ECCO: The University Library is offering trial access to Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), which delivers the full text of every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in Great Britain during the eighteenth century, along with thousands of important works from the Americas. Subject areas covered include history, geography, fine arts, social sciences, medicine, science, technology, literature, language, religion, philosophy, law, and general reference. To try out this latest treasure trove, click here. Note that the trial ends March 5th.

The College of Graduate Studies and Research and the Graduate Students’ Association invites grad students to submit a paper for the 13th Annual University of Saskatchewan Graduate Student Conference. This year's theme is “Interdisciplinarity: Methodologies and Practices in Academia”, and presenters are encouraged to organize and develop their research and arguments through the vein of interdisciplinarity; considering questions such as: how does an interdisciplinary approach enhance or decrease specific research, is interdisciplinary studies beneficial to research, or does it diminish the product? What is interdisciplinarity? Are some disciplines more open to interdisciplinarity than others? Having said all that, the organizers are disarmingly honest (would that other conference organizers were so honest) in admitting that "Submissions need to be only marginally related to the theme."

Submissions are welcome from graduate students in Master’s, Doctoral, Post-Doctoral, and related graduate student programs, and from either full-time or part-time graduate students.

Abstracts of no longer than 250 words must be submitted by Monday, February 28, 2005. Abstracts may be submitted by e-mail to gsa_admn@duke.usask.ca.

Congratulations to John McCannon, who has just published "The Pole Is Ours! The Dilemmas of Exploration, Development, and Science in Arctic Siberia during the 1930s," in The Siberian Saga: A History of Russia’s Wild East, ed. Eva-Maria Stolberg. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2005. Click here and then scroll down to read more about the book.

Kalamazoo Bound: Frank Klaassen and Sharon Wright offer the following astounding opportunity to students:
"A number of students (grads and undergrads) have expressed interest in going to the International Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo Michigan Thursday-Sunday, May 5-8, 2005. The atmosphere is comfortable and the congress is huge (3-4000 attendees and 40 concurrent sessions over 4 days). The program is posted on the web site (link below). For any student centrally interested in topics between 300 and 1600 AD this is a very good conference to attend. In fact, we believe it is CRUCIAL that any graduate students at the U of S working on medieval topics go [and return - ed.]. Sharon and I plan to drive down with any students who want to go (yes, you heard that correctly). We assume the trip will take about 25 hours each way. The savings should be relatively substantial as a result. We also expect to be able to have some of the trip subsidized by the university under programs for grads and undergrads. The cost of registration is $80US for students and accomodation can be had for $26US/night (double occupancy). (Students may, of course, wish to bring sleeping bags and sleep 4 to a room, reducing that cost to $13.) You can eat in the cafeteria (see web page) or at nearby restaurants. We often bought cheese, bread, and fruit and had picnics in our student days. We should have more information about the possibility of subsidies and the cost of transportation at the meeting."

For more information about the congress click here

All faculty, grad and undergrad students interested should attend the Organizational Meeting for the Trip to International Medieval Congress. Monday February 7, 2005, 4:30 p.m., Arts 710.

The Psychology Department is sponsoring a talk by Ulrich Teucher, University of Nottingham, on Community, Self, & Place: Cultural knowledge in Native and non-Native Youth, on Monday February 7th, 4-5pm at STM Room 344B. Dr. Teucher is a candidate for the advertised position in Culture & Human Development.

Call for Papers: Histories of editions. European Society for Textual Scholarship (ESTS) Conference, December 16-17, 2005, Amsterdam. The conference will focus on the ways in which specific texts have been edited throughout history. The aim is to chart tendencies that mark different periods in the history of scholarly editing by examining the evolution of editing older and classic texts such as the Divina Commedia, the Nibelungen sagas, the Canterbury Tales, Esopet, the Bible. Interested scholars are invited to write an abstract for papers that follow the editorial tradition of a text, either within a specific historical period or leading up to the present day, including new developments in electronic editing. Abstracts (300 words) for 20-minute papers can be sent to the chairman of the academic programme committee: herman.brinkman@chi.knaw.nl. Deadline for abstracts: March 1, 2005. Click here for further details.

The University of Saskatchewan library has acquired a subscription to the full-text catalog of Proquest Dissertations and Theses (formerly Proquest Digital Dissertations). For U. of S. library users, this means that most M.A. and Ph.D. dissertations produced in North Amercan universities (and many written at U.K. universities) since 1997 are available immediately and in their entirety as .pdf files. Having opened the file, the search facilty in Adobe Reader can provide a de facto index. Note that some older dissertations have been made available as well: What's Up found a still-relevant Yale doctoral dissertation from 1939, in its entirety. Faculty and grad students will find this a treasure trove of vital scholarly work, much of it state-of-the-art, and advanced undergrads will also want to avail themselves of this latest remarkable addition to our university holdings. U. of S. users can click here to see for themselves. (What's Up tip #314: having searched and found a likely item, click "Page Image pdf" to open the dissertation. If you double-click on the title, however you will be taken to a page inviting you to pay $38 US for the same privilege. Try to resist the impulse to pay.)

