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Category: CHA Reads (Page 2 of 2)

CHA Reads – Ian Jesse on Homelands and Empires: Indigenous Spaces, Imperial Fictions, and Competition for Territory in Northeastern North America, 1690-1763

May 15, 2018 / / 0 Comments

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Ian Jesse defends Jeffers Lennox, Homelands and Empires: Indigenous Spaces, Imperial Fictions, and Competition for Territory in Northeastern North America, 1690-1763. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017. 

I cannot remember how Homelands and Empires: Indigenous Spaces, Imperial Fictions, and Competition for Territory in Northeastern North America, 1690-1763 by Jeffers Lennox got on my radar but I had been meaning to pick it up for some time. I was, therefore, very excited when I was asked to read and defend it for CHA Reads. Before I dive into my review and defense of this book I want to acknowledge that I am a white settler and approached my reading of this book with a personal lens.

 

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CHA Reads – Krista McCracken on The Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure on the Grand River.

May 14, 2018 / / 1 Comment

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Krista McCracken defends Susan M. Hill, The Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure on the Grand River. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2017.

This year’s shortlist for the CHA book prize features a number of fantastic reads. When the shortlist and the call for #CHAReads2018 was announced I jumped at the opportunity to defend Susan M. Hill’s latest book, The Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure on the Grand River.

 

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CHA Reads 2018: An Introduction

May 14, 2018 / / 2 Comments

CHA Reads 2018 Header image featuring all five cover images of the books being reviewed.

 

Welcome to our second annual CHA Reads! Last year’s series was so great, we could not pass up the opportunity to do it again. So we’re back, with five brand-new readers to review and reflect on the five books shortlisted for the Canadian Historian Association’s (CHA) Sir John A. Macdonald Prize* for the best book in Canadian history published in the last year.

Over the course of this week, five scholars will argue why their book should win the coveted award.

Based on the format of CBC’s Canada Reads, five different scholars have agreed to champion these five books. They are:

  • Krista McCracken (Agloma University)
  • Ian Jesse (University of Maine)
  • Carly Ciufo (McMaster University)
  • Dan Horner (Ryerson University)
  • Carmen Nielson (Mount Royal University)

And Andrea and I will be acting as the moderators.

Each scholar selected a book that was outside their particular field of expertise, so that the books could be judged on their merits alone. Because we are Canadians and academics, we have decided that this will be a friendly discussion, rather than a competition. To that end, each scholar has written a short piece explaining the merits of their chosen book and why they think it should win the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize.

*For those who aren’t already aware of this, the name of the prize is currently under debate, and will in all likelihood change following this year’s annual meeting.

 

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CHA Reads: Group Discussion

May 26, 2017 / / 0 Comments

CHA Reads 2017

 

What is CHA Reads? Find out here!

 

UPDATE: Now includes the conversation that happened on Twitter! Scroll to the end to see.

Welcome to the seventh and final post in CHA Reads 2017! This post features the discussion that took place all week long between the other scholars and myself.  In order to make the discussion easier to follow, questions are in green and names are in bold.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series as much as we have! We will definitely be doing this again next year. Don’t forget to check us out all day on Twitter, where we will be continuing this discussion using the hashtag #chareads2017. And I’ll see you back here tomorrow for an early roundup!

 

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CHA Reads: Stephanie Pettigrew on Kouchibouguac: Removal, Resistance, and Remembrance at a Canadian National Park.

May 25, 2017 / / 0 Comments

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What is CHA Reads? Find out here!

 

Stephanie Pettigrew defending Ronald Rudin, Kouchibouguac: Removal, Resistance, and Remembrance at a Canadian National Park. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016.

My very first impression upon reading this book was, “This should be required reading for everybody who works for Parks Canada.” That was about halfway through the first chapter. By the time I reached the epic story of Jackie Vautour more on this in a second, I decided that the book should be required reading for anybody who works for a government agency. Now, almost a year after I first read it, I think it should be read by all Canadians, particularly those using the free Parks Canada passes. This book speaks to the impact of large government projects that prioritizes economic value over human value, one were where families are forced from their lands and deprived of their livelihoods.

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CHA Reads: Joanna L. Pearce on A Place In The Sun: Haiti, Haitians, and the Remaking of Quebec

May 25, 2017 / / 0 Comments

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What is CHA Reads? Find out here!

