Tuesday, October 26, 2004

What's Up, forgetting its manners, has neglected until just now to thank the stalwart HUSA members who trooped out to lobby and cajole high schoolers who so much as slowed for a breath while passing the History and CMRS tables at the recent Experience US! open house. The event should really be called "Experience Them", because faculty attending these affairs quickly learn that it is our student volunteers that the high-schoolers want to meet. Many, many thanks.
HIstory grad makes good! Sanjay Gupta (BA hons, 1991) was interviewed in the Star Phoenix with regard to his booming import/export business, Tea Connexions, which sells high-quality Indian tea around the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and, soon, Australia. Sanjay employs several U of S grads. "A lot of people think", he told the SP, "'How did this guy with a history degree get into business?' And my comment is that when I was taking history, I learned critical thinking skills and idea generation." And we're glad you did, Sanjay. Click here to learn more about Tea Connexions.

Monday, October 25, 2004

A small coterie of History grad students have delared November the Month of the Moustache. They have not said why. If you are biologically and temperamentally inclined to get into the great hairy swing of things, or if you simply dare to know more, click here.

Friday, October 22, 2004

Keith Carlson's status on the SSHRC standard grant titled “Aboriginal Collective Identity Across Time, Space and Academic Disciplines: Exploring Interaction Among the Stó:lõ of South Western British Columbia,” has been upgraded from "collaborator" to "co-principal investigator". While the majority of the funds in this multidisciplinary multi campus project will remain earmarked for archaeological investigations centered out of UBC, SFU and UCLA, the University of Saskatchewan will now have budgetary control for the historical research component of this innovative three year study.

Thursday, October 21, 2004

The finalists for the Saskatchewan Book Awards have been announced, and sessional lecturer David Quiring has garnered two nominations for CCF Colonialism in Northern Saskatchewan (UBC Press): best first book, and best scholarly writing. Congratulations, David!
The Chicago Historical Homicide Project is not, so far as we know, a dastardly conspiracy or a bad rock band, but rather a remarkable online archive that began with the discovery of a rich log of more than 11,000 homicides maintained consistently and without interruption by the Chicago Police Department over the course of 60 years, from 1870 to 1930. The fact that these records were kept without interruption by a single institutional record keeper makes these files an important new resource for the study of homicide, crime, urban development, the police themselves, and, of course, Moose Jaw. Click here to learn more.

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

It is only fitting that Bill Waiser will be delivering the 2004 Great Western University Lecture on Tuesday, November 2nd at 7:30pm in the hospitality room of the Great Western Brewing Co. at 519 2nd Ave. N. Bill's talk, "No Level Fields", debunks the popular legend that Saskatchewan homesteaders faced common challenges and all pulled together. The truth will drive you to drink. Please note that there is limited space at the brewery, and seating is by RSVP only. To reserve a seat, please phone 966-1474 or email dale.worobec@usask.ca.

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Congratulations to Jason Zorbas and his wife Eleni on the birth of their daughter Kyra, born Tuesday October 12th.

Monday, October 18, 2004

Sewage don't get no respect, but modern cities cannot function without clean water and efficient waste disposal. Arn Keeling, SSHRC Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Geography, will speak on "Engineering Water: Pollution and Sanitation in Twentieth-Century Vancouver and Saskatoon" on Friday, October 22, 2004 at 2:00 P.M. in Rm. 256 Arts. The paper examines the ongoing struggle to control water pollution in the cities in question, and illustrates the physical and discursive constructions of nature implicated in the modernization and rationalization of space in the city through technological networks. Everyone welcome. Coffee courtesy of the Department of Geography. Bathroom on the right.

Saturday, October 16, 2004

Christie Martel (BA hons) reports from the Yukon that she is having a wonderful time working for the Yukon Energy, Mines and Resources Library, the Yukon's largest scientific library. Christie is in the middle of a fourteen-week internship, after which she will return to London, Ontario to complete her Masters of Library Sciences degree at the University of Western Ontario.

Friday, October 15, 2004

Google Does More: The good people at Google (who provide the free software behind What's Up, by the way) are now offering a free search tool intended to bring the power of their internet search engine to your own miserably cluttered hard drive. Current search facilities built into Windows can charitably be described as "pathetic". The word that comes to mind when trying the Google offering is "awesome". One major limitation thus far, however, is that the Google Desktop cannot search WordPerfect files, though it rips through Word, .pdf, and email remarkably quickly. Hopefully, the service will soon extend to WordPerfect and other wordprocessors. Keeners can download the Google Desktop (still in beta testing stages) free at http://desktop.google.com. To read further, see today's New York Times article by clicking here.

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Brett Fairbairn will deliver a public lecture on "Everett Baker and the Culture of Co-operation in Saskatchewan", at 8:00 pm, Thursday October 14th at the Diefenbaker Canada Centre. Everyone welcome.
The HUSA Film Series kicks off this Wednesday, October 13th with "To Live",an acclaimed 1993 epic about 20th century China and the question of how ordinary people coped with the most gigantic political and social transformation in modern history. Starring Gong Li. Introduced and presented by Prof Lorne Holyoak, Department of Religious Studies and Anthropology. STM Auditorium (STM 140), 6:30.

