Darren Ferry speaks on Mechanics' Institutes: Friday March 30, 2:30 pm

From Dr. Derek Neal:

Greetings to all,

The Department of History invites you to join us for our final presentation of the academic year, Friday, March 30 at 2:30 pm in room A122. Darren Ferry, of Nipissing's Muskoka Campus, will present a paper entitled "Open to All Classes on Terms of Perfect Equality: The Association of Mechanics' Institutes and the Establishment of Adult Education in Ontario, 1868–1895."

For a generation before 1895, what we would now call adult education in Ontario was largely undertaken by the Mechanics' Institutes, which provided a much wider range of instruction than their name would imply. Historians have generally considered their efforts unsuccessful, but Dr Ferry will challenge this received opinion, with reference particularly to the farmers, bookkeepers, clerks and young women who took advantage of the Institutes' evening classes during this period.

As always, the talk is free of charge, refreshments are provided, and everyone is welcome.

Hoping to see you there,

Derek Neal

Borislav Chernev speaks: "The Future Depends on Brest-Litovsk": March 16, 2012, 5 pm

From Derek Neal:

The Department of History is pleased to invite you to a special presentation on Friday, March 16 at 5:00 pm in Room A226, entitled "'The Future Depends on Brest-Litovsk': War, Peace, and Revolution in Central and Eastern Europe, 1917–1918."

 Our guest speaker is Mr. Borislav Chernev, doctoral candidate in History at the American University in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Chernev will discuss previously overlooked aspects of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Conference which took place between December 1917 and March 1918 in an attempt to resolve the hostilities in the Eastern European theatre of the First World War. Focusing on the importance of Austrian, Bulgarian and Ukrainian delegations, the presentation will emphasize the domestic implications of peacemaking, and ask how the conference contributed to transmuting World War I into later national and social revolution in the vast region affected by the treaty.

 As in the History Seminar Series, the talk is free of charge, everyone is welcome and refreshments will be provided.

Nestar Russell speaks on the Milgram experiments and the Holocaust, Dec. 9, 2 pm

History Seminar Series: Andrew Taylor, University of Ottawa, speaks on oral tradition and written record

From Dr. Derek Neal:

Our next History Department seminar will feature University of Ottawa medievalist Andrew Taylor, who will speak on:
Written Record to Memory: Delgamuukw vs. British Columbia and the Modern Historian

Friday, February 4, 2011
2:30-4:00 pm
Room A 226

Andrew will be using the landmark Delgamuukw land claims case as a starting point to illustrate what we can learn by thinking simultaneously about medieval European history and the history of Canada's relationship with First Nations. In both of these histories, there is a contested relationship between memory, or oral tradition, on the one hand, and the authority of the written word on the other, that greatly affected power dynamics between different groups of people.