Camille Begin wins post at Heritage Toronto

Recent doctoral graduate Camille Begin has accepted a position as Plaques and Markers Coordinator at Heritage Toronto (http://heritagetoronto.org). She will also remain a research associate at the Culinaria Research Centre in the Historical and Cultural Studies Department at the University of Toronto Scarborough. The monograph based on Camille’s dissertation is also due to be released in this Spring in the Studies in Sensory Studies at the University of Illinois Press. The title is Taste of the Nation: the New Deal Search for America’s Food. To see more, follow the link at: http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/65tkf8yq9780252040252.html.

Bob Bothwell interviewed by Macleans on Canadian-American relations

Prof. Bothwell’s interview relates to his new book, “Your Country, My Country: A Unified History of the United States and Canada”: http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/robert-bothwell-on-the-deep-similarities-between-canada-and-the-u-s/?utm_source=Bulletin&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=Media.

Ato Quayson wins Urban History Association top prize for Oxford Street, Accra

Warm congratulations to Ato Quayson, Director of the Centre for Diaspora & Transnational Studies, and cross appointed to History, who has won the top prize of the Urban History Association (International Category) for Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism (Duke University Press, 2014).
For more information: http://news.utoronto.ca/top-urban-history-association-prize-ato-quayson?utm_source=Bulletin&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=News

Professor Ritu Birla’s recent article “Jurisprudence of Emergence: Neo-Liberalism and the Public as Market in India” has been selected as part of the Editor’s Choice Collection

Professor Ritu Birla’s recent article “Jurisprudence of Emergence: Neo-Liberalism and the Public as Market in India” has been selected as part of the Editor’s Choice Collection of influential articles published in South Asia: The Journal of South Asian Studies. Based on the Carol Breckenridge Memorial Lecture she delivered in New York City in fall 2014, the article launches the argument of her next book, on colonial genealogies of contemporary neoliberal governing in India.

With the support of the journal’s publisher Taylor & Francis, the editor of South Asia: The Journal of South Asian Studies has made the collection available free from October 12 to December 31, 2015. The articles are available through the Taylor & Francis website.

In memoriam: Professor Emeritus Ann Provost Robson

Updated: A Memorial Resolution submitted to the Senate of Victoria University presented by Professor Kenneth Bartlett. Please see the attached pdf: PROFESSOR ANN ROBSON.

Dear Colleagues,

We have just received the sad news that our former colleague, Professor Ann Provost Robson, has passed away. Ann Robson taught British History in our Department for three decades from 1967 until 1997. I have included her obituary here, together with details regarding a celebration of her life which is to take place on Saturday 6 June.

Very best,
Nick

Ann Provost (Wilkinson) Robson          
2 December 1931 – 3 May 2015

Born to Bertie and Edith (Provost) Wilkinson in Manchester, England, Ann moved with her family to Toronto in 1938.

She attended Brown School and Havergal College, and earned her BA and MA at the University of Toronto. She married John (Jack) M. Robson in 1953 and received her PhD from the University of London in 1958. Ann was professor of history at the University of Toronto, specializing in 19th century Britain, from 1967 until her retirement in 1997. She was active and a leader in many professional, cultural and community organizations, including the Arts and Letters Club, the Republic of Rathnelly, and the Madawaska Club at Go Home Bay.

A loving mother to William (Helen), John (Brigitte) and Ann Christine (Ben), and devoted grandmother to Maria, Jim and Christine Robson, to Catherine, Jennifer and Rebecca Robson, and to Lisa, Andrew and Michael Bacque. Predeceased by her loving husband and academic collaborator Jack Robson (1927-1995) and her brother John Wilkinson. Distinguished by her energy and lively wit, she will be much missed and fondly remembered by her immediate family, nieces and nephews, former colleagues and friends.

A celebration of Ann’s life will take place at 226 Glengrove Avenue West, Toronto, on Saturday June 6th from 5:00 to 9:00 pm. The family would appreciate donations to the Bertie Wilkinson Scholarship at the University of Toronto (www.donate.utoronto.ca/history).

Congratulations to new Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada Margaret MacMillan and David Wilson!

We are very pleased to announce that Margaret MacMillan and David Wilson, two of our faculty members, have been elected Fellows of the prestigious Royal Society of Canada!

Established in 1882, the Royal Society of Canada recognizes outstanding research and scholarly achievements in the humanities, arts and natural and social sciences. Elected by their peers for their contributions to the research community, please join us in congratulating new Fellows Margaret MacMillan and David Wilson on achieving this high honour!

MACMILLAN, Margaret – Department of History, University of Toronto; Warden, St. Antony’s College, Oxford University. Through her research and writing Professor Margaret MacMillan has contributed to the greater understanding of international history and to the revival of narrative history. Her work situates the relations between states and the making of war and peace in their broader social and historical contexts. She delivers many of the world’s most prestigious lectures and is committed to bringing history to as wide an audience as possible.

WILSON, David A. – Department of History, University of Toronto. Historian David A. Wilson is internationally recognized for making substantial, original contributions to our understanding of the modern Atlantic world. Focusing on the themes of democracy, conservatism, nationalism and religion, he opens up new perspectives on the transatlantic interchange of ideas. He has written pioneering studies of Thomas Paine, William Cobbett, the United Irishmen, and Thomas D’Arcy McGee, and is also the General Editor of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

For the entire Class List of 2015, please see: https://www.rsc-src.ca/sites/default/files/pdf/NF%20Citations%202015_2.pdf

Other members of the Department who are members of the Royal Society include: Robert Bothwell, Derek Penslar, James Retallack, Edward Shorter, Nicholas Terpstra, Lynne Viola. Natalie Rothman is a member of the New College of the RSC.

Double Congratulations to Associate Professor Li Chen

We warmly congratulate Li Chen on the award of tenure and promotion to the rank of Associate Professor. He has also taken on the role of Associate Chair of Historical and Cultural Studies at UTSC, for which we thank him and wish him well.

The latest copy of Past Tense (Spring 2015) is available now!

Here is the link to the latest issue of the Graduate Student Journal: http://pasttensejournal.com/index.php/pasttense/issue/view/1614/showToc

Congratulations to Eric Jennings for being appointed Distinguished Professor in the History of France and the Francophonie!

We are very happy to announce that Eric Jennings has just been appointed Distinguished Professor in the History of France and the Francophonie. This is a testament to the impressive quality and international impact of Eric’s award-winning research into the dynamics around France and its colonial empire through the course of the twentieth century and particularly during World War II. The Distinguished Professorship is a great credit to him and a benefit to the entire Department. Eric’s fourth monograph is coming out shortly in English, having already appeared last year in French, and he will be spending the next year in France on a J.S. Guggenheim Fellowship working on his next monograph. Please join us in congratulating him very warmly.

Dr. Jared Toney wins dissertation prize

Congratulations to University of Toronto PhD graduate Jared Toney, who has won the Immigration and Ethnic History Society’s Outstanding Dissertation Award for his 2014 thesis, “Locating Diaspora: Afro-Caribbean Migrations and the Transnational Dialectics of Race and Community in North America, 1910-1929.” The selection committee noted that the dissertation, which examines identity formation among Anglophone West Indians in New York, Montreal, and Toronto, “significantly expands scholarly understanding on the importance of diasporic communities” and “demonstrates that a sense of blackness was continually reworked in the early twentieth century and was grounded in more than essential notions of color or background or in a simple encounter with new nation-states.” Dr. Toney, who wrote the dissertation under the supervision of Professor Russell Kazal, is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at the University of South Florida.