There was nothing liberal about the British empire, claims to the contrary notwithstanding. In Ghosts of Empire (2011), Kwasi Kwarteng argues that “Britain’s empire was not liberal in the sense of being a plural, democratic society. The empire openly repudiated ideas of human equality and put power and responsibility into the hands of a chosen elite, drawn […]
John Vincent in 1966 wrote that the great moral idea of British liberalism was manliness. This is a topic Susan Pedersen discusses in a chapter entitled “What is political history now?” in What is history now? (2002). According to Vincent, for a nineteenth-century man one’s assignment in life was “to provide for his own family, have his own […]
My volunteer work on behalf of people who stutter is largely in the past; my current volunteer work focuses on my local community. By way of example, I’m currently writing a series of blog posts related to the life and times of Colonel Samuel Smith, who built a log cabin in 1797 in what is […]
Below is an outline of topics for a brief talk at Centennial College, July 27, 2012 for Professor Patrick Michalak’s class. The title for the talk is from an essay with the same title from What we see: Advancing the observations of Jane Jacobs (2010), available on loan from the Toronto Public Library. I much […]
Update: A Feb. 21, 2014 New Yorker article is entitled: “Why is academic writing so academic?” [End of update] In Myth, ritual and the oral (2010), Jack Goody discusses fiction and non-fiction, the role of narrative in oral and lecto-oral societies, and the history of novels and the theatre. In lecto-oral cultures, one finds […]
Building Stories is a system is designed to inventory historic buildings, structures, and sites across Canada. Related resources include the Heritage Resources Centre at the University of Waterloo. A blog at the Heritage Resources Centre features regular updates. News release highlights smartphone applications A news release provides an overview of the project. University of Waterloo website highlights […]
As I’ve noted elsewhere, we know little about the personality of Colonel Samuel Smith. Because he built a cabin in 1797, after the American Revolutionary War, on what is now the school grounds of Parkview School at 85 Forty First Street in Long Branch, in the southwest corner of the City of Toronto, his story is […]
Museums have a relationship to history, a relationship that’s been explored in some depth. In Theorizing Museums (1996), there’s a reference to Timothy Mitchell’s observation that in nineteenth-century Europe, the museum exhibit was constructed as a simulation of external reality, with a clear sense of separation between the reality and the representation. A European museum-goer […]