Trudeau Video Clips on Youtube

22 12 2009

I’ve compiled a list of Pierre Trudeau clips available on Youtube.The first clip is, of course, the famous “Just Watch Me” interview.





Cool Websites of Young Historians

21 12 2009

A number of young historians have created individual websites to help promote their research. I have made a list of some of the more interesting websites of this sort.

Rob MacDougall

Rob MacDougall is an Assistant Professor of History, University of Western Ontario, where he teaches post-1877 U.S. history, business history, and the history of technology. He has an awesome website. His publications include: “Long Lines: AT&T’s Long-Distance Network as an Organizational and Political Strategy,” Business History Review 80:2 (Summer 2006), 297-327; “The All-Red Dream: Technological Nationalism and the Trans-Canada Telephone System,” chapter in Canadas of the Mind: The Making and Unmaking of Canadian Nationalisms in the Twentieth Century, Adam Chapnick and Norman Hillmer, eds., Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007, 46-62; “The People’s Telephone: The Politics of Telephony in the United States and Canada,” Enterprise and Society, 6:4 (December 2005), 581-587.

Jennifer Burns is an assistant professor of history at the University of Virginia, where she teaches 20th century U.S. history. She used to teach a US history survey course at UC Berkeley (you can listen to the lectures on iTunes U). Dr Burns recently published a work on the influence of Ayn Rand on American life. She was interviewed about this book on the Daily Show and Reason.com. She has a great website.

Maki Umemura

Maki Umemura is a lecturer (in US parlance, an assistant professor) at Cardiff University. Her research is on the history of the Japanese pharmaceutical industry, a topic that combines business history and the history of medicine. Her publications include “The Interplay between Entrepreneurial Initiative and Government Policy: The Shaping of the Japanese Pharmaceutical Industry since 1945Business and Economic History Online (2007). Dr Umemura is currently working on a history of the Japanese pharmaceutical industry since 1945, which will be published by Routledge. Her website includes one of the most visually-appealing academic blogs.

Sean Kheraj

Sean Kheraj is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of British Columbia. He is an environmental historian and the host of the Nature`s Past podcasts. His publications include:“Improving Nature: Remaking Stanley Park’s Forest, 1888-1931” BC Studies (158) 2008: 63-90; “Restoring Nature: Ecology, Memory, and the Storm History of Vancouver’s Stanley Park” Canadian Historical Review 88 (4) 2007: 577-612;“Plaque Build-up: Commemorating the Buxton Settlement, 1950-2000” Problématique: Journal of Political Studies (9) 2003: 5-2.  He is an active blogger.





Canadian History Book Reviewed in WFP

20 12 2009

The Winnipeg Free Press recently carried a review of  Immigrants in Prairie Cities: Ethnic Diversity in Twentieth-Century Canada by Royden Loewen and Gerald Friesen.





Abbeville Institute

19 12 2009

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting story about American academics who are attempting to rehabilitate the reputation of the Southern secessionists. A group of “neo-Confederate” academics who believe that the South’s cause in the Civil War was justified have established an organization called the Abbeville Institute.

The Abbeville Institute claims that its members study the attempted secession of the slave states so as to better understand secessionist movements in the modern world. However, a quick glance at the titles of papers delivered at its conferences suggests that it is actually a very parochial body concerned only with the American Civil War. There are very few papers of a seriously comparative nature and little discussion of secessionist movements in other countries (e.g., Canada). Moreover, the organization appears to ignore the more recent  secessionist movements in Alaska and Hawaii.





More Dallas Police Photos of JFK Investigation Now Online

16 12 2009

Boxes of Books Inside the Texas Book Depository

A number of photos taken by the Dallas police department during the investigation of John F. Kennedy’s assassination are now available online.





A Canadian Historian at the Copenhagen Conference

13 12 2009

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court Canadian historian at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference. Claire Campbell, an associate professor of history at Dalhousie University, is part of the Nova Scotia delegation in Copenhagen. She is live blogging about her experiences at the Conference.
Her most recent blog post reads: “It’s an odd feeling to be going to my beloved Denmark more as a Nova Scotian, or a representative of Dalhousie, than as a Canadian. I really don’t know what kind of reception Canadians – not of all of whom support the federal position on the COP – will have. As the man sitting across from me in the airport just said, ‘We should be [setting] the standards of good citizenry around the world. We should be model citizens’….” Read the rest here.

Dr Campbell is one of Canada’s foremost environmental historians. Her first book, Shaped by the West Wind:  Nature and History in Georgian Bay, was published by University of British Columbia Press in 2004. She is currently working on a book about the history of Canada’s national parks. Her other publications include:  “‘To Free Itself, and Find Itself’:  Writing a History for the Prairie West,” in National Plots: Interrogation, Revision, and Re-Inscription in Canadian Historical Fiction, 1832-2005, eds. Andrea Cabajsky and Brett Josef Grubisic (Wilfrid Laurier Press, 2009); ‘It was Canadian, then, typically Canadian’:  Revisiting Wilderness at Historic Sites,” British Journal of  Canadian Studies 21:1 (2008), pp. 5-34; “Global Expectations, Local Pressures: Some Dilemmas of a World Heritage Site,” Journal of the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society 11:1 (2008), pp. 1-18; “On Fertile Ground:  Locating Historic Sites in the Landscapes of Fundy and the Foothills“, Journal of the Canadian Historical Association/Revue de la Société Historique du Canada 17 :1 (2006) pp. 235-265.





New Book From John Majewski

12 12 2009

John Majewski, Modernizing a Slave Economy: The Economic Vision of the Confederate Nation

This looks like a book that every historian interested in North America in the 1860s should read. I’ve ordered it and shall share some thoughts once I’ve read it.

Here is the blurb from the publisher:

“What would separate Union and Confederate countries look like if the South had won the Civil War? In fact, this was something that southern secessionists actively debated. Imagining themselves as nation-builders, they understood the importance of a plan for the economic structure of the Confederacy.

The traditional view assumes that Confederate slave-based agrarianism went hand in hand with a natural hostility toward industry and commerce. Turning conventional wisdom on its head, John Majewski’s analysis finds that secessionists strongly believed in industrial development and state-led modernization. They blamed the South’s lack of development on Union policies of discriminatory taxes on southern commerce and unfair subsidies for northern industry.

Majewski argues that Confederates’ opposition to a strong central government was politically tied to their struggle against northern legislative dominance. Once the Confederacy was formed, those who had advocated states’ rights in the national legislature in order to defend against northern political dominance quickly came to support centralized power and a strong executive for war making and nation building.”

This might be read alongside my study of the political economy of the Canadian constitution of 1867.





New Website on the Halifax Explosion

11 12 2009

Houses Ruined by the Halifax Explosion

In December 1917, two ships collided in Halifax harbour, producing an explosion that killed 2,000 devastated the city. The Provincial Archives of Nova Scotia has created a new website with images and video clips. Check it out.





Advice on How To Become A History Professor

11 12 2009

This looks like it’s a useful resource graduate students.

First step: have photo taken with large book. See below:

Next step: buy tweed jacket with leather elbow patches. See below:





Bloggingheads: Global Climate Politics – Video Library – The New York Times

10 12 2009

Vodpod videos no longer available.