American History

Mad Men and Wonder Years: history, nostalgia, and life in The Sixties

May 7, 2012

By Jay Young Like many people, I anticipated the return of Mad Men (AMC, Sundays, 10 pm EST), one of television’s most acclaimed series of the past decade.  Now in its fifth season, the show looks at the life of Don Draper and other workers in the New York advertising industry during the 1960s. At [...]

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The Public’s Role in Active History

April 4, 2012
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by Jeffers Lennox Historians of Canada specifically, and academics generally, have found themselves of late at the business end of some harsh criticisms.  To believe the editorials in major newspapers, academics write about obscure topics for the benefit of a small handful of other academics; we find students and teaching to be a distraction from [...]

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Living History at New York’s Tenement Museum

March 5, 2012

By Jay Young I recently spent an extended weekend in New York City.  Along with the well-known sights, sounds and tastes of the Big Apple, I was excited to visit the Tenement Museum, a restored five-storey building at 97 Orchard Street that educates visitors about life in the Lower East Side during the late nineteenth [...]

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You Can’t Stop the Truth: The Story of the Original Founding Members of the Sugarhill Gang

February 21, 2012

By Francesca D’Amico When The Sugarhill Gang wrote and recorded “Rapper’s Delight” in 1979, little did they know that this single-take recording would serve as a template for establishing an audience and market for Hip Hop, and would also mark the beginning of their thirty year-long battle with contractual turmoil. This story is not new [...]

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The Race Is On in Canada and the United States: A Tale of Two Political Cultures

February 6, 2012

While watching the NDP and Republican leadership races unfold in Canada and the United States, I’ve been struck by the very different political cultures of these two countries. This can be partly attributed to the divergent political philosophies of the right-wing Republican Party and the centre-left NDP. But the roots of these political cultures also [...]

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From Black Tuesday to Black Friday to Everyday

December 7, 2011

Discussing money is generally afforded the same privacy as the balance of one’s bank account. Inviting an open conversation about the subject in public, from basic finance to complex economics, is thought to be rude and even poorer politics. It is perhaps the most polarizing field of contemporary journalism because it has absolutely no means [...]

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What can the past teach us about First Nations’ education?

December 2, 2011

As an historian of the eighteenth century studying Aboriginal engagement with European forms of higher education, modern-day statistics on First Nations education are startling.

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Eating Like Our Great-Grandmothers: Food Rules and the Uses of Food History

November 24, 2011

by Ian Mosby This month’s publication of a colourfully illustrated, revised edition of Michael Pollan’s 2009 bestseller, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, once again has me thinking about the role of historians in contemporary debates about the health and environmental impacts of our current industrial food system. As a historian of food and nutrition, I [...]

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Funneling Controversy: The Keystone XL Pipeline

November 22, 2011

Transborder pipelines are nothing new. There is a long history, forgive the pun, of such enterprises in North America. In fact, Canada has historically been a pipeline pioneer. Yet the Keystone XL project has attracted what is likely unprecedented environmental opposition for a transnational pipeline, including protests featuring celebrities and arrests outside of the White House. Perhaps this pipeline has become a potent symbol of wider dissatisfaction with our current petro-regimes and environmental approaches?

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New Review of Perceptions of Cuba: Canadian and American Policies in Comparative Perspective

November 16, 2011

Perceptions of Cuba: Canadian and American Policies in Comparative Perspective By Lana Wylie Reviewed by Mary Stanik, a communications consultant and opinion writer who has been published in a number of major Canadian and American newspapers. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. These are interesting times for anyone in Canada or the United States who takes [...]

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