Dr. Francoise Noel speaks on local history: Friday, October 1 at 2:30 pm in Room A122.

 The first departmental seminar of the year concerns the Nipissing District:

The Impact of Regulation 17 on the study of District Schools: a Case Study from the District of Nipissing

 By Françoise Noël

 

Can  the historian interested in examining the expansion of Ontario schools into the Districts in the ideologically charged period from 1911 to 1931, do so from the standard documentation available? In answer to this question this paper provides data at both the micro and the macro level originating from three sets of documents: Schools and Teachers, the Inspection Summary Registers, and the Report of the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Condition of the Schools Attended by French-Speaking Pupils, referred to here as the Merchant Report. While these documents allow us to provide a snapshot of the Ontario school system at the beginning and end of this period, the impact of Regulation 17 on the documentation available makes the task of studying the intervening years difficult. Schools and Teachers, does not include English–French schools for the entire period between 1914 and 1926, thereby creating a significant gap in our knowledge of the system in this period. That gap can only be partially filled by using the Inspection Summary Registers as these were created for the express purpose of tracking compliance to Regulation 17 and do not contain the same information. The Merchant Report, while it provides much useful information on the schools that taught French for the period 1925-1926, also does not fill the gap in Schools and Teachers. Regulation 17 leaves behind a legacy of documentation which is ideologically biased towards the resolution and understanding of that “problem” and this continues to make it difficult to view the expansion of schools into the Districts in an ideologically neutral fashion. Our examination of a micro sample from the Nipissing District also underlines the extent to which each school was a separate entity onto itself and shows that conditions could exist in schools located only a few miles apart. Summary data of any kind can therefore provide only a limited view of the situation in District schools. The structure of the school system and its divisions into two or more sectors, depending on the period, reflects the ideological debates of the day. As historians, however, we need to look beyond these divisions and seek an understanding of the interrelationship between schools and their communities that goes beyond these boundaries.

Contest! Money!

Georgia Lyons writes:

Student Affairs is offering a monetary prize for the solution to a monthly writing challenge.  Posted on www.nipissingu.ca/studentaffairs/writingtips.asp , the "Grammar Granny Challenge" asks students to find the errors in the four short writings posted.

Natalie Zemon Davis at NU, Friday September 24!

The Department of History welcomes Professor Natalie Zemon Davis to campus on Friday, September 24, to speak in F210 (the Fedeli Room) at 5 p.m.

Professor Davis' talk is titled Decentering History: Local Storytelling and Cultural Crossing in a Global World.
Speaking partly from her own experience, Professor Davis will explore ways that the practice of history has changed, examining historical comparison through local figures (a male and female writer from different parts of the world in 1400) and through cultural crossing (how techniques in healing and justice transferred from Africa to a slave colony).
Natalie Zemon Davis is among the most widely known and influential historians in the academy. Her work on the social and cultural history of early modern Europe has reached readers far outside the university setting, perhaps most famously with The Return of Martin Guerre (1983) and most recently with Trickster Travels: a Sixteenth-Century Muslim between Worlds (2008). Earlier this year she received the Holberg International Memorial Prize in recognition of her lifetime achievement.
The lecture is free of charge and all are welcome.

For further information, please contact Dr. Derek Neal in the Department of History at derekn@nipissingu.ca .

From the History Club

First I would like to say it is good to be back and into the swing of this with the new school year. I also thought I would let you know about the new executive members for the history club for 2010/2011. The President for this year is Amanda Van Lanen, the VP is Ryan Michaelis, and the Secretary is Kimmy Demers. As well, the hotmail account has been giving us some issues concerning sending emails. Therefore, we have decided to update the email and get a new email through gmail. The new email is nipuhistroyclub@gmail.com.  I will still be checking the old email for a few weeks until everyone has switched to the new email. That is about it for now, I hope classes are going well, and I look forward to working with you to promote the History Department.

Thanks,
Amanda Van Lanen

Considering graduate school next year. Think about money!

Research Services and Graduate Studies will be holding Graduate Studies Scholarship workshops in the week of September 20 - 24, 2010.   

The date and times are listed under the Current Events link on the Graduate Studies website found under the Current Students link on Nipissing's Website.
 http://www.nipissingu.ca/graduatestudies/graduatestudies_currentevents.asp312