Events

  • History/Labour Studies talk on teacher unionism, Nov. 18

    Monday, November 02, 2026 | By

    Join the Departments of History and Labour Studies for a virtual conversation about teacher unionism with Dr. Chantal Mancini. We are co-hosting a webinar directed particularly at Brock students planning to enter the K-12 classroom. Don’t miss this unique opportunity!

    “Why Do Teachers Need Unions? Organizing the Education Workplace, Past and Present” will be held on Wednesday, November 18, 2026, from 7-8:30 p.m. Q&A will follow. All are welcome.

    Please register on Eventbrite here.

    For generations, Canadians have gotten the message that labour unions might make sense for factory workers or tradespeople but not for educated people in professional jobs. But K-12 teachers have a long history (over 100 years!) of organizing collectively to improve pay and benefits, win job security, and make sure schools are places where educators as well as students can thrive. Today, more than 80% of education professionals in Canada belong to unions.

    How and why did it happen – and what does it mean to belong to a teachers’ union today?

    Whether you are studying to become a teacher or about to start your teaching career – or even if you are already working in the classroom – you won’t want to miss this opportunity to learn more from a leading expert on teacher unionism: Dr. Chantal Mancini, Adjunct Assistant Professor in the School of Labour Studies at McMaster University.

    Dr. Mancini has extensive experience as a secondary-school teacher with the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board and as past president of the Hamilton-Wentworth branch of the Ontario Secondary Schools Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF). She holds a Ph.D. in Labour Studies from McMaster (2023), and her doctoral dissertation on how centralized collective bargaining has affected OSSTF won the 2025 Eugene A. Forsey Prize in Canadian Labour and Working-Class History from the Canadian Committee on Labour History, affiliated with the Canadian Historical Association.

     

    Categories: Events

  • Dr. Michelle Vosburgh to share local history, Nov. 7 and Nov. 28

    Monday, November 02, 2026 | By

    Dr. Michelle Vosburgh, Canadian historian and long-time part-time instructor in the History Department, will be speaking (twice!) as part of this year’s L. R. Wilson Heritage Research Archives Speaker Series, to be held at 286 King St. in Port Colborne.

    Both presentations – one on war memorials (Nov. 7) and one on Welland Canal workers (Nov. 28) – are free and open to the public. Don’t miss these informative and engaging events!

    Categories: Events

  • History Speaker Series: Jordyn Beaupré on girlhood in late Victorian-era Ontario, Nov. 10

    Wednesday, October 28, 2026 | By

    The History Department is pleased to announce the first talk in its 2026-27 Speaker Series.

    “Within and Without the Home: Displaced Girls, Settler Colonialism, and the Limits of Legal Protection in Late Victorian Ontario”
    Jordyn Beaupré, part-time Instructor, Department of History, Brock University; Ph.D. candidate, Department of History, McMaster University

    Tuesday, November 10, 2026
    1:30 – 3:00 p.m.
    573A Glenridge Ave. (GLA), Room 201

    The talk will be followed by a question-and-answer period. Light refreshments will be served. All are welcome.

    For Brock affiliates, please RSVP here: https://experiencebu.brocku.ca/event/336876

    Special thanks to Brock’s Social Justice and Equity Studies M.A. Program for co-sponsorship and support.

    In her talk, Jordyn Beaupré explores how ideas about home and the family influenced public debates and legal proceedings that focused on protecting adolescent girls in late nineteenth-century Ontario. She examines how race and class affected which kinds of families were seen as legitimate and capable of producing girls who, if subjected to sexual violence, would be considered worthy of legal protections – and how, in turn, institutionalization and settler-colonial policies prevented some girls from receiving those protections. Juxtaposing the experiences of Indigenous girls and immigrant girls sent to Canada as “home children,” she shows how prioritizing white settler families produced distinct and uneven forms of unprotected girlhood.

    Jordyn Beaupré is a part-time instructor in Brock University’s Department of History and a doctoral candidate in McMaster University’s Department of History, currently in the final stages of her studies. At McMaster, she received a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship and completed a graduate diploma in Gender and Social Justice. She is a historian of girlhood, law, and colonialism, focusing on late nineteenth-century Canada and the position of girls in the nation-building project. Her work has appeared in the Journal of History and the Canadian Journal of Law and Society and will soon appear in the Journal of the History of Sexuality.

     

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  • Movie Screening: Ghost in the Machine, Monday, Sept. 28 at 7pm

    Friday, September 18, 2026 | By

    Brock’s Department of History – along with the Posthumanism Reearch Institute, the Social Justice Research Institute, and the President’s Advisory Committee on Human Rights, Equity, and Decolonization – is co-sponsoring a showing of the documentary film Ghost in the Machine, a gripping examination of artificial intelligence that the 2026 Sundance Film Festival has called an “urgent technological horror story.”

    The film is showing on Monday, Sept. 28, at 7 p.m. at the Marilyn I. Walker Theatre in downtown St. Catharines. It’s free and open to the public. Don’t miss it!

    If you are affiliated with Brock, you can register to attend here: https://experiencebu.brocku.ca/event/331796

    For the Sundance story: https://www.sundance.org/blogs/2026-sundance-film-festival-ghost-in-the-machine/

    To view the film trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9DAv0D7tnY&t=1s

    Categories: Events

  • Join our History welcome session: Sept. 22, 2026

    Tuesday, September 15, 2026 | By

    Majoring in History at Brock, or thinking about it? Don’t miss our welcome session for new and returning undergraduates, to be held on Tuesday, Sept. 22, from 1-3 p.m. in 573A Glenridge Ave. (GLA), Room 201.

