HUSA (the History Undergraduate Student’s Association) will be conducting its annual membership drive from September 26th to 30th in the friendly confines of the Arts Tunnel. Membership can be purchased for a meager five dollars, which buys history students the opportunity to socialize with fellow students at a number of planned gatherings and events. This year HUSA is planning to be more active than ever befor, so be sure to drop by and purchase your membership.

The Department of History will be holding an Undergraduate Workshop, "How to Apply for Graduate School and Grants," on Friday, September 30, in Arts 208, from 1-3 p.m. The program will feature a number of speakers from the History Department including professors and graduate students. All are welcome to attend. Refreshments will be served. If you have any questions, please contact the Undergraduate Director, Martha Smith-Norris (Arts 712).

Ph.D. Candidate Jeff Wigelsworth will defend his dissertation,"'Their Greater Degree of Infidelity': Deists, Politics, Natural Philosophy, and the Power of God in Eighteenth Century England", on Monday, September 26th, at 8:30 in the College of Grad Studies, room 50.

Roving correspondent Laura Mitchell, now embarked upon her graduate studies at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, reports that Codices Electronici Sangallenses will shortly offer electronic access to the medieval codices in the Abbey Library of St. Gallen by creating a virtual library. The project will begin with a two-year pilot to digitally reproduce a selection of the finest illuminated codices at such a high resolution that researchers cannot only work with the manuscripts but also perform detailed (art historical or otherwise) analyses of the miniatures in the codices.

The Lynching of Louie Sam is a documentary film of a story from 1884, when a mob of 100 American men rode across the B.C. border, kidnapped a 14 year-old Stó:lo boy falsely accused of murdering a U.S. storekeeper, and lynched him. Canadian investigators promised justice but delivered none, despite knowing the identity of the killers. The film is based on investigative work and analysis conducted by our own Keith Carlson. Having been shown in Toronto or some such place in the spring, it will now receive a much more prestigious screening at the Vancouver International Film Festival on October 4th and 6th. To learn more about the film, and, indeed, to purchase tickets to the Vancouver screening, click here and scroll to the alphabetical bottom of the list.

And the envelope please... The entire What's Up team joins us in congratulating the following winners of the History Department undergraduate book prizes for 2004-2005. Many fine students have won these awards in the past, and we are delighted to add the following names to their number.

The James H. Gray Essay Prize for the best research essay in a 400-level history class is shared this year by Amanda Harrington (“The Maturation of the History of Childhood: Achieving Independence from Centuries of Childhood”) and Jill Mackenzie (“The McDonutization of Canada: Tim Hortons True Commercials' Series and National Identity").

The Simpson Prize in History, awarded annually to two first-year students who have written the best final examinations in a History course at the 100 level, goes to Nicole Haugrud (History 122) and Kurt Krueger (History 120).

The Glen Makahonuk Book Prize for the best labour history essay goes to Scott Wright ("From Autonomy to Commodity: Finding Value from Adam Smith to Karl Marx”).

The winners will be receiving letters from the department shortly.

Boggled by Google, by Gosh. We here at What's Up share the sentiment expressed in a recent New York Times headline: "More Great Free Software from Google: What's With That?" Because for whatever reason, Google continues to roll out stuff we historians can really use. For example, there's Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com/), a powerful search engine that surveys an ever-growing array of academic articles. We've mentioned it before, but as of this fall, if you access it from a computer on campus, the search results will include a direct link to the item if it happens to be held by the U of S library. And remember that unlike other search engines, Google Scholar searches inside the content of articles within its orbit.

For full-tilt boggle, however, nothing beats Google Earth (http://earth.google.com/), a digital globe that at higher magnifications turns out to be made up of detailed satelite images of much, (hell, for all we know, all) of the planet. Saskatoon happens to be covered by higher-resolution images: if you type "9 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, SK" into the address box, the planet spins and the image zooms smoothly in until you can see the Arts Tower clearly. Zoom in further to see the cars parked beside it. Now type another address ("Paris, France", "Rome, Italy", or "Yankee Stadium, New York", say) and you will soon "fly" there and zoom down to the point where you can, for example, just about make out people on the Eifel Tower. You can also tilt the images so as to look out towards the horizon rather than straight down. It is a globe like no other, and its potential as a powerful pedagogical, educational, and time-wasting tool are boundless. And did we mention that it is free? You do need to download a small piece of software, but after that Google's Earth is your oyster. (As long as you run Windows on a recent-ish computer, that is -- Apple owners will have to wait a bit.)

Bill Waiser and his Saskatchewan: A New History are poised to play a lead role in the University's celebrations of the Saskatchewan centenary, starting this coming week. Festivities kick off this weekend across the province. On Tuesday September 6th, the official book launch will be held in Convocation Hall as part of the celebrations marking the re-opening of the grand old College Building.

Bill's book has done us all proud. It is a work of passion, vast effort, and great erudition. Just today it garnered a glowing review in today's Star Phoenix, and in the Globe and Mail book review section the distinguished historian (and Saskatchewan ex-patriot) Ramsay Cook used terms such as "authoritative", "well-written", "first-class", "searing", "balanced", "damning", "moving", and "brilliant". So you had better go read it.

It's official. Former M.A. candidate Rob Angove, now known as Rob Angove, M.A., has successfully defended his thesis, "Holocaust Denial and Historiography" . Congratulations, Rob!