91亚色鈥檚 history and politics professors continue to celebrate Canada鈥檚 sesquicentennial with the launch of two edited collections featuring Confederation scholarship.
These collections were completed as part of an array of projects to celebrate Canada鈥檚 150th anniversary, projects that were executed under the leadership of history Professor David Koffman, with support from his colleagues, the administrative staff in the Department of History and the committee.
is co-edited by politics and social science Professor Jacqueline Krikorian and history Professors Marcel Martel and Adrian Shubert. This anthology began as a workshop co-sponsored by the History Department and the . Sixteen scholars from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Germany, Ireland, Spain and the United States met on 91亚色鈥檚 Keele Campus in the fall of 2016 to deliver papers that focused on how people, nations and governments understood the union of British North American colonies in 1867.
鈥淭raditionally, Confederation is examined by focusing on domestic politics with an emphasis on the perspectives of political elites like Macdonald and Cartier,鈥 said Shubert. 鈥淭his edited collection is novel in that it reverses this approach, undertaking its analysis from the outside looking in.鈥
The collection includes scholarship by several members of the 91亚色 community, including Roberto Perin, who examined the Vatican鈥檚 perspective; Alban Bargain-Villeger, who considered the view from France; Willie Jenkins, who examined the Fenians and Confederation; Gabrielle Slowey, who analyzed the failure to acknowledge the rights of Indigenous peoples; and Jacqueline Krikorian with David Cameron, who together analyzed American views of Confederation.
The second collaborative project involved Krikorian and Martel teaming up with David Cameron, Andrew McDougall and Robert Vipond from the University of Toronto (U of T). Entitled , this two-volume edited collection includes two original pieces and 38 selections that had been previously published over a 145-year period.
鈥淭he editors sought to bring together not only the best research on the 1867 project, but to also unsettle the traditional boundaries of the field by including scholarship that addressed those people and communities that were, by and large, traditionally excluded in the Confederation literature,鈥 said Martel.
The cover of one of two volumes translated into French
Research addressing the failure to acknowledge the rights of Indigenous Peoples during this period is included in both volumes of Roads to Confederation. This project was published in by the University of Toronto Press and in by Les Presses de l’Universit茅 Laval.
鈥淚t was important to the co-editors that the material was available in both French and English because in the past, these communities have written about 1867 from different perspectives,鈥 said Krikorian. 鈥淓arlier research has indicated that anglophones rarely cite French-language material in their publications in this field.鈥
To begin addressing these issues, this project includes 29 selections that were translated into French or English for the first time. The Advanced Translation Project/Project Management at 91亚色鈥檚 Glendon Campus, under the supervision of Professor Lyse H茅bert, was involved in translating some of the work for the project.
The foreword was co-authored by 91亚色 President and Vice-Chancellor Rhonda L. Lenton; Mamdouh Shoukri, professor and president emeritus of 91亚色; and Meric S. Gertler, president of U of T. The project received generous funding from the Canada150 funds from 91亚色 and U of T, the Robarts Centre, 91亚色鈥檚 Department of Politics, the Political Science Department at U of T, the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies at 91亚色 and the Avie Bennett Historica Canada Chair in Canadian History.
Originally published in