Professor Bettina Bradbury of history and women’s studies at Glendon and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies will speak on Twists, Turning Points and Tall Shoulders: Studying Canada and Feminist Histories Wednesday, Oct. 24, from 4 to 6pm in the Senate Chambers, ninth floor North Ross Building. Everyone is welcome to attend.

Bettina Bradbury

In this “intellectual biography”, Bradbury will reflect on her career in and contributions to the study of Canada. An award-winning historian of Québec and family history, she has served 91��ɫ in various roles, including as chair of women’s studies and as director of the graduate program in history, among others. She recently received the Faculty of Graduate Studies Teaching Award.

The event is also a celebration of Canadianist research at 91��ɫ featuring a first collective book launch for Canadian themed publications produced in 2011 and 2012 by members of the 91��ɫ community. It is an opportunity for the Robarts Centre to highlight the breadth of Canadianist research at 91��ɫ.

Anyone wishing to attend the event, should RSVP to robarts@yorku.ca.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin to research stories on the research website.

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JMI is a peer-reviewed, Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada-funded journal that is published bi-annually by the . It’s directed by its founder, 91��ɫ women’s studies Professor Andrea O’Reilly, and is partnered with Demeter Press.

This issue includes 14 articles, seven book reviews and a poetry folio, featuring the work of Laurie Kruk.

The articles in the journal include: ‘Commodifying the Fetus’, ‘The Economics and Politics of Delayed Birth Timing’, ‘Mothers, Milk and Money: Maternal Corporeal Generosity, Social Psychological Trust, and Value in Human Milk Exchange’ and ‘From “Need” to “Risk”: The Neoliberal Construction of the “Bad” Mother’.

For more information, visit the  website.

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She was nominated by 91��ɫ linguistics Professor Sheila Embleton and given the award by Halifax MP Megan Leslie (BA Hons. '03). In 2010 Leslie gave the first Varpu Lindström lecture, an annual event created in Lindström's honour.

Varpu Lindström

Professor Lindström died in Beaverton of brain cancer. She was 63.

91��ɫ will lower the flag to half mast from July 6 at 9am to July 7 at 1pm in her memory.

A memorial service will be held July 6 at 2 pm at , 6150 Yonge Street. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the , P.O. Box 278, 27 St. Clair Ave. E., Toronto, ON M4T 1L0. A private funeral has already been held.

Born in Helsinki, Finland in 1948, Lindström immigrated to Canada in 1963. Her mission to document the Finnish-Canadian experience began one summer while she worked as a Finnair public relations officer and heard old immigrants talk about how hard it was to carve out a new life in Ontario’s backwoods in the 1920s. Lindström, whose father had dragged her “kicking and screaming” at 14 from Helsinki to Oshawa, could relate. “I thought, my goodness, somebody should record this,” she told magazine in a 2006 interview. So she did. The tapes inspired her BA, MA and PhD theses and launched her academic career at 91��ɫ in an emerging new field – Canadian immigration history.

During her distinguished career as a professor and scholar at 91��ɫ, she specialized in North American social history, immigration and women’s studies, focusing primarily on the experience of Finnish immigrants to Canada. Her first book was based on her thesis: Defiant Sisters: A Social History of Finnish Immigrant Women in Canada, 1890-1930. She also published From Heroes to Enemies: Finns in Canada, 1937-1947.

Inspired by Defiant Sister, filmmaker Kelly Saxberg invited Lindström to be researcher and historical consultant for her 2004 National Film Board documentary, . The critically acclaimed documentary was shown on national TV in Finland and at film festivals around the world, and won awards at Manitoba’s 2006 Blizzards Awards.

Until the 75-minute film was released, few knew about the 2,800 young Finnish-Canadians returned to Russia in the 1930s with dreams of a starting a new society and ended up victims of Stalinist purges. “It was not even a footnote in Canadian history books,” Lindström told . From there, Lindström went on a quest to discover what happened to the families caught in the Karelia “fever”.