The University of York (U.K.) will open a Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies on 1 October 2005, under the directorship of Professors David Wooton (History) and William Sherman (English). The Centre will sponsor two international conferences in the summer of 2006: '"Shrews" on the Renaissance Stage' (26-27 May 2006) and 'Rethinking the Baroque'. The Centre is also inviting applications for three-year doctoral and post-doctoral fellowships. A dedicated website will follow shortly. In the meantime, click here to learn more about the doctoral fellowships, and here for the postdoctoral (deadline for the latter is 17 February, 2005).

Congratulations to Ph.D candidate Rebecca Brain, who has received a travel award from the American Association for the History of Medicine to attend and present a paper at their conference in Alabama in April.

Paris and Berlin, anyone? Faculty from the University of Regina will be leading a study tour of Paris and Berlin this coming spring/summer, with the focus on history and modernity. U of S students are invited to join up. An informational meeting will be held this Thursday, 3 February, Kirk Hall 146, at 2 p.m.

An action shot from today's Honours Colloquium lunch.
Click on the image to enlarge.

The 8th Annual Michael Swan Honours Colloquium was held today at the Diefenbaker Centre, and was a resounding success. What's Up salutes the honours students who presented stimulating and polished papers; the audience of students, faculty, and friends who turned up out in droves on a lovely but absurdly cold day; and Martha Smith-Norris, who made the whole thing happen.

A friendly crowd of students, faculty and friends awaits
the start of the next panel of speakers at the Honours
Colloquium. Click on the image to enlarge it.

The History Grad Students Colloquium this Thursday at 7:30 in the Faculty Club will feature three speakers:
Rachel Hatcher: "Truth & Forgetting in Guatemala"
Robert Paul: "The Domestic President: The School Desegregation, Welfare Reform and Environmental Policies of Richard M. Nixon"
Jennifer Jozic: "The Mental Furniture of Educated Men: Ulster, Linen and the Plantation Period"

Everyone Welcome. All graduate students are encouraged to attend.

CMRS Lecture Series: Brent Nelson, Department of English, will speak on "Shakespeare's Anatomy of Curiosity in The Tempest". Thursday January 27th, STM Room 344B. Refreshments at 3:30, talk at 4:00. Everyone welcome.

Bill Waiser will present a paper on "Our Shared Destiny: Saskatchewan in 1905 and 2005" at a seminar, The Heavy Hand of History: An Analysis 100 Years in the Making, hosted by the University of Regina in conjunction with the Saskatchewan Institute of Public Policy. Bill is one of four distinguished speakers on the panel. The seminar runs from 8:30 to 12pm on Friday, January 14th. Registration is limited to 40, so be sure to book in advance if you are considering making the trip. Click here for further details.

You do not have to drive all the way to Regina to hear Bill, mind you. As we have noted, he is back on tv and now on radio as well. More to the point, he will be appearing live and in person right here on campus on Monday, January 24 to give the final capstone lecture in the Centennial Lecture Series: "Saskatchewan's Inauguration Party". Place Riel Theatre (Arts 241). 7:30 pm. Everyone Welcome.

The 8th Annual Michael Swan Honours Colloquium will be held Friday, January 21st from 9:00:am to 4:30pm in the Diefenbaker Centre. The colloquium offers the department community the chance to gather and celebrate the excellent work of our graduating class of honours students. This year's program features six sessions and twenty-two papers on a wide array of topics. Come out and enjoy not just a free lunch and a damn fine piece of cake, but a day of good company and fine scholarship. Everyone welcome. Click here to see the program. (Hint: While you wait for your old version of Adobe Reader to load, see below regarding the Adobe Reader 7.0.)

Adobe Reader 7.0 has just been released, and it is worth having. Adobe Reader is the free program nearly all of us use to read .pdf files, including journal articles available online through the library. Version 7.0 has various refinements, but the one that matters most is that the program now loads much more quickly. Adobe Reader 7.0 is available for MAC, Windows, and Linux users, is still free, and is available by clicking here.
(A word of warning, however, for those of you who already have the full, purchased version of Adobe Acrobat Professional on your hard drive, which enables you to create as well as read .pdf files. It will be overwritten by Adobe Reader 7.0 if you follow the default setup options, which loads Adobe Reader in the same directory as Adobe Acrobat. If this happens, you will lose the additional functions of the purchased version. Be sure to load the two programs in separate directories.)

