A couple of weeks ago, I gave a public lecture at the L.R. Wilson Institute for Canadian History titled “Order and Animals in Nineteenth-Century Toronto”. This lecture is based on my current research project on the history of urban animals and it focuses on the regulation of domestic animals in […]
Animals
My current research on the history of animals in Canadian cities has been motivated, in part, by my interest in examining overlooked aspects of the past. If nineteenth-century North American cities were replete with horses, pigs, chickens, and cattle, why do they seem so absent from urban history? This week […]
The second episode of EHTV: Live from the Field is now online, featuring a look at local food and butchery. On this episode of the series, a group of new scholars in environmental history gather to learn how to butcher a lamb as part of an effort to understand historical […]
Environmental history is often characterized by the interdisciplinary character of its research. Since its earliest iteration in the 1970s, some of the leading scholars in field stressed the importance of integrating interdisciplinary insights into the study of the historical interrelationship between nature and society. In his 1990 article on the […]
Episode 16 The Industrialization of Agriculture: September 28, 2010 [audio: http://niche-canada.org/files/sound/naturespast/natures-past16.mp3][44:24] From 1945 to the early 1970s, technological innovations helped to transform American agriculture. The introduction of industrial chemicals and new machinery to US farm operations in the decades after the Second World War ushered in, what some historians have […]
I recently published a review of Sharon Kirsch’s book, What Species of Creatures: Animal Relations from the New World on H-Net Reviews. You can download a PDF copy of the review here. In this book, Kirsch explores early European encounters with New World animals in northern North America. She provides […]
Unusual urban animal sightings abound in Canada this month. Last week I wrote about the grey whale that visited Vancouver’s False Creek, the first to be seen in the vicinity of the city in living memory. Canada’s increasingly complicated relationship with wild animals in urban environments continues this week in […]
One of the most exciting things about environmental history research is the opportunity to do field research. It’s fun to get away from the desk and get outdoors. I did just that this afternoon when I heard that a grey whale had wandered into False Creek. After running down to […]
Episode 11 Animals, History, and Environment: November 22, 2009. [audio:http://niche-canada.org/files/sound/naturespast/natures-past11.mp3][55:05] Environmental history is primarily concerned with the relationship between humans and non-human nature, but the study of non-human nature holds a different set of problems and poses a different set of questions when considering non-human animals. As environmental historians continue […]