Historians established some years back that our Victorian fore-parents did indeed have sex.

Now, in the course of the Jessie Caldwell Memorial Lecture to be delivered to the Saskatoon Archaeological Society this Friday, March 28th, at 7:30 in room 132 of the Archaeology Building here on campus, our very own
Chris Kent (seen left in dapper modern garb) aims to take counter-intuitive scholarship a well-heeled step further. In "How To Dress Like a Victorian Gentleman", Chris will explain that "the Victorian gentleman was not eternally clad in a tubular outfit of boring bourgeois basic black." [Which, now that we think of it, may help to explain how they managed to have sex, after all.] "In fact gentlemen's dress styles varied widely, more so than they do today in colour, cut, and detail. It was the mark of a gentleman to demand distinctive features in his clothing, and the gentleman's tailor was only too happy to oblige, since such features generally added to the cost of the clothes, and were a mark of their being custom tailored." Drop by the Archaeology Building on Friday evening to learn more. Everyone welcome.

Introducing the

2008-09
History Undergraduate Program & Course Guide

PLUS

The Spring and Summer 2008 Course Offerings

As a special favour to our loyal What's Up readers, we are providing you with a sneak preview of the online edition of the regular season Handbook and the Spring and Summer supplement at no extra cost! Truth be told, this online edition will be updated whenever the Handbook is tweaked, and so watch this site!, because the Handbook you click on here will actually be even more up-to-date and authoritative than the pretty-darn-authoritative-and-rather-more-portable printed version set to appear early next week at a History Department General Office near you!

Just imagine how jealous your friends will be when they learn that you not only already know what courses will be offered by the History Department next year, but that you even know when they will be offered! That's right! Next year's Timetable is included in the Handbook at no extra cost! We ask only that you play fair and resist the temptation to take undue advantage of the power this knowledge unleashes in you.

********************

The release of THE BOOK means, of course, that ADVISING SEASON is upon us!

The History Department will be primed and ready to go when you turn up at the appointed time to meet with a friendly faculty advisor.

What's that, you say? You don't have an appointed time?

It's not too late. History Faculty will be slopping advice around like opinionated drunken sailors during designated morning and afternoon hours from Monday March 31st to Friday April 25th.

So don't miss out. Go to the 7th Floor, follow the signs, and SIGN UP for an appointment with a faculty advisor. Your future in the past awaits you!

Bill Waiser, as seen on radio: Earlier today Bill Waiser was interviewed on CBC Radio's nationally broadcast Sounds Like Canada program with regard to the book he edited of Everett Baker photographs that captured everyday people doing everyday things in Saskatchewan in the 1940s and 1950s. To hear the interview in Real Player, click here and scroll down past the baby with colic.

The final CMRS Colloquium of the year will be held this Friday, when CMRS Fellow Ryan Pederson (B.A. hons, M.A. U of S, Ph.D. SUNY Binghamton), will present
"Instantiating an Ethos: Noble Violence & Chivalric Discourse in Early Modern France"
The Reception gets uncorked at 4 pm, the Talk begins at 4:30, and it all happens in STM 344B

All are welcome.

Exclusive! These action pics from the recent History Graduate Banquet held at Boffins convey just a pale sense of the fun and conviviality of the event, as this image of beaming students and proud faculty attests. Not, however, that the event was without a darker side, as captured below when Undergrad Director G.R. DesBrisay had his grandmother's famous shortbread recipe snatched by unknown assailant Margaret Robbins. Click on either photo to enlarge.

And Click Here to see more scenes of that happenin' scene.

This one is worth getting all bold about.

Those of you who know your First World War may have heard about Lord Kitchener's Pals Brigades. That was a recruiting campaign to lie down and avoid. (Don't mention the Somme!) Thankfully, this recruiting campaign isn't like that at all.

As many of you already know, there is a fairly huge discrepancy on campus between the number of work/study employment opportunities available to students in the sciences and the scant few such opportunities available to history students. That may be about to change.

The University Learning Centre is looking for a few good students to serve their fellow students and generally advance the cause of university civilization by undertaking to work as PALS, Peer Mentors engaged in Peer Assisted Learning.

PALs work with ULC coordinators and professors on a variety of academic support projects and initiatives serving U of S students, including:

• providing guidance for Learning Communities for first-year Arts and Science students
• leading Structured Study Sessions for traditionally difficult courses
• organizing and leading Communication Café sessions for ESL and EAL students in the Global Commons
• leading small-group Study Skills workshops for undergraduate students
• contributing to the development and delivery of Community Service-Learning events
• working with the Math and Stats Help Centre programs

Ok, so that last bit might not be required of the likes of you. Where strong history students might come in especially handy, PALS-wise, is in

• assisting junior students with their writing in a discipline-specific way.