The Library of Congress' s Rare Book & Special Collections Division has released a new digital collection, The Kraus Collection of Sir Francis Drake, available on the Library's Global Gateway
Web site at: http://international.loc.gov/intldl/drakehtml/. The Kraus Collection comprises important primary and secondary materials about Drake's voyages throughout the then Spanish territory of the Americas. It consists of 60 items--16 manuscripts, 29 books, 8 maps and views, and 7 medals and portraits. The materials range in date from 1579 to 1765. Texts are in English, Latin, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish and French.

Ever just know that you wrote something brilliant once that applies to what you need to write now, but have no idea what file it might be in on your hard drive? We here at What's Up have been test-driving Copernic Desktop, a free download for Windows users that sets itself up to index your hard drive for files and, if you like, e-mails and web pages. It can find any word or phrase on your hard drive with lightening speed, putting the pathetic Windows search facility to shame. It is easy and intuitive to use. We are told that it contains no spyware and makes minimal use of your computer's resources. Unlike Google Desktop, Copernic Desktop can search the content of WordPerfect and pdf files, as well as MS Word. What's Up's lawyers remind us to remind you that we bear no responsibility for what happens to you if you try this software, and cannot guarantee that any writing you recover really is brilliant. Even so, if you wish to learn more, click here.

Congratulations to Ph.D. candidate Brendan Edwards, whose book Paper Talk: A History of Libraries, Print Culture, and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada Before 1960 has just been published by Scarecrow Press. The book explores the pre-1960 history of print culture and libraries as it relates to the First Peoples of Canada -- a history largely untold before now. Click here to learn more.

Bill Waiser is back on the air. Looking Back, his celebrated series of historical vignettes about Saskatchewan, is being repeated on CBC Newshours every Tuesday in a run-up to the Provincial centennial, and Bill is also doing a new bi-weekly history "column" for CBC radio's Afternoon Edition, starting Tuesday January 4th.

Public Lecture. On Friday, 14 January Simonne Horwitz (St. Antony's College, Oxford) will speak on “Urbanisation and Health Seeking Practices: A Case Study of Baragwanath Hospital, Soweto, South Africa, 1948-1990.” Ms. Horwitz, a Rhodes scholar, is currently in the final year of her D.Phil in Modern History. 10 a.m, Room 1004, College of Education. Everyone welcome.

Congratulations to Larry Stewart, whose Practical Matter : Newton's Science in the Service of Industry and Empire, 1687-1851 (co-authored with Margaret C. Jacob) has just been published by Harvard University Press. The book aims at a general audience and examines how, despite powerful opposition on the Continent, a Newtonian understanding gained acceptance and practical application. There was nothing preordained or inevitable about the centrality awarded to science. "It is easy to forget", they write, "that science might have been stillborn, or remained the esoteric knowledge of court elites. Instead, for better and for worse, science became a centerpiece of Western culture." Click here to learn more.

HUSA Film Night: The Year of Living Dangerously. Presented by Professor Pamela Jordan, this tense political thriller portrays Indonesia during a deadly power struggle between communists and Islamic military generals in 1965, during the Cold War. Polymath Mel Gibson -- movie star, Scottish historian, theologian -- plays an Australian news reporter who is looking for his "big break." Also starring Sigourney Weaver, this stylish 1983 film is a tale of political intrigue, love/sex, betrayal, and redemption. Thursday, January 20, 6:30 p.m, Place Riel Theatre (Arts 242)
Admission: Free! (Refreshments will be available).

As part of the 2004-2005 Fine Arts Research Lecture Series, John McCannon will be giving a talk entitled "Heroic Retrospection: Idealizations of the Archaic in Fin-de-Siècle Russian Painting." The lecture will be held at 7:30 p.m., Sunday, 16 January 2005, in Quance Theatre (Education Building). All are welcome. For details, see www.usask.ca/music/other_events/farls/lectures.html.

History Grad Student Professionalization Workshop & T.A. Roundtable: This two-part event will take place Friday, January 14th at the Gwenna Moss Teaching & Learning Centre (Main Library, ground floor), from 1:30-4:30 (1:30-3:00 Workshop; 3:00-4:30 Roundtable).

This year the traditional winter follow-up to the fall TA Workshop, the TA Roundtable, is being preceded by an additional workshop on what we are calling “professionalization”. It sometimes helps to think of the history profession as a particular (peculiar might be a better word) culture, one with its own protocols, folkways, silences and taboos. Traditionally, students are left to find their own way into this culture, for better or worse. This workshop is intended to help demystify the profession, smooth the process of acculturation, and, above all, help our current M.A. and Ph.D. candidates make more informed decisions about whether the profession is right for them, whether to continue to a doctorate or on to the job market, and how best to proceed down those paths. All History Grad Students are encouraged to attend.

