Professor Brad Cross, from the Department of History, will receive the John McKendy Memorial Teaching Award. Dr. Cross believes that his most successful courses are ones in which he draws attention to what the class, including himself, doesn’t know or might not be able to know. He and the students learn as a collective and through many non-traditional teaching techniques.
“I consider teaching to be a combination of preparation and response to the unexpected – teaching seems to be a dynamic process that continues to change with the work we are doing,” said Cross.
His students have studied historical artifacts at King’s Landing to learn about the past through material history. His travel-study courses to New York have provided rich learning opportunities that bring urban history to life and help broaden student’s knowledge and experience.
“His outside-the-classroom trips to study history have been as well orchestrated as his classroom sessions and have proven to be some of the greatest learning experiences of my time in university,” said a student who nominated Cross for the award.
“It was an honour to be nominated by students,” added Cross. “These students were subject to experimentation, experiential learning and hands-on approaches. They’ve been involved in research as well.”
<Campus News>
Dr. Michael Dawson will be awarded the inaugural St. Thomas University Early Career Research Award. He has become widely recognized in the fields of Canadian cultural history and Canadian historiography.
He was the recipient of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council post-doctoral research fellowship and a Standard Research Grant, and he has received five St. Thomas University General Research Grants and three St. Thomas Research Course Releases, as well as a Conference Organizer’s Award.
Dawson’s successes are evidenced by his diverse scholarly publications as well as the various prizes, awards and research grants he has gained. He has also contributed greatly to student and faculty research at STU, and elsewhere, and shows strong leadership in the academic community. He has become a widely recognized player in Canadian Cultural History and Canadian Historiography, and has also proven himself time and again as a very talented researcher, writer, teacher and mentor.
<Campus News>
Monday, February 20, 2012
The History Department, the Science and Technology Studies Programme, the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, and the Department of Psychology are pleased to present a public lecture by Dr. Susanne Klausen of Carleton University.
The title of the lecture is:
“Sex, Shame and Suicide: The Criminalization of Trans-Racial Sex and the Disciplining of White Male Heterosexuality in South Africa during Apartheid, 1948-1990″
TIME/LOCATION: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 7 p.m. in Room 103, Edmund Casey Hall (St. Thomas University)
Dr. Klausen is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Carleton University where she teaches African, South African and World History. She is the author of Race, Maternity, and the Politics of Birth Control in South Africa (Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004) and has written extensively on the comparative history of eugenics, abortion and birth control.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
WHEN: Monday 20 February, 9am
WHERE: Faculty Lounge in ECH 201
Faculty and current Honours students will be on hand to provide an overview of the upcoming Senior Seminars and to discuss the Honours Programme.
Refreshments will be provided
Thursday, January 26, 2012
This year, four faculty members of the History Department have received research grants from the Research Office, including the Major Research Grant awarded to Dr. Jennifer Lofkrantz for her project “Scholars, Captives, and Slaves: The Intellectual Debate on Ransoming Prisoners in Muslim West Africa.”
The other recipients are:
Dr. Bradley Cross for “After the Bauxite is Gone: A History of Land Rehabilitation Schemes in Transnational Context”
Dr. Michael Dawson for “A Canadian Girl in South Africa: Gender, Imperialism and Education During the Boer War”
Dr. Karen Robert for “Fordism’s Promise and Perils: An Analysis of Ford Motors Operations in Argentina, 1960s – 1980s”
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
The Global and International Studies Initiative at STU awarded three of its four Research Grants to Dr. Brad Cross, Dr. Jennifer Lofkrantz and Dr. Robin Vose.
On 21 October, Dr. Carey Watt delighted his colleagues and other guests with wits and good humour, as he presented his latest edited book on “civilizing missions” in South Asia.
Lee Benson obtained her Honours Degree in History in 2011, and was awarded a SSHRC Masters Scholarship to attend Carleton University. She will be starting graduate school there in September 2012 with a well-developed research project. This is the update Lee has sent us:
“I’ll be continuing a project I began at Saint Thomas regarding the history of the automobile. My project at Saint Thomas was an examination of the use of industrial film in the Automobile industry from 1930 – 55, focusing on films used for advertising. My hope is to continue that project and expand it to include a comparison of the advertising employed by GM and that of the Ford Motor company. Ford created its own advertisements and GM used an advertising company. GM’s car ads fit very well within broader trends in American advertising culture at the period and my preliminary hypothesis at this point – given what I know of the Ford Motor Company in this period – is that Ford’s ads will be very different. I want to do a comparison of the cultural values that were promoted by each companies advertising and how that relates to broader trends in automobile culture. We’ll see how far I get with that. I may have to save part of that for my next degree and just take it a little piece at a time, especially given how little literature has been written on industrial film advertising.
I’m really looking forward to this project as my first two years at Saint Thomas were spent in the journalism program. Continuing with a project so focused on media allows me to tie my passion for history and my passion for journalism and communications together. Carleton is a great place to do that, although I know I never would have gotten here if it hadn’t been for the time I spent working with STU’s history professors. I wouldn’t have even attempted it. I appreciate all that you and others have done to help get me here and I wish you all the best this fall!”
Essay abstract: “Advertising in Motion: The Use of Industrial films in American Automobile Advertising, 1930 – 55”
Friday, September 9, 2011
Dr. Edward Kissi, Associate Professor of History at the Department of Africana Studies at the University of South Florida, will present “Beyond the Holocaust: A Comparative Interpretation of Genocide and Mass Murder in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Darfur.”
Monday 3 October at 7:00-9:00pm, in Ted Daigle Auditorium
This public lecture is jointly sponsored by the History Department at St. Thomas University and the Atlantic Human Rights Center. The Annual History Lecture/Vigod Memorial Lecture will offer an opportunity to reflect on interdisciplinary themes central to liberal arts education. The Vigod Memorial Lecture, named in honor of Dr. Bernie Vigod, focuses on Human Rights issues, while the Annual History Lecture explores World History themes. Dr. Kissi’s presentation will bring together both of these important topics.
For scholars of genocide, the tragedies in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Darfur are particularly instructive. The genocide in Cambodia was ideological, Rwanda’s was ethnic, and in Darfur is a convergence of factors in which desertification, government counterinsurgency and policy of “Arabism” have undermined the traditional coexistence between pastoralists and farmers. Dr. Kissi’s lecture will shed light on the need to go beyond a Holocaust-based typology for the study of contemporary genocides, as well as on the need to approach each genocide in terms of its global as well as distinctly local dimensions. A nuanced analysis of the three case studies will demonstrate a fine line between the crime of genocide and other forms of mass atrocities, a critical distinction at a time when genocide and mass murder have become interchangeable words in many circles.
Dr. Edward Kissi is historian of comparative genocide, who has published widely in the leading genocide journals and Africanist journals. His well-received book, Revolution and Genocide in Ethiopia and Cambodia, was published in 2006 by Lexington Books.
Kudos to Professor Bittermann whose Sailor’s Hope: The Life and Times of William Cooper, Agrarian Radical in an Age of Revolution was awarded this year’s Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing.
Through this prize, the Atlantic Book Awards wish to “recognize an author (or authors) who excels at illuminating the Atlantic region’s vibrant history and acknowledges the work of the publisher who makes the book available.”
Earlier in the month, Dr. Bittermann had been asked to give a lecture on his book at the Province House in Charlottetown, PEI, as his work had also received the Publication of the Year Award from the Prince Edward Island Museum and Heritage Foundation.