As our friends (pals, even) over at the the PALs Recruiting Office put it, "Strong students can offer support to their peers, and, in so doing, bolster the quality of student commitment and effort in the courses we teach." Amen to that.

As for what your university can do for you, in return for working with the ULC to help other students succeed, PALs receive valuable experience, ongoing training, a support system and a place to prepare their work or collaborate, and an honorarium equivalent to (Canadian) tuition for one or two 3CU classes.

In an ideal world, wouldn't all historians be pals? And wouldn't all PALs be historians?

The deadline for applying for a PAL-ship is fast approaching. Very fast. Like, tomorrow, Friday, March 28th (extended from an earlier deadline.)

To learn more, click here or here or call Donna at the ULC, 966-2886. Do it now!

Historians are creatures of chronology, so you are no doubt accustomed to reading this blog from the bottom up. In which case, you could be forgiven for thinking that grad students have all the fun. But that is not necessarily the case. Or not necessarily always the case, at any rate.

Why, this very month, the Department of History and the History Undergraduate Students Association are hosting the annual

History Graduation Banquet
Thursday, March 13th, 6:30 pm
Boffins Club*
(Located at Innovation Place, here on campus.)

Come celebrate your impending graduation! Or that of your friends and/or loved ones! Celebrate whomever you like! Whatever you like! Just don't miss it.

Family and Friends and Faculty Welcome!
Fun for the whole posse!
(Or crew, if people still have crews.)

Tickets are $25 each, and can be reserved in advance by emailing

uofshusa@yahoo.ca

or
buy or reserve in advance and in person,
this Thursday, March 7th from a pizza-slinging HUSA rep posted outside Arts 156
from 10:am to 2pm.

* Artists conception. Boffins Club, fine though it is, is not exactly as pictured above.

As you can imagine, the grad student community is all aflutter over the impending momentous events scheduled for this Friday, March 7th. Take a deep breath, and get this.

First, there is the HISTORY GRAD STUDENTS COLLOQUIUM, downstairs in the Faculty Club, starting at 3:30 and featuring the following presentations:

Lesley Wiebe: "A Historical Analysis of Amebiasis Among Indians in Northwest Saskatchewan"

&

Karin Tate-Penna: "The Divinity of the Imperial House: Rome's emperor cult and the deification of women under Trajan and Hadrian."

As if that isn't enough, hot on the heels of that event comes the annual HISTORY GRAD STUDENTS COMMITTEE BOOK PUB, on the main floor of the Faculty Club in the Window Room from 5-7pm.

Come bid on a wide variety of history books, at least one microwave oven, and perhaps on student research assistants who will be auctioned off to the highest bidding faculty members. Undergrad and grad students alike are invited to bid on the books and the microwave.

Not only do you stand to walk away with some fine literature and perhaps a perfectly functional small appliance, but when it is all over and you slope off into the night in search of another drink, you will know that you have contributed to a number of worthy causes. All proceeds go towards sponsoring HGSC events, the Buffalo Conference, and the Dave Debrou Memorial Scholarship in History.

Speaking of Mark Meyers (see below; seen on the right), we are delighted to report that the editorial board of the Journal of the Canadian Historical Association (JCHA) recently announced that Mark has won the award for the best article in the 2007 print issue of the journal. "'Your brain is no longer your own!': Mass Media, Secular Religion, and Cultural Crisis in Third Republic France" was based on the paper that Mark presented at last year's CHA meeting here in Saskatoon. The award will be presented at the 2008 annual meeting of the CHA in Vancouver. Congratulations, Mark!

Do you like our new outfit?

The whole team of us here at What's Up is delighted with the renovations underway on the departmental website, which is shaping up very nicely indeed under the command of Mark Meyers and College of Arts and Science webmaster Jason Belhumeur.

Stay tuned for further advances.

The entire What's Up team has been enamored for some time with the electronic book revolution, and things seem to have taken an even more interesting turn of late. So if you have never bookmarked or favourite-ed a url in your live, now is the time to do so with Live Search Books. Because Microsoft moves in mysterious ways. Having provided the historical world (in fact, the whole world) with the great gift of Live Search Books, they have made it weirdly hard to find the link you need to get at those tens of thousands of tomes old and new. But we here at What's Up have done the heavy lifting, so just save that link and you will be in business.