John McCannon and Frank Klaassen will lead the Professionalization Workshop. It will be followed immediately by the T.A. Roundtable, led by Gordon DesBrisay, in which T.A.s will share their teaching questions, suggestions, tips and tactics. All current T.A.s are encouraged to attend. Retired T.A.s will be most welcome.

All interested faculty are also invited. Food and drink will be served.

Alumnus John Friesen (B.A. Hons., M.A.; Ph.D. Leeds), currently a post-doctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University, is the next speaker in the 18th Century Studies Dinner Talk series. John will speak Wednesday, January 12th on “‘Standing on the Shoulders of Giants’: Newtonian Natural Philosophy and the Ancients-Moderns Controversy at Christ Church Oxford”. Drinks start in the Faculty Club lounge at 6:30, dinner downstairs at 7:00. All faculty, grad students, and honours students are welcome to attend, but you must book in advance. Permanent faculty pay $20, everyone else $10. Contact Pat Harpell in the English Department (966-5486) by Friday January 7th to book a place.

It is with profound sadness that we inform you that Mary Miller died suddenly on December 19th. Mary was the wife of Jim Miller, mother of Andrew and Christian, friend of countless people including everyone in this department, and director of the Diefenbaker Centre. Mary's funeral will take place Thursday, December 23, at 2:00 pm in St.Thomas More College Chapel. A reception in the College will follow the service.

Memorial donations may be made to UNICEF or the Canadian Cancer Society and would be appreciated in lieu of flowers. Condolences may be sent to mail@saskatoonfuneralhome.com.

The Diefenbaker Canada Centre will post memories of Mary on their webpage at http://www.usask.ca/diefenbaker/. If you have any stories that you would like to share, and/or photographs, please e-mail the Diefenbaker Centre's webmaster, Robert Paul at paul@admin.usask.ca.

Brent R. MacFarlane has been awarded first prize in the Classical Association of Canada's National Junior Undergraduate Essay Contest (for students in introductory courses in Classics) for his essay, "The Romans Wore Bowling Shoes: Plautine and Terentian Devices and Resulting Reflections of Society in John Hughes' Uncle Buck," written for John Porter's Classics 121: Roman Culture and Civilization. As the awards committee notes, "the author demonstrates convincingly that the satirical devices used by Plautus and Terence work equally well when applied to the neo-conservative movement of the 1980s."

Congratulations to Roger Carpenter, whose book The Renewed, the Destroyed, and the Remade:The Three Thought Worlds of the Iroquois and the Huron, 1609-1650 has just been published by Michigan State University Press. Roger is a term appointment in our department, and taught previously at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. Click here to learn more about the book.

Congratulations to M.A. candidates and new parents Jennifer Hamel and Darren Friessen on the birth of future history student Benno Thomas Friessen, born early in the morning on December 7th, a few weeks early, at 6 lb, 10 oz. And congratulations to you, too, Benno.

Those interested in prying into the lives of dead English and Welsh people are in for a treat. MyFamily.com and The National Archives in London have come together to launch a new co-branded (read: "for profit") online service. For the first time, fully searchable indexes and scans of original documents from the 1881 and 1891 censuses for England and Wales are now available. And over the next two years all historic censuses from 1841 to 1891 will be made available online in the same way, providing a wealth of information, including ages, occupation and place of birth. The press release neglects to mention that the prices run $14 Canadian to view an individual record, $59.95 for a quarterly subscription to the whole set, and $139.95 for a year's subscription. Click here to find out more.

John Porter’s article, “Nicolaus Reads Euphiletus: A Note on the Nachleben of Lysias 1,” has just appeared in Ancient Narrative vol. 3 for 2003, pp. 82-87. The account of the Lydian king Gyges’ ascent to the throne offered in Nicolaus of Damascus’ Universal History (1st C. BC) has been traced directly to the work of the fifth-century Lydian historian Xanthus. This study examines Nicolaus’ clever manipulation of narrative motifs derived from the Bellerophon myth and the first speech of the 5th/4th-century Attic orator Lysias. The use of the latter, in particular, suggests that the relationship to Xanthus’ account is far from straightforward and tells against the view of Nicolaus as a mere redactor.

The winner of the November moustache contest was Jennifer Hamel, for tolerating her husband Darren's lovely Tom Selleck style 'satche for a whole 30 days. The runner-up was Chris Clarke for his biker-like 'handle-bars.'