    You’ll learn about the major, Concurrent Education, and the History Co-op program from faculty and students who are in the know. And enjoy a free slice of pizza while you’re at it!

    For more information, contact the History Department at [email protected].

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  • Learn firsthand about flax with History postdoc Ali Macdonald: Sept. 19, 2026

    Monday, September 07, 2026 | By

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  • MA in History Information Session

    Thursday, August 20, 2026 | By

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  • Ace Gammon-Burnett to defend History MA thesis: August 24, 2026

    Wednesday, August 05, 2026 | By

    History MA candidate Ace Gammon-Burnett will defend his thesis on Monday, August 24, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

    The defence will take place on Teams. Interested members of the public are welcome to attend.

    Ace’s thesis is entitled, “Opposita juxta: Aristotelian Antithesis as the Epistemic Engine of Alexander Ross’s Pansebeia: or, A View of All Religions in the World (1653/1655).” His thesis supervisor is Dr. Michael Driedger.

    Thesis abstract

    Alexander Ross (1591–1654), Royalist cleric and controversialist, confronted the collapse of sociopolitical and religious conformity during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum—and the exposure of early modern Europeans to global religious diversity—by doubling down on an aggressively ancient Aristotelian mode of knowing. This thesis foregrounds Ross’s use of antithesis as a core epistemological structure for defining “true religion” through the curated “deformities” of its many contraries in his best-selling Pansebeia (1653/1655). I also trace Ross’s theory of heliolatry (sun-worship) as the origin of “Gentile” religion, linking his anxieties over contemporary heliocentric innovations across key texts of his corpus to his conclusions in Pansebeia. Building primarily on R.J.W. Mills’s work on the conflicting legacy of Pansebeia as both heresiographical polemic and an inadvertent precursor to Enlightenment notions of religious diversity, my close-reading analysis across three chapters reconstructs Ross’s comparative method to show how his rigid Aristotelian framework shaped the aims, limits, and paradoxical consequences of Pansebeia.

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  • Lauren Berry to defend History MA thesis: August 17, 2026

    Wednesday, August 05, 2026 | By

    The History Deparatment is pleased to announce that MA candidate Lauren Berry will defend her thesis on Monday, August 17, from 10 a.m. to 12 noon.

    The defence will take place both in person, in Room 600F of the Plaza building on the Brock University campus, and on Teams. It is open to interested members of the public.

    Lauren’s thesis is entitled, “Panic and Popularity: English Women Actors and their Detractors, 1730-1810.” Her thesis supervisor is Dr. Jessica Clark.

    Thesis abstract

    In eighteenth-century England, claims circulated about the alleged licentiousness and immorality of both the theatre and actresses, fueling anxieties that dominated eighteenth-century English culture. This created challenges not only for the theatre, but also actresses as cultural creators; these included but were not limited to actresses not being taken seriously, stigma around their work, a nebulous social position for the group, and the emergence of a mode of celebrity that, while a positive development in some ways, also generated gossip, rumours, and scurrilous stories in the English press and popular culture.

    This thesis argues that, in spite of these challenges, pro-theatricalists and actresses responded to detractors by asserting their role as cultural creators through their own writings, thus reclaiming a space among an emotional community of supporters who were key contributors to English cultural productions. It does so via both quantitative and qualitative historical methods.

    For the former, this thesis surveys recurring language and arguments in twenty-six tracts from authors of various religious denominations and three tracts by secular authors. These incudes arguments made against the theatre in pamphlets, books, and sermons such as the anonymously written The Stage the High Road to Hell (1767) and Remarks on the Prevailing Custom of Attending Stage Entertainments (1794) by John Kendall.

    For the latter, I undertake deep, contextual readings of print culture produced by both detractors of the theatre and cultural creators defending its significance—that is novels, plays, and autobiographies written by actresses such as Charlotte Charke and Mary Robinson—as well as pamphlets and responses created by pro-theatricalists and reformers. I also consult literature, conduct or advice manuals, encyclopedias, pamphlets, tracts, and sermons.

    In doing so, this thesis demonstrates that eighteenth-century English actresses were cultural creators in their own right, who led the way in defending the theatre both explicitly and implicitly through their artistic works.

    Categories: Events

  • Join the History Department at Humanities Smart Start: July 23, 2026

    Monday, July 20, 2026 | By

    (Above: Brock History Department faculty members Jessica Clark, Olatunji Ojo, and Tami J. Friedman [behind the camera] were on hand to greet Humanities students at Smart Start, July 31, 2025.)

    Are you starting school at Brock this fall? Connect with Department of History faculty members at Smart Start (Faculty of Humanities) on July 23. We’ll be staffing a table in Rankin Family Pavilion from 9-10 a.m. and again from 1-2 p.m.

    Don’t miss the Department’s own Dr. Jessica Clark at the Humanities panel, “The One Thing You Should Know: Tips for Humanities Students.” She’ll be speaking about communicating with your instructors. The panel will be held in Sean O’Sullivan Theatre from 10:30-11:30 a.m.

    Be sure to stop by! We’re excited to meet you.

    For the day’s schedule, click here: https://discover.brocku.ca/start/schedule/#july-23

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