The two main sites for books on the open web are Google Books and Microsoft's rival version, Live Search Books. In general, Google Books has a larger selection, but Microsoft has a big advantage so far as new books are concerned. Some publishers allow Google Books readers access to up to 10% of a given book's content. This is very useful in many cases, but you can rarely access more than 5 or so pages in a row before running into pages that are withheld -- fair enough, they want you to buy the book.

Publishers working with Live Search Books, however, grant up to 20% access to a book's content (once you enroll and sign up -- free, just need an email account) and that 20% can be contiguous. It might well, for example, include a complete chapter in a book of essays. You cannot print effectively from these current books (out-of-copyright works can be dowloaded and printed in part or in whole as pdf files from either Google Books or Live Search Books), but, hey, you can read. In many cases the books are not in the library or out on loan, or just too new to be found elsewhere.

Ronald S. Love (1955-2008)

The department learned recently of the sudden death from natural causes of Dr. Ron Love, a former colleague who taught at the U of S for many years. Originally from Alberta, Ron earned a doctorate from the University of Southern California in 1987. A post-doctoral fellowship brought him to Saskatoon soon after, where he conducted his research into sixteenth-century French history and taught a wide variety of courses throughout the 1990s. From here he moved to a tenure-track appointment at the University of West Georgia, where he swiftly rose to the rank of associate professor. He was the author of several works, including Blood Religion: The Conscience of Henri IV, 1553 - 1593 (McGill-Queen's Press, 2001) and Maritime Exploration in the Age of Discovery, 1475 - 1800 (Greenwood, 2006), and was co-editor with Glenn Ames of Distant Lands and Diverse Cultures: the French Experience in Asia, 1600 - 1700 (Greenwood, 2003). A warm tribute from colleagues at the Western Society of French Historians, of which Ron was a past president, makes it clear that "His joy at seeing old friends and making new ones, his capacity to extend a welcoming hand to new members of the society, and his gracious help to those of us who served after him ... will be long remembered." A memorial service for Ron Love was held February 17th in Carrollton, Georgia.

The beerishly inclined (and legally entitled) among you should know that there will be a Beer Night Fundraiser next Friday, January 25th, from 8-10pm at the Hose and Hydrant on 11th Street just off Broadway. The fundraiser itself will feature a happy mixture of undergrads, grad students, and faculty -- a perfect model for the target of the fundraising, the second annual Buffalo Conference (May 9-11 at Manitou Beach), a showcase for historical research presented by senior undergrads, grad students, and faculty working in any field of history. Profits from the fundraiser will go to support students attending the conference.

Tickets for the Beer Night Fundraiser cost $12. They will be for sale next week in the tunnel and can be also be purchased directly from Mandy Fehr. We here at What's Up also happen to know that those attending tomorrow's Honours Colloquium at the Diefenbaker Centre (see below) will have the first opportunity to purchase tickets. Those very tickets (which will also be sold at the door on the day) will entitle you to prize draws and "other fun activities". See you there!

The long drought is over. It has been 51 long weeks since we last held an honours colloquium, but now the time has come. This very Friday, in fact. Even if you are not contractually obliged to attend and present a paper by dint of your enrollment in the History Honours Program, you are certainly invited to come along and celebrate the stupendous scholarship and cutting-edge historical research and insight put forth by this year's senior honours students.

To whet your historical appetite, here is the tasty program on offer at the ...

11th Annual Michael Swan History Honours Colloquium

Friday, 18 January 2008
9:15 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Diefenbaker Canada Centre, University of Saskatchewan

Sponsored by the History Undergraduate Students Society (HUSA) and the Department of History

9:30-10:15 On Being Heard

(Sarah Shephard, moderator)

Jayme Pfeifer. “‘Rough Music’ in Ben Jonson's Epicoene.”

Margaret Robbins: “'Annie Get Your Gun' and 'Calamity Jane': History and Myth in American Western Musicals.”

Paul Aikenhead. “Looking For A Place To Happen: A Semiological Analysis of The Tragically Hip.”

*******

10:15-10:30 Coffee

*******

10:30-11:15 Underground & Underdog

(Gayle Cluett, moderator)

Ryan Spence “The use of the Supernatural in Procopius' Secret Histories: Criticizing an Autocrate”

Heather Douglas. “The Albigensian Crusade: An overreaction to heresy in Languedoc?”

Felipe Paredes-Canevari. "Bannockburn: Scottish Prowess or English Folly?"

*******

11:15-12:00 Getting it Wrong

(Ryan Winquist, moderator)

Andrew Fitz-Gerald. "The effects of the Treaty of Nanking on Qing Dynasty China: Give `em an Inch and..."