The Eighteenth-Century Studies at the U of S group is hosting a dinner talk on Tuesday November 30. Professor Jessica Warner (research scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health & Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto) will talk about "John the Painter: An Eighteenth-Century Everyman". The subject of the talk went by various aliases and attempted to burn down Portsmouth and Bristol in support of the cause of American independence. He was hanged for that in 1777. The talk offers thoughts on why certain young men become terrorists, and how best to catch them. 6:30PM, Faculty Club bar, faculty, grad and honours students welcome.

Professor Warner will also deliver a talk the next day, Wednesday, December 1, on "The 'Gin Craze': The Story of the First Modern Drug Scare". The talk promises to offer unflattering remarks about the American "War on Drugs". 4pm, ARTS 101, everyone welcome.

Coming to a Tunnel Near You: This year, as in the past few years, HUSA is offering a wide variety of History Department & HUSA clothing. These T-shirts, bunny hugs, zip up fleeces, and sweater vests are hot, hot, hot! OK, quite warm. Still, you can bet Posh Spice will want the whole set. Order this fine gear in the tunnel from HUSA volunteers who will be manning and womanning their table from 10:30-ish to 2:30-ish this Monday through Friday.

A new exhibit at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., offers a glimpse at correspondences four centuries old. Letter Writing in Renaissance England, which runs through April 2005, includes letters penned in invisible ink, sealed in wax and embroidery silk, and sent to and from some of the most famous figures in English history. Click here and here to learn more.

Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, Israel, will bring online its historic new Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names on November 22, 2004. The database, which will allow online public interaction and contributions of new names and materials, seeks to capture the names of as many Jewish Holocaust victims as possible. The sophisticated technology allows users worldwide to access a treasure trove of millions of personal, historical and genealogical documents archived in 14 languages using cutting-edge Web search systems from the convenience of almost any computer. See it at http://www.yadvashem.org.

The National Archives in the UK presents Gallery of Victorian Prisoners Online - Two volumes of photographs and case details of prisoners inWandsworth Prison dating from 1872 to 1873 are now online. Each case gives the prisoner's physical description, as well as a photograph, their date and place of birth, the crime they committed, their sentence, the place of conviction and often their place of residenc. This is all fabulous, but, like many UK archives, access to the images promised and other information beyond the catalogue is actually available only on a pay-as-you-go basis. A family historian tracking one or two kinfolk through the prison system might find it a good deal, but for researchers hoping to survey a series of records, it can get very costly. See for yourself at: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/stories/47.htm

Don't forget: HUSA is sponsoring a Beer Night, TONIGHT, November 18, from 7-9 pm at Winston's Pub in the Senator Hotel (21st and 3rd downtown). Admission is $8 and all proceeds go to the Dave De Brou Scholarship Fund. Everyone of drinking age is welcome.

The British Library has launched the Endangered Archives Programme. Unless action is taken now, much of mankind's documentary heritage may vanish - discarded as no longer of relevance or left to deteriorate beyond recovery. This website explains what the Endangered Archives Programme is, and how it can help: http://www.bl.uk/about/policies/endangeredarch/homepage.html

Google continues to issue products that can change the way we work (for the better, that is). The newest addition to their stable of search tools is Google Scholar, a staggeringly efficient search tool that enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web. Early testing in the What's Up labratory revealed that, on campus at least, many of the links Google finds will go directly to the article in question. Check it out at http://scholar.google.com.
Or, thanks to our library friend Peter Scott, you can consult the good people at Google right here:

HUSA is sponsoring a Beer Night this Thursday, November 18, from 7-9 pm at Winston's Pub in the Senator Hotel (21st and 3rd downtown). Admission is $8 and all proceeds go to the Dave De Brou Scholarship Fund. Everyone of drinking age is welcome.

The New York Times today published a jaunty article about the Al Capone industry in Moose Jaw. For the next week or so, until the link expires, you can click here to read the article. Meanwhile, even as we speak, researchers are looking for tunnels under Regina, hoping to find evidence of Queen Victoria's surreptitious visits to her namesake city. The searchers have gained heart from recent admissions out of B.C. that rumours the queen (with or without Albert -- reports vary) lived for a time in a cave under the Empress Hotel have proven unfounded. She must have been somewhere, goes the reasoning, so why not Regina?

Call for papers: The ever-busy Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of Saskatchewan group invites faculty and grad students to propose twenty-minute papers on any topic relating to the "long" eighteenth century (c.1660-1815) for the conference The Eighteenth Century: Current Research and Future Perspectives to be held March 18-19, 2005 at Luther College, University of Regina. Proposals in the form of 250-500 word abstracts should be sent in e-mail messages (not attachments) to Dr. Noel Chevalier (noel.chevaier@uregina.ca) AND Dr. Catherine Tite (catherine.tite@urgenina.ca). The deadline for proposals is January 15, 2005. The local point person is Ray Stephanson in the English Department: stephanr@usask.ca.

