Faculty & Contact

Below is a list of faculty that are active in the department, and available to students with course specific questions. If you need administrative support, we encourage you to refer your questions to one of the following;

  • The Chair of the department can address detailed program questions, including program requirements, planning and selection, research opportunities, graduate studies, and more.
  • The Academic Advisor, if available, can offer support including course registration and course load, important dates, academic policies and more.
  • The Academic Deans serve as the academic and administrative anchors to the professors within their Faculties or Schools as well as the students.

Faculty of the History and Global Studies Department:

Contact Information is found in the BU Directory
Dr. Gordon Barker

Dr. Gordon Barker

Full Professor

Educated at McGill University (BA Economics, BA Honours in History), and the College of William and Mary in Virginia (MA and PhD. in History), Gordon Barker began his career at Bishop’s in 2006. Specializing in African American, Revolutionary America, and Civil War Era history, he has published two major books, a book chapter in an edited volume published recently by the University Press of Florida, and several articles and reviews in leading scholarly journals. In 2010, he received the Virginia Historical Society’s prestigious William M.E. Rachal Award. In 2014, he received Honorable Mention for the Rudnick Book Prize awarded by the New England American Studies Association. He has also received numerous teaching excellence awards and the Bishop’s University Emerging Scholar Award. He teaches the American surveys and upper-level thematic courses on African Americans, the American Civil War and Reconstruction, and Women in Early America. Dr. Barker is President of the Eastern Townships Resource Institute.

Gordon Barker Interview Part 1:

Gordon Barker Interview Part 2:

Gordon Barker Interview Part 3:

My current work focuses on slavery, race relations, and black agency during the Revolutionary, Antebellum, and Civil War Eras. Building on the research that I undertook for The Imperfect Revolution and Fugitive Slaves and the Unfinished Revolution, I am working on a third book exploring the increasing militancy of black abolitionists in the North during the late antebellum period as well as a film script on Fugitive Slaves.  My current book project focuses on the ideology of leading black abolitionists and how the freedom fights of female fugitive slaves and kidnapped free black women catalyzed the antislavery movement in the North.

My recent publications include the following works:

Monographs

Fugitive Slaves and the Unfinished American Revolution, Eight Cases, 1848-1856 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishers, 2013).

The Imperfect Revolution: Anthony Burns and the Landscape of Race in Antebellum America (Kent: Kent State University Press, 2010).

Book Chapters

“Revisiting British Principle Talk: Antebellum Black Expectations and Racism in Early Ontario,” in Damian Alan Pargas (ed.) Fugitive Slaves and Spaces of Freedom in North America, 1800-60 (University Press of Florida, 2018).

Articles

“Secession and Slavery as a Positive Good: The Impact of the Anthony Burns Drama in Boston on Virginia,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (2010) Volume 118, No. 2.

Reviews

Jim Crow North: The Struggle for Equality in Antebellum New England by Richard Archer, Civil War Book Reviews (2018)

An Indispensable Liberty: the Fight for Freedom of Speech in Nineteenth-Century America edited by Mary M. Cronin, Journal of Southern History (2017)

“Oberlin Resolve: Dying for a Holy Cause,” Review of The “Colored Hero” of Harper’s Ferry: John Anthony Copeland and the War Against Slavery by Steven Lubet, Civil War Book Reviews (2016)

From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth: Labor and Republican Liberty in the Nineteenth Century by Alex Gourevitch, Journal of Global Slavery (2016), Volume 1, No. 1.

African Canadians in Union Blue: Volunteering for the Cause in the Civil War by Richard Reid, Canadian Journal of History (2015), Volume 50, No. 3.

I Freed Myself: African American Self-Emancipation in the Civil War by David Williams, American Historical Review (2015), Volume 120, No. 2

The Road to Black Ned’s Forge: A Story of Race, Sex, and Trade on the Colonial American Frontier by Turk McCleskey, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (2014), Volume 122, No. 4.

“Race and Freedom on Pennsylvania’s Borderland, 1820 through Reconstruction,” a review of On the Edge of Freedom: The Fugitive Slave Issue in South Central Pennsylvania, 1820-1870 by David G. Smith. H-CivWar, H-Net Reviews (January) 2014.