 

Joanna Pearce defending Sean Mills’ A Place In The Sun: Haiti, Haitians, and the Remaking of Quebec.

 

Or: Why you should move Sean Mills’ latest to the top of your TBR pile of great Canadian history books, even if you don’t see how it connects to your own research

If there’s one thing #CHAReads2017 is teaching me, it’s that we have an abundance of great books to choose from for this year’s Sir John A MacDonald Prize. If you’re anything like me, you go into the CHA every year with the best of intentions to read the short list, or at least the winner. If you’re also anything like me, your Canadian history reading is mostly limited to books related to your own research, whatever you’re teaching this year, and books by your friends and colleagues (and supervisors) because trying to pull together your own work is taking up all of your mental energy. #gradstudentproblems

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CHA Reads: Samuel McLean on Colonial Relations: The Douglas-Connolly Family and the Nineteenth-Century Imperial World

May 24, 2017 / / 0 Comments

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What is CHA Reads? Find out here!

 

Samuel McLean defending Colonial Relations: The Douglas-Connolly Family and the Nineteenth-Century Imperial World.

Adele Perry’s Colonial Relations: The Douglas-Connolly Family and the Nineteenth-Century Imperial World is a nuanced and textured consideration of families, relationships, authority, and colonialism, examined through the lens of the family of colonial governor James Douglas and his wife, Amelia Connolly. However, this book is not a biography. Rather, as Perry herself notes, “I utilize available archival evidence about one extended family to anchor an analysis of the nineteenth-century imperial world, to ground and focus these wide, wandering, and sometimes daunting histories.”(p. 5) Based on research conducted at twelve different archives on three different continents, this book is a veritable tour-de-force that blows all of its competition out of the water.

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CHA Reads: Sean Carleton defends Imperial Plots: Women, Land, and the Spadework of British Colonialism on the Canadian Prairies

May 24, 2017 / / 2 Comments

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What is CHA Reads? Find out here!

 

Sean Carleton defends Sarah Carter, Imperial Plots: Women, Land, and the Spadework of British Colonialism on the Canadian Prairies (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2016).

This year’s shortlist for the CHA book prize is impressive and features five excellent titles. While each book is worthy of recognition for different reasons, I have been asked to speak to the strengths of Sarah Carter’s latest book, Imperial Plots: Women, Land, and the Spadework of British Colonialism on the Canadian Prairies. The book is “a project of unravelling the profound entanglement of colonial and metropolitan histories, and of discovering how the colonial culture of prairie Canada was constituted through a complex interplay of the local, the region across borders, the national, and the imperial” (19). The book at once grapples with the global and local and displays an incredible breadth of focus without sacrificing detailed precision. Imperial Plots, in short, showcases the skill of Carter’s historical storytelling in spades.

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CHA Reads: Mary-Ellen Kelm on The Vimy Trap, or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Great War

May 23, 2017 / / 0 Comments

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What is CHA Reads? Find out here!

 

Mary-Ellen Kelm defending The Vimy Trap, or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Great War.

The Vimy memorial was on TV when Andrea Eidinger’s call for participants in #CHAreads went out on Twitter. Though the First World War is not my field, I have long been interested in how the past gets used to make or break community. So I signed up to participate in #CHAreads and to investigate the merits of The Vimy Trap: or How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Great War by Ian McKay and Jamie Swift – a nominee for the CHA’s Sir John A. Macdonald prize. The Vimy Trap is a book that all Canadian historians, whatever their interests, should read.

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CHA Reads 2017: An Introduction

May 23, 2017 / / 0 Comments

CHA Reads 2017

Welcome to the first annual CHA Reads! Inspired by the CBC’s Canada Reads competition this is a new way to feature and reflect on the five books shortlisted for the Canadian Historian Association’s (CHA) Sir John A. Macdonald Prize for the best book in Canadian history published in the last year.

Over the course of this week, five scholars will argue why their book should win the coveted award.

Based on the format of CBC’s Canada Reads, five different scholars have agreed to champion these five books. They are:

  • Mary-Ellen Kelm (Simon Fraser University)
  • Sean Carleton (Mount Royal University)
  • Samuel McLean (King’s College London)
  • Joanna Pearce (York University)
  • Stephanie Pettigrew (University of New Brunswick)

And I will be acting as the moderator.

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