Lindström became known as a “memory keeper” in Finnish-Canadian communities. Over several decades, she amassed diaries, family correspondences, financial ledgers, war-relief funding and other organizational records about Finns who immigrated to Canada in the 1880s to early 1900s as a result of economic depression and war in Finland. She also collected sound recordings of oral histories, folk music, documentary films, and more than 1,000 books, almanacs and plays published by Finnish authors in North America. Her research into Karelia “fever” took her to Russia where she photocopied rare documents, such as two volumes of a Soviet register of Finnish war crimes, a list of persons found in the mass grave at Karhumaki, and Soviet lists of North American Finns who journeyed to Karelia to help build a socialist utopia. In May, she donated all this to 91��ɫ’s Clara Thomas Archives & Special Collections.

Lindström started teaching history at Atkinson Faculty of Liberal & Professional Studies in 1984. In addition to teaching and research, she played a vital role in 91��ɫ’s administration. She was founding chair of 91��ɫ’s groundbreaking School of Women’s Studies, was chair of Atkinson’s History Department and coordinator of its Canadian Studies Program. While master of Atkinson, she helped the Atkinson Students' Association through a fractious period and they, in gratitude, established the Varpu Lindström Scholarship. She served as an elected Senate representative on 91��ɫ’s Board of Governors and on many University committees, and was acting director of the School of Social Work.

In 2006, she was named a University Professor. Lindström’s personal qualities of quiet determination and selflessness made her a mentor and inspiration to so many, said her nominator, Rhonda Lenton, then Atkinson dean. At the core of all her activities was “her profound respect for human dignity, equity and learning.”

Lindström leaves sons Allan Best (BA 97) and Martin Best, and husband Borje Vähämäki.

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This special issue, Remembering Barbara Godard, is edited by four of her former colleagues and students – 91��ɫ women's studies Professor Eva C. Karpinski, professors Ray Ellenwood and Ian Sowton of the Department of English, and 91��ɫ alumna Jennifer Henderson, now a professor at Carleton University.

A pillar of the 91��ɫ community, Prof. Godard broadly influenced the fields of Canadian and Quebec studies, translation studies, feminist poetics, semiotics and cultural studies. She was also a founding co-editor of the feminist literary periodical Tessera, a contributing editor of Open Letter and The Semiotic Review of Books, and the book review editor for Topia: A Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies.

She died on May 16, 2010, at Toronto Western Hospital (see YFile, May 19, 2010).

For more information, visit the website.

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The film will be screened tonight in the Nat Taylor Cinema, N102 Ross tonight from 6:30 to 9:15pm. Created by New 91��ɫ filmmaker Ellen Weissbrod, this documentary film pays tribute to  and her life. It also explores public responses to a recent major exhibition, held in Rome, New 91��ɫ City and St. Louis, devoted to her work and that of her father Orazio.

The film features an interview with Elizabeth Cohen, 91��ɫ professor of history, women's studies and humanities in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

"Artemisia Gentileschi painted really dramatic and gutsy stuff, and has become one of the heroines of women's history," says Cohen. "As a young woman, Artemisia was raped by a colleague of her father's and there is a trial record that documents her family situation and these events. This archival material is my research area and I speak about it in the film."

But the film is more than historical, says Cohen, because it also represents in a beguiling way the strong and moving responses of modern students and museum visitors to Gentileschi's work and story.

"The film-maker Ellen Weissbrod, from New 91��ɫ, will be present," says Cohen. Following the film, there will be a panel discussion featuring Cohen, along with professors from the Departments of Women's Studies, Film Studies, Visual Arts and History.

A Woman Like That tracks the filmmaker's journey to understand Artemisia Gentileschi in her own times and for 21st -century viewers. It features interviews with scholars and writers who brought the painters' work to North American attention. Weissbrod also travels to Italy to talk with museum curators, art dealers and collectors of Gentileschi's work.

The screening is free and open to the public.

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Left: Annie Bunting

Bringing together historians of slavery and women's human rights scholars, this workshop will explore the phenomenon of forced marriage and enslavement from comparative and historical perspectives.

During conflicts in Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Uganda and Rwanda, women were kidnapped, raped and forced into "marriages" with combatants. recently found such gender violations to constitute a new crime against humanity of forced marriage as opposed to sexual slavery.

