Christopher Petrakos

Biography:

Christopher Petrakos is a broadly trained historian of European and North American history. He has a Ph.D. from Purdue University (2011) and joined the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Toronto Mississauga in 2012. His book, The Spiritual Borderlands at the Edge of Empire, examines the life of Anglican missionaries William and Charlotte Bompas in the far British-Canadian and American Northwest, from the Alaska Purchase to the Klondike Gold Rush.

Professor Petrakos teaches a range of courses in the Department. From conspiracy theories in history and the Protestant Reformation to a seminar on the Klondike Gold Rush, his courses encourage students to engage with some of the defining ideas and events of European and North American history.

Always looking to new frontiers, Professor Petrakos's next research project centers on the "new journalists" of the 1960s and 1970s—Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, and Norman Mailer—and their tenuous relationship to the emerging counterculture.

In his free time, Professor Petrakos enjoys photographing the diverse wildlife of the Aspen Parklands at his cabin in east-central Saskatchewan and reading widely in the pre-Columbian civilizations of the American Southwest and the ancient Maya world.

Students interested in completing directed readings or independent study courses are invited to contact him.

Courses Commonly Offered at UTM

History 453: The Klondike Gold Rush

History 357: European Renaissance 

History 340: Reformation Europe 

History 242: Making the Modern World: Nations, Empires, and Ideologies in Conflict, 1890-Present

History 241: The Transformation of Europe and the World, 1789-1890 

History 213: A History of the Present (Conspiracy Theories in History)

History 103: Revolutions in History

Selected Academic and Public-Facing Publications:

Book

The Spiritual Borderlands at the Edge of Empire: Anglican Missionaries William and Charlotte Bompas. London: Bloomsbury Academic/T&T Clark (forthcoming, fall 2026).

Articles

"The 'Spiritual Borderlands' of the Far Canadian North: The Ministries of William Carpenter Bompas and Robert McDonald in Comparative Context." The British Journal of Canadian Studies 35, no. 2 (2023): 139-164.

"'A Holy Relique Preserved from Ages and Generations Past': The De facto Act and the Afterlives of Henry VIII's Will in English Historical Thought, 1709-1715." Anglican and Episcopal History 91, no. 4 (December 2022): 1-26.

"William Carpenter Bompas and the Spiritual Borderlands of the Far Canadian North." Network in Canadian History and the Environment, Northern Borders and Boundaries Series. April 15, 2021. https://niche-canada.org/2021/04/15/william-carpenter-bompas-and-the-spiritual-borderlands-of-the-far-canadian-north/.

"'What They Did Was Big': William Ogilvie, Surveyor of the Canadian North from Confederation to the Klondike Gold Rush." Ontario Professional Surveyor 64, no. 1 (Winter 2021): 18-21. https://www.aols.org/site_files/content/pages/about/media/ops-magazine/winter2021.pdf.

"Comedy Gold: Humor and Social Boundary Making on the Alaska-Yukon Border, 1886-1896." Studies in American Humor 7, no. 1 (2021): 86-104.

"Apocalypse Now: Bishop Bompas, Providence, and Conversion in the Canadian North, 1865-1906." Journal of the Canadian Church Historical Society 57, no. 1/2 (Spring/Fall 2019): 3-31.

"'The Plot Writ the Association': Mary Queen of Scots and Parallel Histories of the Protestant Association during the Exclusion Crisis, 1679-1681." Early Modern Culture 13 (2018): Article 4.

"William Ogilvie, the Klondike Borderlands, and the Making of the Canadian West." The American Review of Canadian Studies 46, no. 3 (October 2016): 362-379.

"'A Pattern for Princes to Live By': Queen Elizabeth I's Memory and Historical Polemic During England's Exclusion Crisis." American, British, and Canadian Studies Journal 25 (December 2015): 132-154.

"'Those Times Can Tell the Story': The Anglican Reformation, Henry VIII's Succession Statutes, and England's Exclusion Crisis, 1679-1681." Anglican and Episcopal History 84, no. 4 (2015): 393-415.

"'We Would Live Like Brothers': A Re-examination of Diego de Vargas's Reconquest of New Mexico and the Pueblo Indian Revolt, 1692-1696." Delaware Review of Latin American Studies 15, no. 1 (August 2014). http://www.udel.edu/LAS/Vol15-1Petrakos.html.