Old World, New World: America and Europe in the Age of Jefferson edited by Leonard J. Sadosky, Peter Nicolaisen, Peter S. Onuf, and Andrew J. O’Shaughnessy, Journal of Southern History (2012) Volume 78, No. 1.

Crusade Against Slavery: Edward Coles, Pioneer of Freedom by Kurt E. Leichtle and Bruce G. Carveth, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (2011), Volume 119, No.4.

Dr. Cristian Berco

Dr. Cristian Berco

Full Professor

Cristian Berco (Ph.D. Arizona, 2002) joined Bishop’s in 2004. His research focuses on the social history of the body, mainly through work on sexuality, disease and ethnicity. His first book Sexual Hierarchies, Public Status (2007) examines sodomy trials in the Aragonese Inquisition, while his second one, From Body to Community, focuses on venereal disease as a lived reality. He has also published in various academic journals and edited collections on the social dimensions of the early modern syphilis epidemic. Currently, he is working on the neurophysiological processes undergirding the Spanish Inquisition. Dr. Berco teaches the history of medieval and early modern Europe, and colonial and modern Latin America.

Cristian Berco Interview – Part 1:

Cristian Berco Interview – Part 2:

Cristian Berco Interview – Part 3:

The Body and Society in early modern Spain

Dr. Berco’s research program focuses on the body and society in the early modern Hispanic world. Though he has published widely on a variety of topics, including the decriminalization of sodomy in nineteenth-century Argentina and gender identity and self discipline in Baroque Spain, his main interests entail the following:

The Body, Sexuality and Society, specifically male homosexual behaviour, its reliance on gendered constructs, and its uneasy relationship to social status in early modern societies. Gleaned from Spanish trial records, this research focuses on the border between the hierarchies constructed through the sexed body and those available from public understandings of status. Dr. Berco’s book on the subject, Sexual Hierarchies, Public Status: Men, Sodomy, and Society in Golden Age Spain argues that, though homosexual behaviour was widespread due to a penetrative conceptualization of masculinity, public anger was mobilized into trials when these sexual relationships violated normalized power relations, as in the case of Muslim slaves sodomizing Christian adolescents. At the same time, because of the diffuse nature of an inquisitorial trial, magistrates did not always follow through on the public intent to punish, effectively shielding some groups like the clergy from harsh sentences. Dr. Berco has also published separately on the intimate connection between patriarchal forms of power and sodomy, both in practice and in terms of the constructs informing them.

The Body, Disease and Society. This research focuses on syphilis and its sociocultural implications as a lived illness. By combining institutional and notarial records, this research examines this chronic disease in its full personal and social dimensions. Dr. Berco’s book From Body to Community: Venereal Disease and Society in Baroque Spain traces the complex lives of syphilis patients at Toledo’s Hospital de Santiago, moving from the somatic aspects of infection and treatment to the sociocultural implications for patients living with this chronic illness in terms of marriage, work, and community relationships.

The Body, the Brain and Inquisitors. This new research interest grew out of combining Dr. Berco’s recent work on the perception of the clothes body and his collaboration with choreographer Isabelle Van Grimde on the body and its relationship to vision and movement. Relying on novel methodologies from the burgeoning field of neurohistory, Dr. Berco is thus currently focusing on historicizing the inquisitorial brain. Focusing mainly on sensory perception, motor-emotional control, and cognition, this research has already led to the publication of “Perception and the Mulatto Body in Inquisitorial Spain: A Neurohistory,” Past & Present 231, no. 1 (2016): 33-60”. Dr. Berco is currently continuing this work with an eye to writing a monograph on the inquisitorial brain.

Book

From Body to Community: Venereal Disease and Society in Baroque Spain (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2016)

  • Winner: American Association for the History of Medicine Welch Medal (2018)
  • Winner: European Association for the History of Medicine and Health Book Prize (2017)
  • Finalist: Canadian Historical Association Ferguson Prize (2017)

Sexual Hierarchies, Public Status: Men, Sodomy, and Society in Spain’s Golden Age (University of Toronto Press, January 2007).

Articles in Journals and Chapters in Edited Collections

“Fashioning Disease: Narrative and the Sick Body in the Spanish Inquisition,” in Hilaire Kallendorf, ed., A Companion to the Spanish Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 205-232

“Determining Insanity in the Inquisition: Sensory Perception and Legal Culture in Seventeenth-Century Lima,” eHumanista: Journal of Iberian Studies 36 (2017): 42-61.

