The History Student Handbook for 2009-10

is now available.

Linda Dietz has done it again. And this time she has outdone herself. Each year about this time, Linda takes the descriptions of courses on offer in the upcoming year along with the newly compiled timetable and all the necessary rules and regulations associated with our various History degree options, and pulls it all together in a handy booklet. Pick up the new edition in the History general office on the 7th floor, or click right here right now to check it out. Start planning your History courses for next year, then make an appointment with a History faculty advisor to seal the deal! To make an appointment, proceed to the 7th floor and sign up on the sigh-up sheet outside the History general office.

Since they asked so nicely, how could we refuse?

"The Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, located in the Diefenbaker Centre on campus, is holding an information session on Thursday, April 2 for students to talk about our graduate programs, and I’m wondering – if you feel it would be appropriate – if you can help us promote the session by forwarding the e-mail message below to your students and invite/encourage them to attend the session if they are at all curious about any of the four programs we offer (MIT, MPA, MPP, and PhD). Click here for a poster providing more information." You could also click here.

Simonne Horwitz's academic expertise in the history of the ongoing HIV/AIDs epidemic worldwide has direct relevance to the situation now unfolding in Saskatchewan. CBC News reporter Geoff Leo contacted Simonne (courtesy of a tip from fellow medical historian Erika Dyck) in the course of his investigation of the soaring rate of HIV/AIDs in this province. The story broke today. Simonne (shown here in a happier mood yesterday, at the USSU ceremony at which she received a 2009 Teaching Excellence Award) has been all over CBC radio and television in the last few hours. She was interviewed by Anna Maria Tremonti in part one (starting at the 13th minute on the podcast) of the nationally broadcast The Current (click here to listen), and by Sheila Coles on CBC Saskatchewan's Morning Edition - Extra (click here to listen).

In both cases (the Morning Edition interview is longer and more probing), Simonne presented the truly sobering data in a global and a local context succinctly, clearly, and unflinchingly. In just a few minutes she set out the human elements -- social, cultural, economic, political -- that facilitate the spread of the disease, are ravaged by its consequences, and in which the key to effective responses is to be found. It was nothing less than a call to informed, compassionate, and urgent action.

Next year, Simonne will offer a new honours seminar that directly engages with these issues: History 498.3, "History of HIV/AIDA, With a Special Focus on the Developing World". It now seems that Saskatchewan will also loom large in those discussions.

Department Head Valerie Korinek's pioneering research on the history of gay and lesbian communities on the prairies is featured in a new docudrama, Stubblejumper, a film by David Geiss based on the life of the late Doug Wilson, a one-time grad student in Education whose small ad in a 1975 edition of The Sheaf advertising a gay organization on this campus drew nation-wide media attention and touched off one of the most sustained episodes of gay rights activism in Canadian history. The film played for three nights at the Broadway Theatre recently, and will be broadcast Saturday, March 28th at 9pm on SCN. Don't miss it. Being historians, you might also want to check out Valerie's article "'The Most Openly Gay Person For at Least a Thousand Miles': Doug Wilson and the Politicization of a Province, 1975-83", The Canadian Historical Review, 2003. Click here for the full-page article on Valerie, Doug Wilson, and the film in the March 13th edition of On Campus News.

Whitney Lackenbauer is heading back this way to present a talk entitled:

"Arctic Front, Arctic Homeland: Re-evaluating Canada’s Past Record and Future Prospects in the Circumpolar North".

Thursday, March 26, 2009 at 4:30 PM

Neatby Timlin Theatre (Room 241, Arts Building)

These days, Whitney is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at St. Jerome's University (federated with the University of Waterloo). Once upon a time (November 2003-August 2004), he was a CRC postdoctoral fellow at the U of S, which allowed him to work on several projects related to indigenous peoples and militarism. His many publications include

Arctic Front: Defending Canadian Interests in the Far North. Toronto: Thomas Allen & Son Ltd., 2008. (With Ken Coates, Bill Morrison, and Greg Poelzer.)

and

Battle Grounds: The Canadian Military and Aboriginal Lands. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007. xviii, 350 pp.

Thinking about traveling to Europe this spring?
Of course you are.
Interested in the theatre?
Of course you are.

It only stands to reason, then, that you should know about the following
Study Abroad opportunity:

Drama 285.3: Theatre Studies in London
May 4-21, 2009. Week 1 in Saskatoon, then, 11 glorious days in London!

Cost: UofS tuition, $438, Program Fee, $1500 (lodging, tickets to shows, travel from London to Statford, program overhead); air fair (estimated $1200).