Riley Dziadyk. "National Missile Defense Debates: Origins and Perspectives."

Kristine Montgomery. "Residential Schools 1946-1970: Changing Policies, Unchanging Objectives"

Michael Kunz: "Fumbling in the Light: America's Failure to Identify Genocide in Rwanda."

*******

12:00-1:15 Free Lunch!

Join us! Dine with the Stars!

*******

1:15-2:00 Culture Matters

(Nicole Gilewicz, moderator)

Kurt Kruger. "London and the Highwayman-Hero."

Heather LeGars. "Khaki is the New Black: British Women's Paramilitary Organizations in the First World War".

R.J. Williamson. "The Historiography of Slavery in the Antebellum South"

*******

2:00-2:15 Coffee

*******

2:15-3:00 Medicine and Authority

(Margaret Robbins, moderator)

Adam Fowler. “Thirteen Blackbirds: Theory and the Cure for Scurvy.

Cody Powell. "Social Reformers, Charlatans, and Entrepreneurs: Phrenology in History and in Practice".

Nicole Gilewicz. "Legacies of Mistrust: Tracing Western Interaction with Indigenous Health Systems"

*******

3:00-4:00 Cold War Fallout

(Kurt Kruger, moderator)

Tim Nyborg. "The Superpowers’ Resolve: Reactionism and Misperception in the Cuban Missile Crisis"

Romain Baudement. ''The Rise and Fall of Japan's Economic Miracle: Its Economic, Political and Social Causes and Consequences''

George McQuitty. "The Cyclical Model of Deng Xiaoping Economics: 1978-1987"

Elisabeth Kasleder. “The Origins of Revolution: Romanians Fight Against Communism”

*******

4:00 ­Closing Remarks

*****

Well, here's some news worth waiting for.

The HISTORY UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT ASSOCIATION & the DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

present…

The sixth annual HUSA History Film Series!

Charming story for children? Or cleverly-disguised political allegory?

Itself a historical phenomenon, The Wizard of Oz premiered in 1939 and remains one of the most beloved films of all time. Outperformed by Gone with the Wind—another 1939 film—at the Oscars, the tale of Dorothy and her ragtag companions still went on to thrill countless millions of young viewers for almost six decades.

But was the original book by L. Frank Baum truly for kids? Scholars have long speculated that the 1900 novel contains multiple allusions to contemporary American politics. Was the Wicked Witch of the West really President McKinley? Is the Tin Woodman a stand-in for the industrial working class? Do historians and literary critics just overthink these things? Come follow the Yellow Brick Road with the History Department to find out!

Introduced by Geoff Cunfer, Department of History

DATE & TIME: Thursday, January 24 @ 7:00 p.m.

PLACE: Arts 134

ADMISSION: free! (refreshments available for a small fee)

Hot of on the hooves of last year's ground-shuddering success, we bring you Buffalo II!

A lot of people talk about the Return of the Buffalo, but here at the University of Saskatchewan we make it happen....

The University of Saskatchewan Department of History Invites proposals for the 2nd annual

Buffalo Province History Conference
Presentations on all historical topics welcome

May 9 – 11, 2008
Manitou Springs Hotel, Manitou Beach, Saskatchewan

Come join other graduate students and faculty from Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta in a supportive and academically enriching environment. We invite you to present a paper on an aspect of your research, listen and comment on the presentations of others, network with peers and faculty, and meet and socialize with potential future advisors and colleagues.

Although preference is given to graduate student submissions, we welcome proposals from faculty, senior honours students, and other specialists in the field of history.

Proposals for both complete panels and individual papers are welcome.

Panel Proposals should include a 250 word abstract for the panel as a whole as well as information for the individual papers. For an individual paper, please include a 250 word abstract and short biographical sketch. Please send submissions to Keith Thor Carlson (keith.carlson@usask.ca) by December 17th 2007.


For more information, visit our website: http://www.usask.ca/history/buffalo/

About the Buffalo Province History Conference

In 1904, Sir Frederick Haultain, the Northwest Territories’ first and only premier, had a dream: to unite the prairies into a single province called Buffalo. Building on that dream, the Buffalo Province History Conference seeks to bring together graduate students and faculty from Canada’s Prairie universities in a rigorous and collegial environment. Manitou Springs Resort and Mineral Spa (www.manitousprings.ca) is located in the centre of Buffalo province, one hour southeast of Saskatoon in the resort town of Manitou Beach.