Perception and the Mulatto Body in Inquisitorial Spain: A Neurohistory,” Past & Present 231, no. 1 (2016): 33-60.

“The Great Pox, Symptoms, and Social Bodies in Early Modern Spain,” Social History of Medicine 28, no. 2 (2015): 225-244.

“Miscegenation” and “Sodomy”,  in Evonne Levy and Kenneth Mills, eds., Lexikon of the Hispanic Baroque: Technologies of a Transatlantic Cultural Transfer (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2014), pp. 219-20 and 324-5 respectively.

“The Many Faces of Female Discipline: Gender Control, Subversion and the Nun-Confessor Relationship in Golden Age Barcelona,” in Manuela Scarci, ed., Creating Women: Representation, Self-Representation, and Agency in the Renaissance (Toronto, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2013), pp. 149-65.

“Syphilis, Sex, and Marriage in Early Modern Spain,” Journal of Early Modern History 15, no. 3 (2011): 223-53.

“Crossing Borders: Identity, Difference and Community,” Journal of Eastern Township Studies 37 (Fall 2011)

“Textiles as Social Texts: Syphilis, Material Culture and Gender in Golden Age Spain,” Journal of Social History 44, no. 3 (Spring 2011): 785-810.

With Stephanie Fink De Backer, coauthor. “Queerness, Syphilis and Enlightenment in Eighteenth Century Madrid,” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispanicos 35, no. 1 (2010): 31-48.

“Producing Patriarchy: Male Homosexuality and Gender in Early Modern Spain,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 17, no. 3 (September 2008): 351-376.

“The Masks of Normalcy: Homosexual Behaviour, Syphilis, and Decline in Juan Calvo’s Valencia,” in Kenneth Borris and G. S. Rousseau, eds., The Sciences of Homosexuality in Early Modern Europe (New York: Routledge, 2007), pp. 92-113

“Social Control and its Limits: Sodomy, Local Sexual Economies, and Inquisitors during Spain’s Golden Age,” Sixteenth Century Journal 36, no. 2 (2005): 331-358.

“Juana Pimentel, the Mendoza Family, and the Crown,” in Helen Nader, ed., Power and Gender in Renaissance Spain: The Mendoza Women (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), pp. 27-47.

“Revealing the Other: Moriscos, Crime, and Local Politics in Toledo’s Hinterland in the Late Sixteenth Century,” Medieval Encounters  8, no. 2-3 (2002): 135-159.

“Between Piety and Sin: Zaragoza’s Confraternity of San Roque, Syphilis and Sodomy,” Confraternitas 13, no. 2 (Fall 2002): 3-16.

“Silencing the Unmentionable: Non Reproductive Sex and the Creation of a Civilized Argentina, 1860-1900,” The Americas 58, no. 3 (January 2002): 419-441.

Dr. Jean Manore

Dr. Jean Manore

Full Professor and Dean of Humanities

Jean Manore (Ph.D. Ottawa, 1995) came to Bishop’s in 2001. Her research interests focus on the historical understandings of Aboriginal and Treaty rights and the tensions among these rights, environmental advocacy and technological development. Her publications include Cross-Currents: Hydro-Electricity and the Engineering of Northern Ontario and numerous articles; she is also a co-editor of The Culture of Hunting. Currently, she is exploring ways to decolonize historical interpretations and methodologies. Dr. Manore teaches courses on post-Confederation Canada, Public History and Heritage, Indigenous/settler relations and environmental history (animal/human relations and the history of water).

Jean Manore Interview – Part 1:

Jean Manore Interview – Part 2:

Jean Manore Interview – Part 3:

Aboriginal Treaty Rights and historical memory: Treaty #9 and the process of colonization. The First Nations, of what is now called northern and northwestern Ontario, signed a treaty with the federal and provincial governments in 1905 and 1906. While the First Nations have an oral history of the negotiations which indicate that the treaty was simply one of ‘peace and friendship,’ the federal government believes that something much more was represented in the treaty’s terms. However, its corporate memory does not include an historical understanding of what those terms would have meant at the time of signing and beyond. This research explores the context under which the terms were drafted by the federal and Ontario governments and offers settler interpretations of those terms from an archival, technological and legal perspective.