Alum Todd Diakow (MA, 1995)) recently contributed his reminiscences of Dave De Brou for the Memories of Dave page on our departmental site. Todd is a high school Social Studies teacher living in Langley, B.C. and teaching in Abbotsford,where he puts the De Brou method into practice year after year.

MA candidate Rob Morley has created a new "group" in PAWS, the History Teaching Group where instructors at all levels can swap tips and share strategies and concerns. Any faculty or graduate students interested in participating in the group should contact Rob at r.morley@usask.ca and ask to be signed up.

Our dear friends at the U of S Library keep doing even better by us. There is now a dedicated page linked to the Library Catalogue, under "Subjects", for History that offers a very efficient way in to just the sort of searches we all do. The most important search engines for the likes of us are grouped under the "Journal Articles" tab, for example, and the tab for "Dictionaries and Encyclopedias" contains the Canadian Encyclopedia Online and Oxford English Dictionary, among others. All history students and faculty should find this of use. You might care to bookmark the page, and then spread the word. Meanwhile, click here to check it out.

This Remembrance Day, the University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections is launching a 10,000 image website documenting Canadian wartime participation covering the Red River Resistance, the Boer War, World War I and II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. The digitized documents, photos and publications comprising The Canadian Wartime Experience website cover a wide variety of topics, including everything from women who gathered clothing for bomb victims to a Jewish writer trapped with Nazis in a holding camp in Halifax, from a first hand account of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles to letters from soldiers who never returned home.
Click here to learn more.

Grad students interested in teaching strategies might wish to attend the workshop Don't Lecture! Why Students and Teachers Should be Acquainted with Problem-Based Learning led by Professor Richard Cassidy of the Chemistry Department at the Gwenna Moss Teaching and Learning Centre on November 12, 9-11:am. Click here to learn more and register.

Meanwhile, course instructors interested in learning more about the electronic teaching options now available may wish to attend the workshop WebCT or PAWS: Which is Right for Me? presented by Jay Wilson of Curriculum Studies, at the Gwenna Moss Teaching and Learning Centre in the Library, Wednesday November 17 from 10:00 to 11:30 am. Click here to learn more and register.

In celebration of Family History Month in the U.S., The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, Inc. has announced the official re-launch of its award-winning website www.ellisisland.org, featuring improved navigation, retooled and advanced search capabilities, as well as family history research tips and forms, free to all users. The newly revamped site, which contains 25 million ships' passenger records covering entry through the Port of New York and Ellis Island from 1892-1924, first launched on April 17, 2001 to critical acclaim and a deluge of traffic. To date the site has received over 6 billion hits. The list includes anyone entering the U.S. at the Port of New York, and so includes travellers as well as immigrants. Many Canadians traipsed through the Big Apple, including the young Lester B. Pearson and the possible forbears of such illustrious Canadian families as the DesBrisays, Korineks, Kalinowskis, Waisers, Klaassens and so forth. The Miquelons, curiously, did not make their New York debut until 2002.

The University of Guelph has for some time published the journal Scottish Tradition, which is now to be relaunched as the International Review of Scottish Studies under the editorship of Professor Graeme Morton. The IRSS is a fully peer-reviewed journal and invites submissions on all aspects of Scottish history and culture. Gordon DesBrisay is a member of the editorial board. Click here to learn more about the revamped IRSS.

Improve your file management: Everybody here at What's Up has expressed frustration at times with the clumsiness and clunkiness of Windows Explorer. If you share that frustration, you might like to try a freeware program that has made all of us much happier. It is called xplorer2, and works much like Windows Explorer, only better.(You will still have Windows Explorer there to fall back on, if you must.)You can, for example, see two directories worth of files at a time, and drag and drop between them: much more efficient for transfering files to a removeable disk, say. There is a pay version of the program, but the free one seems fine and appeals more to the Scottish historians among us. The legal affairs department here at What's Up reminds us to remind you that we accept no responsibility for anything that happens on your computer. But we have used this program long enough to like and trust it. If you are interested in learning more, click here.

The approximately ten thousand cartoons in the British Cartoon Collection at the Library of Congress date largely from the period 1780 to 1830, an era dominated by the prodigious talents and prolific efforts of such famous caricaturists as James Gillray and George Cruikshank. The cartoons highlight aspects of British political life, including tensions with its colonies and other nations, as well as society, fashion, manners, theater, and all things scatalogical. See the collection at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/cpbrhtml/cpbrabt.html.

