What made a man in the 18th and 19th century? That鈥檚 what 91亚色 Professor, graduate director of the Department of History, will reveal at her public lecture聽tomorrow as part of the Canada: Like You've Never Heard It Before Speakers' Series.
Podruchny鈥檚 talk, 鈥淭ough Bodies, Fast Dogs, Well-Dressed Wives: Measures of Manhood Among French-Canadian Voyageurs in the North American Fur Trade鈥, will take place聽tomorrow, from 2:30 to 4pm, at 010 Vanier College, Vanier Senior Common Room, Keele campus.
She will discuss French Canadian and 惭茅迟颈蝉 voyageurs working in the fur trade. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the voyageurs developed a range of masculine ideals that worked together to promote a particular trope of manhood among this workforce. Men were expected to perform near miraculous feats of labour by paddling continuously for weeks on end, barely stopping to sleep and eat, carrying impossibly heavy packs across slippery and steep portages, and shooting through dangerous rapids, says Podruchny.
They challenged each other to develop bodies that were as tough as possible through games of speed, endurance and strength. They distinguished categories within the workforce. Pork eaters were denigrated as lesser men; North men were considered to be tougher; Athabasca men the toughest, she says.
Tough man ideals included taking risks, being jovial and stoic in the聽face of hardship, and standing up to the dangers of the wild. Voyageurs also idealized largess, spending money on luxury goods, such as decorating their possessions, feasting and drinking, and wooing women with extravagant gifts. The range of these ideals created distinct values in fur trade and 惭茅迟颈蝉 communities that stood out sharply from their bosses, missionaries, and later white settlers who began to intrude in the northwest starting in the 1870s.
Podruchny work focuses on the history of French and indigenous contact in early Canada. She is the author of and co-editor of .
The 2010-2011 Canada: Like You鈥檝e Never Heard It Before Speakers' Series features public lectures by prominent 91亚色 Canadianists. Co-sponsored by the Canadian Studies Program and the Canadian Studies club, this interdisciplinary series demonstrates the breadth and depth of both Canadianist research at 91亚色 and the work of outside authors.
This series is co-sponsored by Vanier College, Winters College, New College, Stong College, Calumet College and Founders College, as well as the Office of the Dean of the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.
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