Settler Images of First Nations and their traditional territories: Research in this area includes explorations of photographs and other visual images that have been created by settler authorities to project certain ideas and understandings of the First Nations and their traditional lands. It also includes examinations of landscape formation and how understandings of land use shape First Nations/settler relations.

Decolonizing the Academy: Working with scholars from Sociology and Education, this research examines the efforts of universities to decolonize their practices, policies and pedagogies and what barriers and challenges exist when doing so. It includes discussions of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action and the contentious debates around the ideas of “Truth,” “Justice” and “Reconciliation.”

Books

2007

The Culture of Hunting, principal editor, Vancouver: UBC Press, pp.276

1999

Cross-Currents:  Hydro-electricity and the Engineering of Northern Ontario, Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, pp.209.

Book Chapters and Journal Articles from 2000

2021

“Responding to the Findings of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission:  A Case Study of Barriers and Drivers for Change at a Small Undergraduate Institution,” Journal of Higher Education, forthcoming (Co-authors:  Prof. Mary-Ellen Donnan and Prof. Avril Aitken).

2020

“If not here, then where?  Making Decolonization a priority at an undergraduate university,” in Decolonizing and Indigenizing Education in Canada, Sheila Cote-Meek and Taima Moke-Pickering eds.  (Co-authors:  Prof. Mary-Ellen Donnan and Prof. Avril Aitken).

“De-colonizing the Treaty #9 Photographs of Duncan Campbell Scott,” in the International Journal of the Image, Vol11:no.1, pp.21-38. https://doi.org/10.18848/2154-8560/CGP/v11i01/21-38

2017

« Les Premières Nations et les Systèmes d’Énergie intracontinentaux:  un moyen de préserver l’état-nation? » Neuvo Mondo, on-line, (October). https://journals.openedition.org/nuevomundo/

2016

“Treaty #3 and the Interactions of Landscape and Memory in the Rainy River and Lake of the Woods Area,” in Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 50: no.1: (Winter, 2016), pp.100-128. Peer reviewed.

2014

“Treaty 3 and the interactions of landscape and memory,” submitted for publication consideration to the Journal of Canadian Studies.

2011

“The Historical Erasure of an Indigenous Identity in the Borderlands: The Western Abenaki of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Quebec,” in Journal of Borderlands Studies, Vol.26: no.2, (August, 2011), pp.179-196.

2010

Liberalism and the Numbered Treaties, Aboriginal Policy Research: a History of Treaties and Policy, Jerry B. White et al., eds., Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishing, Vol.VII, pp.41-57

2007

“Modernity’s Contested Terrains of space and place:  Hunting and Algonquin Park, 1890-1950,” in The Culture of Hunting, Jean L. Manore and Dale G. Miner, eds., Vancouver:  UBC Press, chp.9, pp.121-147.

2006

“Rivers as Text: From Pre-Modern to Post-Modern Understandings of Development, Technology and the Environment in Canada and Abroad,” in A History of Water, The World of Water, Vol.III, T.Tvedt and T. Oestigaard, eds., London: I.B. Taurus & Co. Ltd., pp.229-253.

2003

“The Construction of Rivers and Community Transformation: An Alternative History of the St. Francis River,” in Journal of the Eastern Townships, No.23, Fall/Automne, 2003, pp.27-40.

2001

“The Promise of Hydro? Comparative and contrasting hydro-electric development in Ontario and Quebec,” in Canada Confederation to Present, Chris Hackett and Robert Hesketh eds., CD-Rom, Edmonton: Chinook Multimedia Productions.

2000

“Indian Reserves vs. Indian lands: Contrasting Views of Reserves, Crown Lands and Natural Resource Use in northeastern Ontario, 1906-1990,” in Ontario since Confederation, Edgar-Andre Montigny and Lori Chambers eds., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 195-213.

Conference Papers from 2000

2019

“Consciously Adjusting the Volume of the Settler’s Voice,” Canadian Sociology Association Annual Conference, Vancouver, BC. Co-authors: Mary Ellen Donnan and Avril Aitken.

“Responding to the Findings of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission: A Case Study of Barriers and Drivers for Change at a Small Undergraduate Institution,” International Conference on Learning, Belfast, northern Ireland, co-authors: Mary Ellen Donnan and Avril Aitken.