Call for Papers: Symposium on Book Culture Studies, sponsored by the Canadian Association for the Study of Book Culture, will be held at the University of Western Ontario in conjunction with the annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, May 31-June 1, 2005. The conference theme is Inside & Outside: the material book in cultural and literary contexts. The organizers define “book culture” broadly to refer to studies in the history of the book, literary and cultural history, historical bibliography, etc., and will consider papers on all periods and places, and are looking for works that contribute to the study of written communication by any writer, in any medium, language or genre. Proposals should be a maximum of 250 words and include a title and abstract, indicating the research basis of the study as well as the argument. Papers may be in French or English and should not exceed 20 minutes. Please forward proposals by February 1st to Prof. Robert Brazeau, Dept. of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2E5, rbrazeau@ualberta.ca.

Keith Carlson and Brendan Edwards recently returned from Chicago where they each presented a paper as part of a panel on "Literacy in Indigenous Worlds" at the Annual Conference of the American Society for Ethnohistory. Meanwhile, Gordon DesBrisay just returned from the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference in Toronto, where he provided the comment for a session on "Speech Crime and the Negotiation of Community in Early Modern Scotland".

Almna Report: Ellen Crumley (BA, 94) writes that her undergraduate training provided her with writing and critical thinking skills that have stood her in good stead. Professors De Brou, Swan, and Grogin, in particular, proved the making of her. Ellen went on to complete a Master’s degree in library sciences, and having worked for six years in the health sciences industry she hopes to commence work on her Ph.D. in 2005. Congratulations, Ellen, and very best wishes for your future studies.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Call for Papers: The Third International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities will be held at Cambridge University, 1-5 August 2005. The conference will continue in its endeavours over recent years to develop an interdisciplinary agenda for the humanities. Proposals are invited for 30 minute papers, 60 minute workshops or jointly presented 90 minute colloquium sessions. Presenters may choose to submit written papers for publication before or after the conference in the fully refereed International Journal of the Humanities. If you are unable to attend the conference in person, virtual registrations are also available which allow you to submit a paper for refereeing and possible publication and to access the conference proceedings. The deadline for the first round call for papers is 15 October 2004. Proposals are usually reviewed within four weeks of submission. For further details, see http://www.HumanitiesConference.com.

Pam Jordan will join a distinguished panel of speakers discussing the future of UN Peacekeeping at a weekend conference, Making Peace, sponsored by the Saskatoon Peace Coalition. The conference will be held Friday-Sunday November 5-7 at Holy Cross High School in Saskatoon. To register, contact peaceconference@hotmail.com.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has just been published online. It contains biographic entries on some 50,000 dead Britons, plus a judicious smattering of dead colonials. In paper it comes to sixty volumes. It is one of the largest collaborative undertakings in the history of the humanities, with 10,000 contributors, including 1396 from the United States, 302 from Australia, 52 from Germany, 16 from India, and at least five from Saskatoon: Jim Miller, Warren Johnston, Larry Stewart, Chris Kent, and Gordon DesBrisay. The Saskatoon connection is even stronger, however, if we count (as we do indeed count) the contributinos of alumni Duncan Sutherland (BA hons, MA; Ph.D. Cambridge), now based in London, and Jared Sizer (BA hons; Ph.D. Cambridge) in Edinburgh. Click here to learn more about the ODNB, which is coming soon to a University of Saskatchewan Library near you.

What's Up's sister publication NowThen, the History Department's annual-ish newsletter, was recently mailed to students and alumni. Congratulations to Dale Miquelon and Nadine Penner for making it happen. If you cannot wait for Canada Post to find you, you can see it here first with just one click.

New Electronic Resource in Library: Since 1967 Latin American Newsletters (LAN) has been the leading independent source of political, strategic, economic, and business intelligence on Latin America." Part of the Latin American Intelligence Service, LAN covers Mexico, the Caribbean, Central and South America in English and Spanish. Many of the items listed are available in full text. If you are inside the U of S loop, click here for further details.

Special Guest Lecture: On Wednesday, September 29, Dr. Jennifer Welsh is going to give a special guest lecture to students and faculty in the Department of History. This lecture will take place from 1:30 until 2:20 in Arts 206. Dr. Welsh is a Professor of International Relations and a Tutorial Fellow in International Relations, at Somerville College (Oxford). She was born in Regina and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Saskatchewan and both a Master's and Doctorate in International Relations from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. She is the author of three books on international relations and the co-author of a work entitled "Chips and Pop: Decoding the Nexus Generation." During the lecture, she will speak about her latest book "At Home In the World: Canada's Global Vision for the 21st Century." All are welcome to attend this lecture. For further information, please contact Martha Smith-Norris at smithm@usask.ca or 966-5800.

The History Department Website has been updated with links to a variety of useful sites for students. From the "undergraduates" pull-down menu located at the top of the screen (this screen, for example), click on "online resources" and find links to the department's approved footnoting and essay writing guides, along with sites offering guidance on matters of plagiarism and academic honesty. Graduate students, meanwhile, can find these and other links relevant to their duties as T.A.s by clicking on the "graduates" pull-down menu and then choosing "resources for grad students."