Monday, October 11, 2004

Conference: Victorian Canada is the theme of this year's annual meeting of the Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada. Jim Miller will deliver a keynote address on “‘Victoria’s Red Children’: ‘The Great White Queen Mother’ and Native-Newcomer Relations in Canada” at 9:am on Friday, October 15th, and at 1:30 pm that same day M.A. candidate Liz Scott will deliver a conference paper entitled “No ‘Fair Chance’: Public Opinion and Criminal Assumptions of the British Home Children in Canada 1869-1930". The panel Liz is on also includes former history student Jennifer Shepard, now completing a Ph.D. in English at the University of Alberta. The conference will be held at the Bessborough Hotel, with registration and a reception on Thursday evening starting at 6:30pm, and then a full day of conferencing on Friday. For details concerning registration and the conference program, click here.

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

The Department is hosting two new Post-Doctoral Fellows in Native-Newcomer History in 2004-05.

In September Lissa Wadewitz joined us after completing her Ph.D. in History at UCLA on ‘The Nature of Borders: Salmon and Boundaries in the Puget Sound/Georgia Basin.’ Lissa’s post-doctoral research project is to expand the Canadian portion of her doctoral research on trans-border salmon fishery issues on the Pacific slope of Washington state and British Columbia. She will submit the expanded and revised work to a university press, and will also make conference presentations and submit articles to scholarly journals during the year. She introduced herself to the local research community on 30 September, when she gave a talk to the Native-Newcomer Discussion Group.

In early October Lissa was joined by Angela Wanhalla, who had even more recently (29 September, to be precise) defended her doctoral dissertation with flying colours at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. Angela plans to carry out intensive research on a Saskatchewan reserve, and to compare the reserve’s experience with intermarriage and the transgressing of boundaries with parallel experiences on Taieri Native Reserve (the subject of her doctoral dissertation) in New Zealand. In the short term, Angela plans to prepare two journal articles and make conference presentations from this comparative work.

We welcome Lissa and Angela, and wish them enjoyment, academic success, and a warm winter in Saskatoon.

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

Students and others in need of guidance at this time of year can check out the Research and Essay Writing guides listed at Keyanaw Etutor, a service directed towards Aboriginal students in the first instance but of value to everyone. The U. of S. Library also has an excellent suite of materials for students. From the Library home page click on "How to Find, Evaluate, Write,Cite", or click here to go straight there. This cite is particularly good on, ahem, plagiarism.

These links and other valuable research guides (footnotes, anyone?) are also available from the pull-down menues at the top of this page: click "Undergraduates" and choose "online resources", or for an even larger selection click "Graduates" and choose "resources for grad students."
Bill Waiser will deliver an enlightening lecture in the Synchrotron (a.k.a. Canadian Light Source) "Light Lectures" series on Monday October 18th at 7:30 in the STM Auditorium. In "Lighting Up Saskatchewan: An Electrifying History", Bill recounts that former Saskatchewan premier Tommy Douglas said his greatest accomplishment could easily be seen from an airplane at night – the electrification of Saskatchewan. But how did Saskatchewan rural residents cope until power lines found their way to even the most remote villages and farmyards? Bill will explain all. Everyone welcome. Reception to follow.

Monday, October 04, 2004

The Library is hosting a series of Friday afternoon workshops on Finding Resources for Term Papers, and the History workshop is this coming Friday, October 8th, in Main Library Room 161 from 1:30-3pm. All students are welcome and should be encouraged to attend.
The Department of History, the Department of English, the Prairie Centre for the Ukrainian Heritage, and the Ukrainian Museum of Canada are sponsoring a one-day international symposium, Writing about Talking: Orality and Literacy in Contemporary Scholarship. This is an all-day affair, Friday October 15th, at the Bessborough Hotel. Registration is free, but you must register in advance to gain electronic access to the conference papers. For further details see Keith Carlson or click here.

The conference is also tied into a major museum exhibition originating in Kyiv: Oral History of Collectivisation: the case of Ukraine (1930s), which opens at 7:30 pm on October 15th at the Ukrainian Museum of Canada.
HUSA, the History Undergrad Students Association, is starting the year right by hosting a Meet the Prof Night at Louis' bar, Thursday October 7, 7-9pm. All history students, prospective history students, potential history students, and those who know deep in their hearts that they should be history students are invited.

Friday, October 01, 2004

TODAY!!!: Friday, Oct. 1. How to Apply for Graduate School and Funding. A workshop for undergrads considering life after undergraduateship. 3-5pm Arts 217. Everyone Welcome!
Workshop for all history students and faculty. The University Secretary, Gordon Barnhart, will give a presentation Wednesday October 6th at 2:30 in Arts 206 entitled Academic Integrity: The Correct Way to Go. Gordon will discuss a variety of university policies (of which he is a prime author), including plagiarism cases and appeals procedures. The presentation is intended for undergraduate students, graduate students and faculty. If you have any questions, please contact Martha Smith-Norris, Undergraduate Director, Department of History, at smithm@sask.usask.ca (or 966-5800).
As loyal readers of What's Up will know, the Canadian Association for the Study of Book Culture / Association Canadienne pour létude de l'histoire du livre was founded last June so that scholars working in a broad range of disciplines in Canadian universities can meet on the common ground of studies of book and print cultures. U of S doctoral candidate Brendan Edwards is a member of the new group's Executive. The Association now invites memberships: $40 per year ($100 for 3 years), or $20 per year for graduate students, sessional instructors, and independent scholars. Graduate students should provide proof of status. Membership is for the calendar year, but initial memberships will carry through until 31 December 2005. Please send your cheque, along with your name, institution if any, address, phone/fax/email contact information, (and a brief note about your research interests if you wish) to:
Dr. Mary Lu MacDonald
10 Botany Terrace
Halifax NS B3N 2Z7