Announcements

The Department of Historical Studies would like to congratulate Dr. Joan Simalchik, recipient of the 2012 Ludwik and Estelle Jus Memorial Human Rights Prize. To view the article, please click here.

Congratulations to Historical Studies 4th year student and President of HSS, Ashley Yoannou, this years recipient of the Principal's Involvement Award.

The Department of Historical Studies would like to congratulate Daniel Thornton's quote in the Article, "Discussion versus lecture in class" posted in the Medium on Nov 14, 2011. To read the article, please click here.

During the summer term of 2011 the students in Dr. Ariel Beaujot’s class, “Visions of the Other: Representations of Africa, Asia and India” (HIST 493), participated in an innovative new assignment allowing them to plan and create a museum exhibition for their final assignment.

Each student chose an object that has its origin in a non-western country and also has relevance in Canada. Students chose things like the Niqāb, Sapporo beer, baby slings, hummus, perfume and sugar. They did a material cultural analysis on their artefacts noting its shape, use and texture, the emotional and intellectual responses they derived from the object, and devised a research plan based on these observations. With the help of Historical Studies librarian Elaine Goettler, the students learned to search historical newspapers, image databases, and video archives, to locate sources specific to their topic. With this research as their base the students planned and presented a museum exhibit about their object.

The students who worked on hummus designed a museum that allowed visitors to explore hummus through the senses of smell, touch, and taste and showed their visitors how hummus is a politically charged foodstuff in the Middle East. The students who presented on perfume challenged their audience to create advertisements that did not reproduce the Orientalist imagery often found in perfume ads. And the student who worked on the salt created a living museum in the form of a video montage that transported visitors from Caribbean sugar plantations, to Victorian England, to modern day Canada demonstrating along the way how each of these cultures experienced sugar.

I invite you to take a look at “Veiled Fantasies” an exhibit about the Niqāb that was done in blog form: veiledfantasies.blogspot.com

Images from the class have been posted on flicker, to view the pictures please click here http://www.flickr.com/photos/63935477@N03/