2018

“Partnerships, Community Capacity Development and the 13 Principles at Bishop’s University,” Quebec Past and Present Colloquium on Quebec Studies, ETRC, Sherbrooke, Quebec in collaboration with Mary Ellen Donnan and Avril Aitken.

2017

De-colonizing the Indigenous Image in Canada: An examination of the photographs of D.C. Scott taken during the Treaty #9 negotiations in 1905-06, International Conference on the Image, Venice Italy, October/November.

“Higher Education, the 13 Principles and Indigenous Peoples: Putting Words into Action at Bishop’s,” Colloquium on the Struggle for Social and Environmental Rights Brazil and Canada in Solidarity, Sherbrooke, Quebec, with Mary Ellen Donnan and Avril Aitken.

2015

« Les Premières Nations et les Systèmes d’Énergie intracontinentaux: un moyen de préserver l’état-nation? » and “Intervention in First Nations societies by the Canadian State” for the International Committee for Historical Sciences Congress, Jinan, China.

2014

The survey and the map: the use of territorial technologies as instruments of colonization of Aboriginal lands in Canada, World History Congress, San Jose, Costa Rica.

The Department of Indian Affairs, D.C. Scott and the Governmentality of Treaties 3 and 9, CHA, St. Catherines, Ontario.

2013

The pen, the canoe, the survey: Technologies of Environmental Colonization, Quelques Arpents de Neige Environmental History Workshop, Kingston, Ontario.

2011

Treaty #3 and the interactions of landscape and memory in the Rainy River area during the late nineteenth century, CHA, New Brunswick. « Le Traité no 9 et la perméabilité des frontières entre les rapports oraux et écrits des négociations, » Paper to be presented at the ACFAS Annual Conference, May, Sherbrooke ACFAS Sherbrooke.

2010

“Treaties as tools for modern state formation? Aboriginal arguments to the contrary in Treaty #3 and #9” American Society for Ethnohistory, Ottawa.

2009

“Indigeneity meets Industrialism: Contrasting and Colliding Views of a Canadian northern hinterland, 1870-1930” forthcoming (August), International Congress on Environmental History, Copenhagen.

“Liberalism and The Numbered Treaties,” Aboriginal Policy Research Conference, Ottawa: Indian and Northern Affairs Canada/University of Western Ontario.

2007

“Treaty 9 and the Borderland of Northern Ontario: Liberalism, Colonialism and Native Resistance to State Expansion,” Canadian Historical Association Annual Conference, University of Saskatchewan.

2006

“Treaty 9:  Is it or is it not part of Canada’s ‘Liberal Order Framework?’” Wahnapitae Annual Aboriginal Conference, Temagami Ontario.

2005

“Foreigners in their own Land: The erasure of Abenaki history in the Eastern Townships,” for Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting, University of Western Ontario.

“Professing an interest in First Nations History: Reflections on Teaching and Researching Native/settler Relations in a Canadian University” for “First Nations, First Thoughts,” School of Canadian Studies Annual Conference, Edinburgh.

2003

“The Technology of Rivers and Community Transformation: An Alternative History of the St. Francis,” ETRC annual conference, Bishop’s University.

2001

Modernity’s Contested Terrains of space and place: Hunting and Algonquin Park, 1890-1950,” Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting, Laval.

“Rivers as text: from pre-modern to post-modern understandings of development, technology and the environment in Canada and abroad,” International Water History Association Conference, Bergen, Norway.

Dr. David Webster

Dr. David Webster

Associate Professor

David Webster (Ph.D. British Columbia 2005) teaches international and Asian history topics with a focus on the 20th century. He came to Bishop’s in 2012 by way of positions in Toronto, San Francisco and Regina. His book Fire and the Full Moon: Canada and Indonesia in a Decolonizing World (UBC Press, 2009) examines Canada-Indonesia relations from 1945 to 1999 at both government and civil society levels. Previously he was collection editor of East Timor” Testimony (Between the Lines, 2004). His research, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, concentrates on trans-Pacific interactions between Canada and Asia, and on the diplomacy of independence movements in Asia.

