I am an associate professor of Canadian and environmental history and associate dean at York University.
Read more »Last year, I wrote about my early impressions of the possible uses of virtual reality technology for public history and history education. I also led a session in my fourth-year digital history class on virtual reality and its potential for generating a sense of historical presence, an ability to simulate […]
Episode 60: New Research in Canadian Environmental History Download Audio Subscribe From time to time, we like to draw your attention to new research in the field of Canadian environmental history. We interview authors about new books, we speak with graduate students about […]
In their 2005 article in First Monday, Daniel J. Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig recount the story of a remarkably prescient colleague, Peter Stearns, who “proposed the idea of a history analog to the math calculator, a handheld device that would provide students with names and dates to use on exams—a Cliolator, […]
Episode 57: Why Study Canada? [33:09] Download Audio Why study Canadian environmental history? Where does Canada fit in global perspectives of environmental history? This episode focuses on the role of Canada in environmental history and explores some of the reasons why some scholars study […]
Over the weekend, I appeared on BBC World Service on an episode of The Forum. The episode was a wide-ranging discussion of Canadian history since Confederation in 1867. I participated on a panel alongside Margaret Macmillan and Phillip Buckner. You can listen to the full episode in the player above.
Next month, I will start my first sabbatical. To prepare, I just finished reading Michael Harris’s new book, Solitude: A Singular Life in a Crowded World. The book came out in late April just as my teaching semester wrapped up. The timing couldn’t be better. Sabbaticals are another part of […]
Episode 56: Animal Metropolis [38:08] Download Audio To kick off the 2017 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Toronto, Ontario, I joined two of the editors of a new volume on histories of human-animal relations in urban Canada published by University of Calgary Press. Joanna Dean and Christabelle Sethna […]
For the past year, I’ve been thinking a lot about virtual reality and its potential applications for historians. Can we use virtual reality to better understand the past? Can the experience of virtual reality alter historical thinking? Can we now build time machines, teleporters, and holodecks using virtual reality? These […]
The Department of History is proud to host the annual Melville-Nelles-Hoffmann Lecture in Environmental History on March 20, at 4pm, in the Schulich Private Dining Room. This year’s lecture will be delivered by Professor Sara B. Pritchard from Cornell University. Professor Pritchard is a leading scholar in environmental history and Science and Technology Studies […]
Episode 55: Asbestos Mining and Environmental Health [38:08] Download Audio In 2012, Canada stopped mining and exporting asbestos. Once considered a miracle mineral for its fireproof qualities, asbestos came to be better known as a carcinogenic, hazardous material banned in numerous countries around the world. Canada was once a […]
