Nelson: 2006).
"Poisoning the
Student Mind? The Student Christian Movement on the University of Toronto
Campus, 1920-1965," Journal of the Canadian Historical Association,
New Series, 8 (1997): 147-63.
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