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Research

SELECTED RESEARCH CURRENTLY UNDERWAY BY DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY FACULTY

Department of History instructors conduct research to expand our understanding of earlier times and their meanings. They engage actively in their studies not only in the cause of good scholarship but to serve the broad public interest in the past and in defining its influence on today’s world. Below are a few samples of research projects currently underway by the department’s faculty in 2023-24.

TENURE/TENURE TRACK FACULTY

CARL BENN

1.      Book tentatively titled The Royal Ontario Museum: A History to 1947.

2.      Article exposing a fraudulent treaty “document” engraved on a large rock in Awenda Provincial Park near Georgian Bay.

3.      Book chapters on the Arts and Crafts architecture and the First War memorial and baptistery at St. Thomas’s Anglican Church, Toronto.

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CATHERINE ELLIS

1.      Book chapter on the coronation of King Charles III for an upcoming edited collection in Bloomsbury Academic’s Mass-Observation Critical Series.

2.      Book tentatively entitled Young People, Youth Culture, and the British Government, c.1945-1970.

3.      Article on young women’s photography and memory in interwar Ontario.

4.      Article on royal jubilees and English popular culture. 

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INGRID HEYMEYER

1.      Book chapter titled “The Hammam in the Pre-modern Islamic City: Ancient Legacies, New Bathing Habits.”

2.      Book chapter on the use of water in magical rituals.

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ARNE KISLENKO

1.      Book on Soviet intelligence and the West in the 1920s.

2.      Book chapter on Thailand and covert operations during the early Cold War.

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JEAN LI

1.      Book chapter on a critical, disciplinary review of the current state of research of women and gender in Egyptology.

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JANAM MUKHERJEE

1.      Creative non-fictional narrative book, tentatively titled Kaliyug: The Long Journey “Home,” detailing Dr. Mukherjee's personal engagement in Kolkata, India and chronicling the period of the 1940s in Bengal from intimate and experiential perspectives.

2.      Article (and later a book) titled “Boom Time: Big Business and the Bengal Famine,” on the rise of the Indian industrial elite during the Second World War, focusing on the relationship between industrial profit and famine in Bengal.

3.      Historical advisor to BBC radio to mark the 80th memorial year of the Bengal famine, working with award-winning journalist Kavia Puri on a four-segment broadcast that will foreground individual experiences of the 1943 famine.

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JENNIFER TUNNICLIFFE

1.      Book tentatively titled Drawing the Line: Free Speech and the Regulation of Hate in Canadian History.

2.      Volume of essays that revisit Canada‘s history with human rights (as co-editor).

3.      Article on the response of the political right to the adoption of hate speech laws in 1970s Canada.

4.      Article on Canada’s policy approach to international human rights in light of the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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ROBERT TEIGROB

1.      Monograph on the pursuit of Cold War détente by German Chancellor Willy Brandt and US President Richard Nixon.

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GAO YUNXIANG

1.     A biography tentatively titled Soo Yong (杨秀ca. 1903-1984): Hollywood Actress and Asian Diaspora Cosmopolitan

Funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Long-Term Fellowship at the New York Public Library 2023-24.

2.    A biography tentatively titled Wang Yung (王莹ca. 1913-1974): From Child Bride, Shanghai’s “Literary Star,” to the Transpacific “Drama Queen.”

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SESSIONAL/CONTRACT FACULTY

STEVE BUNN

1.      PhD dissertation tentatively titled “Germans into Nazis … into Canadian Bushworkers: The Attempted ‘Denazification’ of German POWs in Canada During the Second World War.”

2.      Article tentatively titled “Canada’s Contested Parentage: David Willson, the Children of Peace, and the Advent of Canadian Democracy.”

3.      Article tentatively titled “‘People are Still Fascinated with this Story’: Historical Liminality and Raoul Denonville, Transgender Fur Trapper of Northern Ontario.”

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JESSICA CAMMAERT

1.      Article titled “‘Murdered Missionary in Kenya’: Rumour and Imperial Durabilities in Africa.”

2.      Article on the intersection of conflict, gender, and “silence” in oral source work, tentatively titled: “Re-thinking ‘Silence’ in Ethno-Political Conflicts.”

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DIANA CUCUZ

1.      Article titled “Winning Women’s Hearts and Minds: Selling Cold War Culture in the U.S. and U.S.S.R.,” for Media Report to Women.

2.      Article tentatively titled “All’s Fair in Love and the Cold War: Selling the American Way to Russian Women through the American National Exhibition in Moscow” for the Journal of Russian American Studies

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ROSS FAIR

1.      Book tentatively titled The British Hempire: Hemp in the Canadas, 1786-1834, analyzing efforts to encourage hemp production in Upper and Lower Canada.

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THOMAS H. GREINER

1.      Doctoral research on the cultural significance of lapis-lazuli in ancient Egypt from the Predynastic Period to the Middle Kingdom.

2.      Chapter on the earliest appearance of lapis-lazuli in Predynastic Egypt for an edited volume on minerals in Ancient Egypt.

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CHRISTOPHER B. ZEICHMANN

1.      Book on gender non-conformity in the New Testament.

2.      Handbook chapter on the history of homoerotic interpretation in the Bible.

3.      Book chapter discussing the role of the Roman military in the monetization of the Palestinian economy after the Roman-Jewish War.