Interview with David Webster – Part 1:

Interview with David Webster – Part 2:

Interview with David Webster – Part 3:

Dr. Webster’s research is focused on trans-Pacific interactions between Canada and Asia, especially in the realms of diplomacy, religion and economic development; and the transnational diplomatic identities of movements for independence around the Pacific Rim, especially in Timor-Leste (East Timor) and Indonesia. He has three major current projects:

Modern Missionaries: Canadian Development Advisors in Southeast Asia, 1945-65

Postwar Canadian approaches to Asia were often in the non-governmental realm, drawing on the country’s missionary heritage. While diplomats in Ottawa worked for pro-Western states in the political realm, Canadian policies on economic development also aimed at building new states in the Canadian image. Canadians in government, transnational and non-governmental positions offered their own country as a model.

The international experts called together by the UN Technical Assistance Administration were central to Canadian postwar hopes and aspirations. The Administration, headed by Canadian civil servant Hugh Keenleyside, also included staff member George Cadbury, previously director of the Saskatchewan CCF government’s Economic Planning Board. It was individual Canadian technical advisers like these who offered the hands-on advice and played the crucial role in shaping policy taken by Southeast Asian states. These “modern missionaries” imagined themselves as part of a transnational community, one in which Canada could play a leadership role by being an active member of multilateral organizations.

L’action canadienne d’après-guerre en Asie s’est souvent déroulée en marge des interventions gouvernementales, faisant appel à la charité missionnaire. Sur le plan politique, Ottawa favorisait l’ouverture des États sur l’Occident, tandis que sur le plan économique, ses politiques visaient à encourager l’avènement de nouveaux États à l’image du Canada. Les Canadiens oeuvrant dans les secteurs gouvernemental, transnational et non gouvernemental offraient alors leur propre pays en exemple.

Par leur travail, les conseillers techniques canadiens ont joué un rôle déterminant et apporté les conseils pratiques nécessaires pour orienter la destinée des États du sud-est asiatique. Ces « missionnaires modernes » se voyaient membres d’une collectivité transnationale au sein de laquelle le Canada pouvait occuper une place prééminente en s’engageant activement dans plusieurs organisations multilatérales. Aux côtés de l’ONU, le Canada mettait ses espoirs d’après-guerre dans les experts internationaux réunis par l’Administration de l’assistance technique des Nations unies, sous la houlette du fonctionnaire canadien Hugh Keenleyside et d’une équipe dont était membre George Cadbury, ancien dirigeant du Conseil de planification économique du gouvernement CCF de la Saskatchewan.

Notion-States: Non-State Diplomacy on the Pacific Rim

This project studies the ideas and activities independence movements in maritime Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia and Timor-Leste) and the Southwest Pacific, from the early twentieth century to the present. A series of “notion-states” emerged in each case, before the creation of a nation-state. This is a study, therefore, in the formation of national identity and in the way new nations asserted themselves internationally.

A “notion-state” is a group of people who come to consider themselves as a nation before acquiring a state, with members of the notion-state trying to win international support and recognition. That diplomatic campaign in turn affects the way the prospective nation is imagined.

To illustrate by example: the former Portuguese colony of Timor-Leste (East Timor) was invaded and occupied by the armed forces of neighbouring Indonesia from 1975 to 1999, gaining independence in 2002. During that occupation, a group of ethnically and linguistically diverse peoples came to consider themselves a single Timorese nation, in the course of shared suffering and resistance to Indonesian rule. Timorese independence campaigners first tried to copy the model of “third world” liberation movements pioneered in Africa. This combined guerrilla resistance inside the territory and a “diplomatic front” that tried to win the support of the international community and disrupt Indonesia’s own overseas diplomatic, economic and military support. The diplomatic front gained primacy with a successful effort to disrupt Indonesia’s international alliances, using the language of human rights and a global indigenous “fourth world.” This approach conferred greater ability to build transnational alliances in the “first world” of developed North America, Europe and Australia. International developments in turn played a crucial role in altering East Timorese identity. Before becoming an independent nation-state, East Timorese came to think of themselves as a notion-state, “already independent” and alive in the minds of its people, both inside the territory and in a global diaspora.

