Jim Clifford

2012 Olympic Park: Remediating the Environmental and Social Conditions

March 21, 2011

Will the 2012 Olympics force the poorer people living in the Lower Lea Valley to relocate as the environmental conditions improve.

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Watching History Online

February 7, 2011

I have just completed a dissertation on the history of the Lower River Lea and West Ham on the eastern edge of London in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During years of research and writing I’ve looked at a wide range of sources from this time period including government documents, newspapers, photographs, maps, [...]

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The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud

December 21, 2010

I don’t normally rush out to buy the Giller Prize winner.  I’m regrettably not a big follower of recent Canadian literature.  In fact, during the past year I’ve had little time to read fiction more generally.  However, when a small press won the prize for the first time and the interviews with the author suggested [...]

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Does a History Education Matter?

November 8, 2010

In late September the Pope traveled to England and beatified Cardinal Newman. One month later the British government’s 40% funding cuts demonstrated the limited influence of sainthood in the politics of higher education.

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The Sound of History

September 27, 2010

A few months ago the American Radio Works posted a very interesting podcast on the art of making radio documentaries.  The podcast included a live presentation given by Stephen Smith and John Biewen about a new book Reality Radio: Telling True Stories in Sound.  While the whole discussion is very interesting, the second half focuses [...]

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Dr. Georgina Feldberg, 1956-2010

July 14, 2010

The history community lost a great teacher, scholar and active historian this week.  I had the pleasure of knowing Dr. Feldberg during my first year at York.  She was one of the professors in a graduate course on the history of science, health and the environment.  I learned a lot from her as a teacher [...]

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Campaigning with History: Wildlands and Woodlands

May 25, 2010

Last week we have two great posts by Tom and Alix on historians engaging with current issues and the value of “thinking with history” for policy development.  Both these post brought to mind a project in New England that I learned about at an environmental history conference a few  years ago.  The Wildland and Woodlands [...]

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Volcanoes in European history: Exploring Environmental History Podcast

April 20, 2010

Dr Jan Oosthoek has produced a podcast on the history of volcanoes in European history.  The podcast can be found here or you can subscribe on iTunes here.  This podcast and its supporting website are under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license, so we have republished his text introducing the volcanoes podcast and the [...]

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Jane’s Walks: community history tours

April 15, 2010

Since 2007 people have come together once a year to celebrate and remember the life of Jane Jacobs by leading or participating in walking tours of their local communities.  As Jacobs argued, walkability is essential for urban communities.  These tours seem to be a truly fitting monument to Jacob’s legacy.  The walks began in Toronto, [...]

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New Active History Paper: Citizenship Literacy and National Self-identity by Larry A. Glassford

March 9, 2010

Abstract The content of history textbooks and curriculum is an important factor in the political socialization of succeeding generations of students. This study of representative classroom textbooks authorized for use in Ontario at three distinct eras of the 20th century shows how the main lines of interpretation have shifted over time. During the pre-World War [...]

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