Centenniel Lecture Series:
October 4, 2004, 4 PM, Room 241 Arts (Place Riel Theatre. Everyone welcome.
"Just how is landlocked Saskatchewan in the same boat as the Maritime provinces?" In this lecture, Margaret Conrad will explore the shifting notions of regionalism in Canada, the sometimes contentious relationship between eastern & western regions, and how the development of regional cooperation could serve our common interests.
Margaret Conrad, Canada Research Chair in Atlantic Canada Studies at the University of New Brunswick, is a Nova Scotian with ties to the Prairies. She is currently researching aspects of cooperation and conflict within and among the Atlantic provinces and is interested in eastern and western perspectives on the phenomenon of Canadian regionalism. Click here to learn more about Margaret Conrad.

Eighteenth-Century Studies at the U of S announces that its next dinner gathering on Wednesday September 29th will feature Warren Johnston speaking on "Apocalypse Now, Then: Revolution and Revelation in Restoration England." The evening begins upstairs in the Faculty Club Lounge at 6:30 p.m, dinner at 7:00, talk to follow. The set menu will cost around $20 for permananet faculty and $10 for undergraduates, graduate students, and sessional lecturers. If you wish to come, please leave a message with Pat Harpell (966-5486) or e-mail Ray Stephanson stephanr@duke.usask.ca) by Friday September 24th.

At 6:52 on the morning of August 27th, MA candidate Jennifer Wilcox gave birth to future history student Benjamin David Wilcox Nickel. Mother and son are both doing well, and Jenn reports that "Benjamin is perfect and healthy and we couldn't have asked for a sweeter baby." Congratulations to the whole family.

History Grad Student Announcements:

1)Thursday, September 30, 2004 - 5-6:30 pm in Faculty Club basement room - meeting to discuss proposed changes to the history graduate program. For graduate students, this is an important time to speak to any concerns you have re: the changes.
2)Grad. Student Welcome/ History Graduate Students Committee (HGSC) Executive Elections meeting/ De Brou's books scramble - Friday, 24 September at 4:30 in 710 Arts. Refreshments provided.

Those interested in social and economic history from the industrial revolution on might wish to check out Spinning the Web, which brings together a unique collection of some 20,000 items from the libraries, museums and archives of North West England which tell the story of the Lancashire Cotton Industry.
See it at http://www.spinningtheweb.org.uk/.

Speaking of weddings, new MA student Chris Clarke (late of Trent) and his wife Becky were married on August 28th. Congratulations to them both!

The Department of History in conjunction with Denise De Brou has established the Dave De Brou Memorial Scholarship for graduate studies. The awards will be made on the basis of academic merit to a student entering the first year of an M.A. program who is in financial need. Monies raised to date should sustain a modest award for about a decade, but we aim to establish a more generous award in perpetuity. Donations in any amount will be gratefully accepted. Cheques should be made out to the University of Saskatchewan, marked "Dave De Brou Fund", and sent to: Linda Dietz, Department of History, 9 Campus Drive, University of Saskatchewan, S7N 5A5. A tax receipt will be provided.

John Porter will be showing episodes of Michael Wood's In Search of the Trojan War on Monday afternoons in ARTS 206 at 1:30-2:20. The first episode is set to screen on Monday, September 20. Woods, once best known for his tight jeans, is a superb presenter of history on television.

Gordon DesBrisay has published "Lilias Skene: A Quaker Poet and Her 'Cursed Self'" in Woman and the Feminine in Medieval and Early Modern Scottish Writing, edited by Sarah Dunnigan, Evelyn S. Newlyn and C. Marie Harker (Palgrave, 2004). An earlier version of this essay was presented at the inaugural Faculty Research Workshop, and the author wishes to thank the many colleagues who offered helpful advice. Click here for further details on the volume.

The M.A. Oral Examination for Curtis McManus has been scheduled for Tuesday, September 14, 2004, at 2:30 pm in Arts 710. Curtis will defend his thesis, "Happyland: The Agricultural Crisis in Saskatchewan's Drybelt, 1917-1927".

Jean Rowson, MA candidate, was married Saturday, Sept. 4. in Saskatoon to Ernesto Fidel Ruiz Castro. Congratulations!

Bradley Skopyk, (BA, MA) is starting his second year of a doctorate at York, and has received a CGS/SSHRC in this last competition. He also received a fellowship from the Government of Mexico and will be in Mexico doing research for this coming year. All that, and Brad and Paula Grosso (MA), now teaching in Toronto, were married in Maymount Saskatchewan this summer. Congratulations on all counts!