$500 non-refundable deposit due upon acceptance into the course. Remainder of program fee ($1000) due by April 8, 2009.

Click here for further details.

RUN DON'T WALK
TO SEE...

The HISTORY

UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT

ASSOCIATION & the DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

presentation of …

Enemy at the Gate

Autumn 1942. Germany’s assault on the Soviet city of Stalingrad is reaching its peak. The outcome of World War II on the Eastern Front hangs in the balance.

Among the few troops able to make an individual mark on such a battle, characterized by machine warfare and indiscriminate carnage, are the snipers: skilled sharpshooters who strike fear in the heart of every advancing soldier. The real-life story of Russian sniper Vasily Zaitsev (played by Jude Law) forms the core of Enemy at the Gates, the 2001 film directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud (Name of the Rose and Seven Years in Tibet). With one of history’s most titanic battles as their backdrop, Zaitsev and his German rival, Major Koenig (Ed Harris), duel for supremacy and survival.

One of the first English-language blockbusters to deal with the long-neglected Eastern Front, Enemy at the Gates also features Joseph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, and a cameo performance by Bob Hoskins as Nikita Khrushchev.

Introduced by John McCannon, Department of History

DATE & TIME: Wednesday, April 1 @ 5:30 p.m.

PLACE: Arts 241

ADMISSION: free!

The annual History Grad Student Committee Book Pub is taking place at the Faculty Club on Friday March 6th at 3:30pm. (A "book pub" is a "book auction" at which beverages are sold.) This is generally the biggest fundraiser of the year for the HGSC. Not only will a whole lot of swell books be auctioned off at ridiculously low prices, but History graduate students will be auctioning off their research skills -- faculty bidders only I'm afraid -- at the Book Pub as well. This event provides the opportunity to support the HGSC while enhancing your book collection and/or research. The HGSC relies on the Book Pub to fund many of its events throughout the year, including the Keewatin Conference this April.

And know this: UNDERGRADS ARE WELCOME! Indeed, HUSA members are actively working behind the scenes on Book Pub Prep even as we speak. HUSA will therefore receive a cut of the proceeds, which will go towards subsidizing the price of student tickets for the History Graduates' Banquet on May 24th (the Sunday before Convocation).

So, Undergrads! Your money is as good as any grad student's, and your craving for books may well be as highly developed and as likely to be sated by the delicacies that may be had at the Book Pub.

Speaking of money, cash and cheques only, please. Come early and buy often! Hope to see you all there.

Congratulations to Simonne Horwitz, who has been awarded a USSU Teaching Award for 2009, as voted by the students in a campus-wide competition. Only ten such awards are given out annually across the university. Remarkably, Simonne garnered this honour in her first year of full-time teaching for her inaugural edition of History 299.6, Africans on the Move: The History of Voluntary and Involuntary Migration in, and from, Africa between the Earliest Times and the Present. Simonne will receive her award at a ceremony on March 22nd. Congratulations, Simonne!

Please note that Simonne will be teaching this course again next year, along with a new honours seminar, History 498.3, "History of HIV/AIDA, With a Special Focus on the Developing World". The advising season will be upon us shortly, so if you are looking for courses for next year, keep these in mind.

One of the worst kept secrets on campus can finally be revealed.

U of S History Department Awarded Second Canada Research Chair

An associate professor in the Department of History has been awarded $500,000 over the next five years from the Government of Canada to conduct research on the treatment and care for individuals with mental illness.

Erika Dyck, the new Canada Research Chair (CRC) in the History of Medicine, is among the 134 Chairs announced recently by the CRC program, which was created to attract and retain excellent researchers in Canadian universities.

Dyck, a native of Saskatoon, recently authored a book on LSD medical experimentation, titled, Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD from Clinic to Campus. The historian is now focusing on the political and medical attitudes towards mental illness and their influence on state-funded healthcare, the policy of deinstitutionalization and eugenics. Dyck will explore the relatively unstudied history of eugenics in Western Canada, including Alberta’s Sexual Sterilization Act, and the Saskatchewan government’s turning away from this historic practice of sterilizing “mentally-defective” people deemed unfit for parenthood.

The historical study of deinstitutionalization—the release of mental patients into the care of the community—will involve research groups in Vancouver and Nova Scotia. Working alongside fellow principal co-investigator, Megan Davies of York University, Dyck hopes her overall research program will inform current debates about mental health services. This research program will provide some much-needed historical perspective for contemporary debates over health and mental health care.

"Erika is one of this University's excellent young scholars and a terrific complement to the Department of History's strength in medical and health history." said Peter Stoicheff, Vice-Dean of the Humanities & Fine Arts in the College of Arts & Science. Sources close to What's Up can also confirm that Erika is an outstanding teacher.

