Professor Matthew Hayday of the University of Guelph has written an evocative piece on some of the joys and potential pitfalls of engaging living activists in historical research. His piece, “The History of the Recent: Reflections on Social Movement History, Research Methods and the Rapid Passage of Time,” is a useful read for anybody interested in the connections between oral history, professional historians, social movements, and activists.
This is a demonstration by Ian Milligan of how word clouds can be used to visually display textual documents, with possible applications in the educational field, media field, and elsewhere. It also has lots of pretty pictures.
The next Approaching the Past workshop will be held on Wednesday April 27th at 7:oo pm at Toronto’s historic Fort York. The theme of this workshop is “Teaching the War of 1812,” and will feature a tour of Fort York and two short presentations by Karen Dearlove and Carolyn King. Karen will be discussing the upcoming Ontario Visual Heritage Project… Read more »
Simon Enoch reviews Manufacturing Meltdown: Reshaping Steel Work by D.W. Livingstone, Dorothy E. Smith and Warren Smith: I approached the new Fernwood release Manufacturing Meltdown: Reshaping Steel Work by D.W. Livingstone, Dorothy Smith and Warren Smith (Fernwood Publishing, 2011, paperback: $27.95) from a rather different perspective than I approach most other historical works. Manufacturing Meltdown details over thirty years of… Read more »
The ongoing land dispute at Caledonia, and other outstanding land claims in the Grand River Valley, as well as elsewhere in Canada, speaks to the significance of history and what Laurier Brantford’s Program Coordinator for Contemporary Studies Peter Farrugia calls “the immanence of the past in the present.”
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/McKay-The-Empire-Strikes-Back.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download Ian McKay, professor of history at Queen’s University, recently delivered an engaging and provocative talk titled “The Empire Strikes Back: Militarism, Imperial Nostalgia, and the Right-Wing Reconceptualization of Canada”. McKay’s talk was the keynote address of the 15th annual New Frontiers Graduate History Conference at York University. The talk is available here for… Read more »
Ontario Women’s History Network The Ontario Women’s History Network Annual Meeting and Conference and Conference will be held April 1-2 in Kingston, Ontario. It is on “Canadian Women & the Second World War” and has an interesting array of speakers. Please download the conference flyer here. Contact rosefinemeyer@gmail.com for more information. Calling all History Teachers & Curriculum Leaders, Museum and Historical… Read more »
What if the study of the Canadian past was understood as an interdisciplinary field? Steven High’s new paper offers oral history as an example of an interdisciplinary craft that has made such a transition. High, Canada Research Chair in Public History and Associate Professor of History at Concordia University, examines this and other issues surrounding oral history. ActiveHistory.ca is always… Read more »