Workshop speakers will explore the merits of prosecuting those responsible for forced marriage under the heading of Sexual Slavery, Forced Marriage or Enslavement? They will also explore the historical antecedents of servile marriage and enslavement of women.

A keynote presenter at the workshop is , chair of the Women's Forum in Sierra Leone, a national umbrella organization of women's groups in the region. M'Carthy has been working with the for the past three years and will speak about the experiences of female victims in the Sierra Leone war. Other presenters will discuss comparable practices in Uganda, Rwanda and the DRC.

Speaking at the workshop are:

• , president of Free the Slaves
• Gaëlle Breton-LeGoff, a lecturer at the University of Quebec in Montreal
• 91��ɫ law & society Professor
• , a senior researcher in children, armed conflict and human rights at the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University
• 91��ɫ Distinguished Research Professor Paul Lovejoy, director of The Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migrations of African Peoples and
• Rosaline M’Carthy, President, Women's Forum of Sierra Leone
• , Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa (OSIEA), Harvard Law School
• Osgoode Hall Law School Professor
• University of Hull Professor Joel Quirk,
• , RCUK Fellow in International Slavery at the University of Liverpool
• , 91��ɫ PhD candidate in history, The Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migrations of African Peoples
• Jody Sarich, DePaul University, Free the Slaves

This workshop is the first of two conferences supported by a grant. In February 2011, Bunting will host a larger international conference in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Today's workshop is supported by numerous areas at 91��ɫ, including the Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime & Security, the Office of the Provost, the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation, the dean of the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS), and The Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migrations of African Peoples.

For more information, visit The Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migrations of African Peoples website or contact Kathy Mirzaei, interim graduate program assistant, Department of Sociology, LA&PS.

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This year’s conference will take place on the University’s Keele campus. The 2010 conference theme is “Dialoguing Across Differences”. Keynote speakers and sessions will explore how to dialogue across relevant human rights areas in relation to this theme. Conference participants will engage in interactive sessions focused on communicating difficult topics.

Conference organizers are seeking proposals for sessions on race and racialization, gender expression and expectations, (dis)abilities or sexual orientation.

Presenters are invited to submit proposals on the conference theme for a 60-minute session in the format of a round-table discussion, individual or panel presentation, interactive workshop or dialogue process. Proposals should be provided to the Centre for Human Rights no later than Aug. 31.

For more information, e-mail conference organizers Kristina Osborne or Nythalah Baker or visit the Centre for Human Rights Web site.

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Those questions and more are at the heart of , a new collection of essays edited by 91��ɫ history Professor Myra Rutherdale published this spring by McGill-Queen’s University Press.

The book examines the crucial role women have played in health and medicine as nurses and midwives, particularly in the remote geographical areas that dominate Canada’s landscape. As the book's editor, Rutherdale assembled a national contingent of scholars from nursing, women’s studies, geography, native studies and history to supply the essays and anecdotes that are contained within its pages. The result is a comprehensive volume that provides insight and understanding into the two centuries of history and courage of the women working on the front lines of health care and medicine in Canada’s remote communities.

"I was inspired to gather these works together into one collection because I was made aware that there were many scholars working on the history of outpost nursing and midwivery in rural Canada," says Rutherdale. "It struck me that there would be common themes across the country and across the two centuries explored in this book. Most particularly I thought that the perspective of ‘the periphery’ would be useful to explore."

"Were these women, especially the trained nurses, acting as agents of the state or in the best interests of agencies like the Red Cross? To what extent were they actually autonomous?" asks Rutherdale. "And, were they merely reinforcing the sometimes racist and social inequities that seemed to be part of many of the federal government schemes?"

Left: Myra Rutherdale

"Did they, for example, work with midwives from northern communities, and how did they respond to medical traditions which were already established in the communities before their arrival? What motivated these women nurses and midwives to take up their work in the first place?" notes Rutherdale. "Were they just looking for adventure or were they women who wanted to advance in their chosen careers?"

