Good Governance and Traditional Authorities in Ghana --Tuesday, Oct. 6, 11:30 AM

From Dr. Robin Gendron:

On Tuesday, Oct. 6, Matt Morris (a Nipissing student) will be giving a talk on the subject of "Good Governance and Traditional Authorities in Ghana," derived from his recent experience working with an NGO in Ghana. The talk will take place from 11:30 - 12:30 in Room A122 and everyone is welcome. Lunch will be served!

The event is being sponsored by the Political Science programme, the Student Political Involvement Network, and the Nipissing Branch of the Canadian International Council.

History Seminar Series: Dr. Gabriella Petrick on Food History, Friday, Oct 2, 2:30 pm, in A122.

From Dr. James Murton:

The History Seminar Series returns for another year with a talk by historian Gabriella M. Petrick, visiting us from New York University. She will speak on "Sweet, Sour, Salty, Bitter: A Call for the Centrality of Taste in History."

Gabriella's previous work is on the development of industrial food systems in the modern U.S., and this talk is derived from her new research on the history of taste. Dr. Petrick is Assistant Professor Food Studies in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at NYU Steinhardt. For more information see: http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/profiles/faculty/gabriella_petrick.

Friday, Oct 2, 2:30 pm, in A122.

Refreshments will be served. All are welcome!

Note that Dr. Petrick's visit to Nipissing is part of the conference Bringing Subsistence Out of the Shadows: A Workshop on Subsistence Economies. More information at the link.

Gabriella Petrick, food historian, at NU next Thursday

From Dr. James Murton, to faculty, but all can listen in:

As part of next weekend's subsistence history workshop, NYU food historian Gabriella Petrick will be visiting campus. She is a historian of industrial food systems in the modern US and is doing interesting new work on the history of taste. She'll be visiting my Food & Land class a week Thursday, and the plan is for her to give a talk on Friday. I will send you more info on the talk when I have it, but in the meantime if you could mention this to your classes where appropriate, and particularly the grad students, I'd appreciate it. I want to encourage the grad students to attend the talk in particular and she is available to meet with any interested students.

NU History Club notices -- lots going on

Welcome back! I hope you are enjoying your classes so far! A few things of interest to history students in the next couple of weeks:

Our first History Club Meeting will be taking place this Tuesday (September 22nd) at 11:30am in room R313 (in the new research wing). We plan to discuss some upcoming club activities, so if you'd like to get more involved with the History Club, please consider attending!

This year's History Department Meet and Greet will take place on Wednesday, September 30th at 6:30pm in the Owl's Nest Lounge (first floor of the H-Wing). All students interested in (or already in) Nipissing's History program are welcome to attend. Get to know your History Profs and fellow students and enjoy some refreshments and fun!

Club Days is coming up on the week of September 28th - October 2nd. We are looking for people to help run the History Club booth, so if you have a few hours to spare between 9:00-3:00 on any day that week, please email back.

Calling all First Year Students! This year, the History Club will be organizing a Scavenger Hunt and Pizza Party for new History Students at Nipissing University on Monday, October 5th, starting at 12:00pm following the First Year Canadian History Course in B200. Please let any first year History students know!

Other Opportunities of interest:

Students are also invited to take part in a conference that the History Department at Nipissing and the Canada Research Chair in Environmental History are presenting, called "Bringing Subsistence Out of the Shadows." This two-day workshop aims to bring together emerging scholarship on subsistence and mixed economies, both contemporary and throughout history. Subsistence relationships illustrate the complexity of not only economic exchanges, but also of human/nature interactions, and discussions at the workshop will draw upon these complex networks to help understand the continuing significance of subsistence at different scales. 13 pre-selected papers will form the spine of the discussion and the keynote address will be provided by Colin Duncan, author of The Centrality of Agriculture: Between Humankind and the Rest of Nature. The workshop will take place at Monastery Hall, Nipissing University in North Bay, Ontario, on October 2-4th. While the subsistence scale has often been seen as a stepping-stone to larger, more complex relationships of exchange, local and subsistence economies have received a recent revival due to both environmental and economic crises. North Bay has a long history of vibrant subsistence and small-scale productions, including wild berries, fisheries, and forestry. On Friday evening (October 2nd ) there will be a showcase of some of those involved in these relationships at the Kennedy Gallery in Downtown North Bay. If you are interested in further information, or are interested in attending, please contact Bruce Erickson at brucee@nipissingu.ca

Official North Bay launch of Francoise Noel's new book - Thursday, October 15, 7 pm

Dr. Francoise Noel's upcoming book, Family and Community Life in Northeastern Ontario: The interwar years, will have its North Bay area launch on Thursday, October 15, 7-8:30 PM, at the NB Public Library at 271 Worthington Street E.

This book is based on extensive interviews and archival research and reconstructs how various individuals and groups lived together and sometimes came into conflict in the years before the Second World War. As the title indicates, Dr. Noel is especially interested in family life and its rituals, a subject she treated so well in her previous book, Family Life and Sociability in Upper and Lower Canada.

If you live in the North Bay area, and especially if you grew up here, this book will be of special interest to you.

Books will be available for sale at the launch and also at Gulliver's, 157 Main Street W.

Derek Neal's new project

Somewhat passed over in the rush of end-of-year business was the fact that another NU historian was awarded a useful and prestigious SSHRC Standard Research Grant which will provide him time and resources to further investigate clerical and lay masculinity in Late Medieval and Early Modern England. Here's a short description of why this is interesting:

Clergy, Laity and Masculinity in English Communities, 1460-1560 explores interactions between clergymen and lay people in England during a span of time that crosses the conventionally understood distinction between “late medieval” and “early modern” eras of history. Between 1460 and 1560, did clergymen begin to be regarded (or to regard themselves) at all differently? How did clerics and lay people insult or censure each other? In what terms did they report each other’s misconduct? What patterns did physical fights, and more mundane legal disputes, take between them? The question admits cooperation as well as conflict: clerics advised people making wills, they often mediated disputes (including marital ones), and they might complete a household, not disrupt it. All such interactions can inform an understanding of clerical masculinity, and by extension, also of masculinity more generally.

Dr. Robin Gendron speaks on Radio Canada, Sudbury, Tuesday September 15 EARLY

Dr. Gendron writes:

For those of you who will be up bright and early tomorrow morning, you will be able to catch me being interviewed at 6:50 am on Radio Canada (the French CBC) out of Sudbury. I'll be discussing the removal of the Bomarc missile from downtown North Bay, though in all likelihood I'll probably spend more time talking about the history of the missile and similar subjects.