The next CMRS colloquium will be held on Thursday, November 29th at 4:00 in STM 344B (with the presentation slated to begin at 4:30). And this one is special. "Frescoes, Fountains and Fizzy Water: Three Weeks in the Eternal City" is a presentation by the student participants in this past year's Rome Summer Program (Katrina Bens, Chantal de Medeiros, Becky Littlechilds, Sarah Ostafie, Felipe Paredes-Canevari, Nina Thurlow), who will discuss their experiences in Rome and the nature of the program. Since this will almost certainly not be the last Roman study-abroad opportunity offered by Professor Angela Kalinowski, there's all the more reason to see what the wildly successful first edition was all about.

While it might seem cruel [note from editor: it is cruel] to remind people in Saskatchewan in
late November of what Rome can be like in the Summer, this promises to be a highly entertaining and inspiring presentation. Everyone welcome.

While the current moratorium on library lending makes life undeniably difficult for all history students, the growing array of electronic sources does make life less difficult than it might otherwise have been. In addition to Historical Abstracts, Academic Search Premier, Early English Books Online, Eighteenth Century Collections Online, and various treasures you probably already know about, there are others you might consider.

For one thing, the library continues to roll out new offerings on a permanent or trial basis: you can see what's new for yourself at http://library.usask.ca:9003/eresources/archives/current_trials.html#001394#more

Don't forget to check out the History subject page in the library catalogue, which pulls links to most of the main electronic sources under one roof. When you click on the History link, it opens by default to the options for finding journal articles. https://library.usask.ca/subject/hist/articles

To see the offerings under books, click on the "Books & Theses" tab near the top of that page, and scroll down to check the options for "eBooks". You might get lucky and find just the tome you need, in its full searchable entirety.

One potentially useful option not presented on the library page is the University of California Press, a leading academic publisher that makes a surprising number of its books free to the universe via their "eScholarship Editions" web portal at http://content.cdlib.org/escholarship/
You can click on "View Public Titles" under the search box to filter out books that are not available for free. Note that the default for the simple search box on their site is a title search, so don't be surprised if your author search gathers zilch first time. Click here to see one especially useful book they offer free to everyone.

And don't forget that you can find amazing things at Google Books Search (not to be confused with a regular Google search), and Live Search Books. Both sites offer tens if not hundreds of thousands of out-of-copyright (but often still state-of-the-art) books that can be read and downloaded freely, and both sites also allow you the option of searching their entire holdings by keyword or a key phrase. That's a revolution. Both, and especially Live Search Books, offer access to significant portions of some brand new books, as well: don't assume that you won't find anything new there. Both sites are particularly valuable for finding 19th and early 20th century editions of earlier works, including diaries and editions of letters or public records that were never published in any other edition.

Enjoy!

We all know that there is no such thing as a free lunch, but it seems that sage advice does not apply to breakfast. Not, at least, if you are a student of the College of Arts and Science. Because if you move quickly and get your name on the list, you could get in on the following Breakfast Opportunity of a Lifetime (offered monthly).

Breakfast with the Dean, College of Arts and Science

Dean Jo-Anne Dillon

invites Arts and Science students to join her

for breakfast and conversation.

Time: 7:30 am

Date: Tuesday, November 27

Place: Faculty Club

The first 12 students to sign up will be reserved a place at breakfast.

Sign-up sheet is posted in the ASSU office.

Breakfast with the Dean will be held monthly.

An important announcement from the U of S Library:

For the duration of the CUPE strike, no loans (that is: check-out, interlibrary loans, laptop lending) are available at University Library branches.

However, through arrangements between the University and the USSU, photocopying in all University Library branches will be free to students while loan services are unavailable.

Photocopiers are also available in the Reserve areas of each branch library for copying Reserve materials. Also, a DVD/video player is now available in the Murray Library Reserve area for viewing DVDs and videos on Reserve in Murray while these items are not available for loan.

Fines have been suspended for the duration of the CUPE strike. However, books can be returned--if you do not need them, return them so others can use them in the Library. This also applies to Interlibrary Loan materials. Books that have been returned are being reshelved.

Although the STM Library Catalogue has been integrated with the U. of S. Library Catalogue, the STM Library is independent. Books can be borrowed from STM Library.

There are other collections on campus that are also independent. See "other Library Catalogues" on the Library's web site.

Note that books borrowed from STM or other campus libraries do need to be returned when due.

The Library's Electronic resources continue to be available as normal through the Library’s website.

Reference service remains available in Murray Library in most of the other branches when they are open. The AskUS Live (IM) (https://library.usask.ca/uask) services are available as normal.

Library hours are continually being revised, please see the website before making a trip to campus.