The essays contained in the book also explore themes of religion, colonialism, social divisions and native-newcomer relations. Special attention is paid by Rutherdale to nursing in Aboriginal communities and the relations of race to medical work, particularly in connection to ideas of British ethnicity and conceptualized meanings of whiteness.

Rutherdale looks at the experience of nurses in Newfoundland and Labrador, northern Saskatchewan, northern British Columbia and the Arctic. The book features essays on topics such as Mennonite midwives in Western Canada, missionary nurses and Aboriginal nursing assistants in the Yukon.

"There were many interesting submissions and several fascinating stories. The Mennonite midwives explored [in an essay] by University of Waterloo history Professor Marlene Epp were especially interesting since they were so integral to the communities in which they worked. Not only were they midwives but they also worked as undertakers and arranged bodies for funeral rites," says Rutherdale.

Right: A nursing station in Iqaluit

What she discovered in compiling the book was that creativity was a key attribute for the women profiled within Caregiving on the Periphery. "The midwives and nurses who worked on the periphery had to work often alone, or sometimes with just one partner, and they had to work quickly to ensure the survival of their patients," says Rutherdale. "They did not necessarily have the opportunity to consult doctors or to speak with teams. They had to do their best under some harsh circumstances. They had to be skilled and confident in themselves. Nurses were trained ‘not to diagnose,’ but they often found themselves having to do just that, and quickly. They were tested in these communities and had to work hard."

That quality of creativity was also a key element for some of the research that went into the book, says Rutherdale, as there were challenges associated with the fact that some of the nurses, midwives and patients did not leave detailed primary source material. "As is evident from this collection, there are some very innovative ways to get around this frustrating lack of evidence," says Rutherdale. She cites an article by Judith Young, professor emerita of nursing at the University of Toronto. "One example of this is the excellent article by Judith Young who researched midwives in 19th-century Toronto. She used directories and land purchase records as well as other official documents to trace the existence of these fascinating midwives – records that might not be turned to for the questions which she ultimately answered. Sometimes one has to be innovative and creative to find traces of the human past."

Rutherdale also drew on the creativity of her 19-year-old son when she was seeking an appropriate title for the book. "I always find titles rather challenging. I had several titles, most of which were not favoured by family, colleagues or publishers," says Rutherdale. "Finally, I hashed it out with my son who has two parents who are historians so he has heard his fair share about Canadian history throughout his life. He thought Caregiving on the Periphery made a lot of sense given what the authors were trying to highlight in their collective works. And how does one disagree with an opinionated 19-year-old?"

Above: Donalda McKillop Copeland with her interpreter and his friends, Southampton Island, early 1950s. Rutherdale is researching the experiences of McKillop Copeland.

Rutherdale teaches Canadian history, with a special focus on 20th-century Canada and native-newcomer relations in the Department of History in 91��ɫ's Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. She also teaches courses on the history of the body and Canadian women's history.

Her current research project is on the history of the introduction of westernized medicine into northern Aboriginal communities. "I look at the history of traditional medicine and ask what changes took place when doctors and nurses moved to northern communities to establish nursing stations and small hospitals," she says. "Northern Canada is still woefully under-served in terms of access to health care and there are many inequities that still exist in northern communities. The infant mortality rate is high, and women are still being sent to the south to deliver their children. This is ridiculous in 2010."

Caregiving on the Periphery is available online through , and .

By Jenny Pitt-Clark, YFile editor

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This is only the second year the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships have been awarded.

“We are delighted with the results of the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships competition and the opportunity that this represents for four of 91��ɫ's outstanding doctoral candidates,” says Douglas Peers (left), dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies. "In addition to exhibiting remarkable potential as young scholars, the success of these students is a testament to 91��ɫ's interdisciplinary strengths in areas such as environmental studies and women's studies. The Vanier Scholarships' emphasis on bringing the most promising international students to Canada to study has allowed 91��ɫ to attract three students with great potential."

The winners from 91��ɫ are: Tania Hernandez Cervantes of Mexico, who is studying agricultural economics; Yasin Kaya of Turkey, who is studying political economy; women’s studies student Healy Thompson of the United States; and history student James D.J. Trepanier of Canada. Each will receive $50,000 per year for up to three years to pursue research that will lead to the growth of the global knowledge base.