Canadian Churches and the trans-Pacific

The role of religion cannot be overlooked in international affairs. From the great Christian missionary enterprise to Asia in the 19th century, in which Canadians played a major role, to the “clash of civilizations” rhetoric that informs today’s “war on terror,” relations between states and societies have been deeply informed by religious flows, currents and clashes. Scholars are paying increasing attention internationally to the role of non-state actors, including religious organizations, in historical and contemporary foreign policy. Meanwhile, Canada’s relations with Asia in the political, economic, and social fields are more and more important. This informs a growing area of study about the history of Canada-Asia interactions.

This project addresses the role of Canadian churches in shaping Canadian foreign relations, especially with Asia. Did Canadian churches have their own “Asia policy” distinct from the Canadian government? If so, how did it interact with state policy? Without seeing the place of religious organizations in Canada’s foreign relations, we cannot come to a full understanding of Canada’s place in the world. Two Canadian church coalitions illustrate these themes in Canada-Asia relations: the Canada China Programme and the Canada Asia Working Group. They were proactive, autonomous foreign policy actors occupying a space between Canadian churches, the Canadian government, and Asian partner organizations who themselves had shifting relations with their own governments. A study of these organizations contributes to our understanding of non-state influences on foreign policy and the interplay of religion and international relations history.

Fire and the Full Moon: Canada and Indonesia in a Decolonizing World (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2009).

“Development Advisors in a Time of Cold War and Decolonization: The UN Technical Assistance Administration, 1950-1959,” Journal of Global History 6 no. 2 (2011): 249-272.

“Petrolio, Imperi e Nazionalismo Economico: il Saskatchewan e l’Indonesia a confront, 1944-1963” [“Oil, empire and economic nationalism in Saskatchewan and Indonesia, 1944-63,”] 900: Per una storia del tempo presente (Italy) no. 4 (2011): 59-83.

“Canada and Bilateral Human Rights Dialogues,” Canadian Foreign Policy 16 no. 3 (2010): 43-63.

“Self-fulfilling prophecies and human rights in Canada’s foreign policy: the case of East Timor,” International Journal 65 no. 3 (2010): 739-750. Winner of Marvin Gelber award for best article in journal by a junior scholar, 2010.

“Modern Missionaries: Canadian Postwar Technical Assistance Advisors in Southeast Asia,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 20 no. 2 (2009): 86-111.

“Canadian Catholics and the East Timor Struggle, 1975-99,” Historical Studies 75 (2009): 63-82. Winner of Paul Bator award for best article in journal, 2008-09.

“Regimes in Motion: The Kennedy Administration and Indonesia’s New Frontier, 1960-1962,” Diplomatic History 33 no. 1 (January 2009): 92-123.

“History, Nation and Narrative in East Timor’s Truth Commission Report,” Pacific Affairs 80 #4 (2007): 581-91.

“From Sabang to Merauke: Nationalist Separation Movements in Indonesia,” Asia Pacific Viewpoint 48 no. 1 (April 2007): 85-93.

“Dari Sabang sampai Merauke: Gerakan Pemisahan Nasionalis di Indonesia” [“From Sabang to Merauke: Nationalist Separation Movements in Indonesia,”] in Drama Indonesia: Ketidakpastian di Tengah Globabalisasi [Indonesian Drama: Uncertainty in a Globalizing World] eds. Geoffrey Hainsworth & Bakti Setiawan (Yogyakarta, Indonesia: Gadjah Mada University Press, 2006).

“Islam and Cold War Modernization in the Formative Years of the McGill Institute of Islamic Studies,” International Journal of Canadian Studies 32 (2005): 15-43.

Contract Faculty

Eve Dutil

Eve Dutil

Contract Faculty

Eve Dutil is a Bishop’s University alumni (BA double major in History and International Studies with minor and concentration in Japanese Studies) who has graduated from the University of Toronto with a MA in East Asian Studies (2023). She specializes in pre-modern Japanese history and is the recipient of the SSHRC: Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship Master’s (CGS M) 2021 for her proposed research on the Hōjō Regency. 

She has an Online JSAC Conference Publication in progress from her master’s main research paper “Of Rituals, Ghosts, and Divine Winds: an Analysis of the Role of Religion and Ritual within the Hōjō Regency.”