Canada Research Chairs are awarded to exceptional emerging researchers, acknowledged by their peers as having the potential to lead in their field. They are nominated by their university and reviewed by a panel of experts from around the world. There are now a total of 25 CRC’s employed at the U of S.

Erika Dyck is the second CRC in the Department of History, joining Jim Miller, our senior CRC scholar in Native-Newcomer Relations.

Congratulations, Erika!

The 2009 History Department Academic Advising Season will run from March 30th to April 24th.

We here at What's Up believe most strongly -- most strongly indeed! -- that courses are best chosen in consultation with a faculty member (or our super-senior-administrator, Linda Dietz) in the context of ACADEMIC ADVISING. People have been known to proceed through their university careers without having consulted an academic advisor, but it is no way to live and doing so is lowly recommended. Most lowly.

Stay tuned for further details about the History Advising Season. In the meantime, if you crave advice before March 30th, feel free to make an appointment to see our Undergrad Director Gordon DesBrisay (gordon.desbrisay@usask.ca) or drop by Arts 721 to see Linda Dietz.

Prof. John-Paul Himka, Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta, will deliver this year’s Mohyla Lecture at St. Thomas More College, February 27, 7:00 pm in Rm 344B. A specialist in nineteenth and twentieth century Ukraine, his presentation is entitled “Divergent Memories: Ukrainians, Jews, and the Holocaust.”

Prof. Himka’s most recent publications include the co-edited volume Letters from Heaven: Popular Religion in Russia and Ukraine. (University of Toronto Press, 2006) and the forthcoming book, scheduled to be released in spring 2009, History on Linden Boards: Last Judgment Iconography in the Carpathians (University of Toronto Press).

The Mohyla Lecture Series is an annual lecture series organized by the Prairie Centre for the Study of Ukrainian Heritage. In existence since 1995, the Mohyla Lecture Series is a high-profile event that serves as a vehicle to promote Ukrainian Studies at the University of Saskatchewan as well as within the wider community. Selected lectures have been published by Heritage Press, the publishing arm of the PCUH (http://www.stmcollege.ca/heritage_press.html).

Bill Waiser was interviewed this past Saturday by Shelagh Rogers on her new CBC national radio show, "The Next Chapter", in the course of a discussion on stories from the Canadian past that still resonate with Canadians today. To hear a podcast of the show, click here.

The 12th Annual Michael Swan History Honours Colloquium is now history. Last Friday, January 23rd was a great day and our colleagues over in the History Undergraduate Director's office have asked us to pass on their sincere thanks to our friends at the Diefenbaker Centre for making us so welcome; to our own Ingrid Mcgregor for doing the program and posters and for arranging for our food, coffee, and cake; to the grad students who dropped by to lend support, relive past glories, and learn stuff; to the family and friends who turned out in support; to the faculty past and present who came out in record numbers; and, above all, to the sixteen honours students who presented such fine papers and participated in our daylong discussions.

This action shot from the Swan Colloquium captures the Honours students who presented in the afternoon just as the scale of their achievement begins to set in.

We salute, from left to right, James Ingold, Paula Bittman, Deana Diener, Derek Strelioff, Carolyn Bartlett, Shaun Fiolleau, Gayle Cluett, Mark Geldof, James Dobson, Ryan Winquist, and Adam Grieve.

My Fellow Historians,

The time has come for us all to embrace change. To admit that the era of the 11th Annual Michael Swan History Honours Colloquium is over. It served us well, but we cannot go back. We must, in these challenging times, push forward.

It is time, Historians, for us all to embrace change. To pull together so that we might all, every one of us, seize this moment to build anew!

"A new what?" you may ask.

A new colloquium for a new year and a new generation of prospective History Honours graduates, that's what.

And so, Historians, let us us all welcome and embrace and get with the program you can read simply by clicking right here!

For the

12th Annual Michael Swan History Honours Colloquium

is now upon us!


Friday, January 23rd from 10am to 4pm
in the friendly confines of the
Diefenbaker Canada Centre.

On that day, in that place,

in that hall of concrete, glass, learning, and cake,

Sixteen, possibly fifteen, of our top senior History Honours students will step forth

to present and take questions on their

best ... history ... papers ... ever.

Topics will include:

Victorian cartoons
Rwandan genocide
Fascism and The Sopranos
Gender and Sexuality in Nazi Germany
Buffalo Bill
The Bombing of Hiroshima

and much else...

JOIN US
for all or any part of the day.

The audience will comprise students, family, friends, faculty, and, we very much hope, YOU.