Hernandez Cervantes will research alternatives against the global takeover of organic agriculture in Mexico and Canada looking at agro-ecological innovation, rural livelihoods and alternative production, distribution and consumption. Yasin is interested in researching globalization in jeans in a multi-sited ethnography of global economic processes. Thompson will research the protection of vulnerable women looking at northern paternalism and women's sexual and reproductive rights. Trepanier will study scouting and the two solitudes, investigating youth, religion and nationalism in French and English Canada from 1908 to 1970.

This year, 174 scholarships were awarded to doctoral students from Canada and around the world recognized as leaders in their fields of research and in their communities. The Vanier scholars were selected for their exceptional leadership skills and their high standard of scholarly achievement in graduate studies in the social sciences and humanities, natural sciences and engineering, and health.

The scholarships are administered by Canada's three federal granting agencies: the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada. The goal is to build world-class research capacity by recruiting top-tier doctoral students, both nationally and internationally, who will positively contribute to our economic, social and research-based growth for a prosperous future.

For more information, visit the Web site.

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“Over the last 25 years, the topic of motherhood has emerged as a central and significant topic of scholarly inquiry across a wide range of academic disciplines. A cursory review of motherhood research reveals that hundreds of scholarly articles have been published on almost every motherhood theme imaginable,” says O’Reilly, who coined the term "motherhood studies" to acknowledge and demarcate motherhood scholarship as a legitimate and distinctive discipline.

"Indeed, similar to the development of women studies as an academic field in the 1970s, motherhood studies, while explicitly interdisciplinary, has emerged an autonomous and independent scholarly discipline in the last decade," she says. "This intellectual tradition of maternal scholarship both made possible and created the need for an encylopedia on motherhood."

Founder and director of the newly formed (developed from the former Association for Research on Mothering at 91��ɫ), O'Reilly approached contributors and compiled articles by some 300 women scholars throughout the United States, Canada and beyond for the book.

The , the first scholarly reference devoted to the subject, covers a vast array of topics, including how the study of motherhood is almost completely ignored in archeology, mothers in popular culture, hip mamas, influential maternal theorists, the economics of motherhood, psychoanalysis, fertility, guilt, ecofeminism, refugees and the future of mothering. The encyclopedia touches on mothers, and what it means to be a mother in almost every country. It also looks at mothers in film, books, art and poetry, as well as in the Bible.

“The publication is for me a significant moment in motherhood scholarships as it confirms that motherhood has indeed arrived as a legitimate and distinct academic discipline and scholarly field." says O'Reilly. "As well, the encyclopedia, in bringing together for the first time over 700 motherhood topics from A to Z, from aboriginal mothering to zines, and in providing a detailed summary and a bibliography for each topic, is an invaluable resource for anyone – students, journalists, writers, researchers, community agencies – in need of an overview of a particular motherhood topic and/or interested in doing further research on the subject matter.”

Left: Andrea O'Reilly

The book delves into the anthropology of mothering, a discussion on advice literature for mothers, a chronology of motherhood and mother activists. It explores the concept of bad mothering, absentee mothers, alcoholism, ethics, HIV/AIDS, race, slavery, lesbian and bisexual mothers, breastfeeding and more. In addition, it examines terms, concepts, themes, debates, theories and texts of motherhood within history, geography and academia.

To O’Reilly (BA Hons. '85, MA '87, PhD '96), the publication of the encyclopedia is like the coming of age of mothering research. The scholarship of motherhood has been legitimized and recognized, she says.

She introduces the Encyclopedia of Motherhood with a quote from author Adrienne Rich: “We know more about the air we breathe, the seas we travel, than about the nature and meaning of motherhood.” And that is exactly what O’Reilly hopes the encyclopedia will change, that it will provide a glimpse into all things associated with and to mothering. The publication of the encyclopedia demarcates motherhood as an academic discipline and points to the future.

O’Reilly is the author of and . She is also the editor of 14 collections.

For more information, visit the Web site.

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