Dr. Rishma Johal

Contract Faculty

Rishma Johal is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at McGill University where she is currently a course lecturer. She recently completed research work in the United States as a Fulbright Research Award recipient based at the University of Washington. Last fall, she completed the Eccles Centre Visiting Fellowship at the British Library. Rishma is also the recipient of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Award, Fonds de Recherche du Québec Doctoral Award, MITACS Graduate Research Award, and several Graduate Excellence Awards (McGill), which supported her research activities throughout Canada, the United States, and Britain.

Her research interests include Migration and Settlement in Canada and the United States, Indigenous-Settler Relations, the British Empire, and South Asian Diaspora. Rishma’s current research examines intersections among early South Asian migrants and Indigenous communities of the Pacific Northwest between 1857 and 1947. Previously, Rishma completed her MA in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University. She also worked as a reporter for a major South Asian network covering a variety of social, cultural, and political events daily. She has published several articles and worked as a freelance writer for a few popular publications as well. Furthermore, Rishma has been actively involved within the McGill community serving in distinct leadership positions, such as Academic Director of the History and Classics Graduate Student Association as well as Social Media Representative for GradLife McGill.

“Traversing Seas to Evading Proscription: South Asians, Race, and (Im)mobility in Canada and the United States, 1882-1929,” Terrae Incognitae (March 2022).

“The Ghadar Movement and its Impact on South Asian Canadian Women,” republished as a chapter in Social History of South Asians in British Columbia ed. Satwinder Bains (April 2022).

“The Forsaken Daughters of a Developing World: Femicide, Development and Women’s Health in India,” International Journal of Science and Research 7/9 (September 2018).

“Sikh Roots in the Fraser Valley: 100 Years and Counting,” British Columbia History Magazine ed.

Andrea Lister (British Columbia Historical Federation, 2015): pp. 28-34.

“Behind the Borders: Picasso’s Studio and the Parameters of Colonialism,” PIPE Journal (University of the Fraser Valley, 2015): 22-27.

Moving Beyond the Citizen’s Shadow: South Asian Canadian Women’s Agency. Burnaby: SFU Summit Repository, June 2014. https://summit.sfu.ca/item/14484.

“The Ghadar Movement and its Impact on South Asian Canadian Women,” Ghadar Conference Proceedings published by the University of the Fraser Valley (October 2014): pp. 141-170. https://www.ufv.ca/media/assets/cics/resources/Ghadar-Conference-Proceedings.pdf

“Drifting Away: The Komagata Maru, Racial Prejudice, and Canadian Youth,” Komagata Maru Centennial Souvenir (June 2014): pp. 41-46.

Neven Leddy

Contract Faculty

Jody Robinson 

Contract Faculty

Always interested in the history of the Eastern Townships, Jody Robinson obtained her BA from Bishop’s University and went on to pursue a Master’s in History at the Université de Sherbrooke. In 2006, she was hired as the archivist for the Eastern Townships Resource Centre, an organization committed to the preservation of the heritage of the Eastern Townships. In 2023, she became the Centre’s Executive Director. For over a decade, Jody has worked with many heritage organizations in the Eastern Townships on special projects as an archival consultant. Jody has also served on the board of directors for a variety of heritage and community organizations and is presently vice-president of the Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network. 

Robinson, Jody. “The Jenks family of Coaticook.” Stanstead Historical Society Journal 28 (2019): 70-74.

Robinson, Jody. “The Architecture of Villégiature on Lake Memphremagog, 1860–1890.” Journal of Eastern Townships Studies 41 (2013): 55-79.

Robinson, Jody. “Beyond Business: Interactions of English and French Through the Archives of the Douglas Family, an Overview.” Journal of Eastern Townships Studies 40 (2013): 87-96.

Robinson, Jody. “The Child Welfare Clinic of Sherbrooke fonds.” Journal of Eastern Townships Studies 34 (2009): 87-94.

Robinson, Jody. “ ‘Home Sweet Home, that word sinks down deep in my sole’: a Selection of Letters Home from Family Abroad.” Journal of Eastern Townships Studies 32-33 (2008): 171-197.

Robinson, Jody. “Lumbering, House Parties and Fiddle Music: An Overview of the Oral Histories in the Ian Tait Collection.” Journal of Eastern Townships Studies 31 (2007): 79-102.

The Record (Sherbrooke). Regular series of historical articles on people, places, and events from the Eastern Townships using documents from the archives. 2011-2019