Absolutely everybody is welcome to spend as much or as little time with us as they wish.

So come join us at the Diefenbaker Centre this Friday, and see where History might lead you. Expect a warm welcome whatever the weather.

Plus, if you arrive in the noon hour you might just get a sandwich and a damn fine piece of cake.

Some things, after all, ought not to change.

Click here for the program, if you have not already clicked up there.

We always knew that you can get there from here, but it turns out you can come from there and make it back, too -- and in a big way.

So warm congratulations to Angela Wanhalla, who has just been awarded the 2008 The Rowheath Trust Award and Carl Smith Medal from the University of Otago in New Zealand, where she holds an appointment in history.

Angela began life (we like to think) as a post-doctoral fellow in this very department, working with Canada Research Chair Jim Miller on matters of native-newcomer relations. Having lit up our firmament for a year, Angela returned to her native New Zealand to teach and research the histories of cultural encounter in that country’s colonial past, specifically gender, race and colonialism in 19th century New Zealand. She is also interested in the indigenous history of the North American West, and the history of intimacy, particularly interracial relationships.

For someone as outgoing and fun as Angela is, she gets a helluva lot of work done. The award and medal recognises her outstanding early-career research performance at Otago, as did a highly competitive and prestigious Marsden Fast-Start Grant that Angela was awarded last year for a two-year project on the history of interracial intimacy in New Zealand between 1769 and 1969. Way to go, Angela!

Dreaming of Graduate School?

For those of you in the honours program who might be thinking of grad school, here is an opportunity almost too good to be true.

2008/09 Term 2 Arts and Science Research Learning Communities

Meets every Monday at 3:30 starting January 5th

The College of Arts and Science, in partnership with the University Learning Centre, will be piloting a term-two learning community targeted at 3rd year (or other upper-year) Arts and Science students interested in pursuing research careers in academia, industry or community.

Students with a background in any Arts and Science discipline are encouraged to join this Learning Community with the aim of growing their understanding of how to best navigate the research world. We plan to offer students concrete information sessions on graduate programs, funding opportunities in the first five years of appointment (SSHRC information sessions, information about Teaching Assistantships and Research Assistantships, etc.), applying to graduate programs at this and other great universities, writing research proposals and scholarship research statements, developing a CV, sorting out intellectual property, etc. This initiative aims to foster a community of diverse, self-directed learners by emphasizing some of the commonalities between different types of research, and drawing on the connections between a wide range of disciplines.

We plan to gather 3rd-year Arts and Science students together on a weekly basis throughout term two of the 2008/09 academic year. If you know of any students who may be bound for graduate school or thinking about a career in research, please let them know about this great opportunity.

Students must register in advance for this program.

For more information, a link to the registration page, and a one-page flyer suitable for distribution, please visit

http://www.usask.ca/ulc/lc2009

Congratulations to doctoral candidates Merle Massie and Heather Stanley, who took first and joint-second prize respectively in the Humanities and Fine Arts division at last Friday's first annual Arts and Science Graduate Student Exposition. Seventy posters representing the research projects of our best and brightest from departments across the College were presented in the Education Building gym, along with presentations and performances from students in Art and the Fine Arts. Merle, Heather, and Kevin Gambell held the History flag aloft. Hung their posters, anyway. And fine posters they are. You can see them for yourselves, mounted on the bulletin boards near the far end of our beloved seventh floor.

Keith Carlson will be delivering a short talk on Aboriginal veterans and war brides at Browsers following the Remembrance Day ceremony at the University Memorial Gates, Nov 11th at 12:45.

Meanwhile, word has reached the Incident Room of the What's Up Newsroom that Scout troop leader Geoff Cunfer, and Cub pack leader Keith Carlson, will be leading their troop and pack at the same 12:45 ceremony, where the youngsters, dressed in their Baden Powell uniforms, will lay wreaths at the Memorial Gates.

You, yes YOU! (assuming You are of legal pubbing age) are invited to the HUSA Bxxr Night, Saturday, November 8th, 2008 from 8-10pm at The Hose on 11th St (just off Broadway). Tickets are $10 and are on sale at the bottom of the arts ramp this week. Tickets will also be available at the door, though it would greatly assist the organizers to know in advance how many folk to expect. If you have any questions about the event, please contact Kristina at kar152@mail.usask.ca.

What's Up provides the above message as a public service announcement on behalf of HUSA, the History Undergraduate Student Association. The event in question is not sponsored by the History Department or the U of S. I know that must disappoint you because you would rather mingle with faculty than do whatever it is you young people do at a bar these days when not chaperoned by your instructors, but we do nevertheless wish you all a fun and safe evening.