Department of History Graduate Theses
Recent Submissions
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The Rhetoric and Reality of Class: The Narration of Working-Class Identity in China’s Early 1980s
At the time of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, egalitarianism was a key principle of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), yet the goal of social equality has remained out of reach ever since. ... -
“You Appear Silent to People Who Are Deaf to What You Say”: Solidarity, Schisms, and Alterity in Immigrant Women’s Political Organizing in Toronto, 1970s-1990s
This thesis considers the connections between the increased migration of racialized women to Canada and the ascendancy of social movements in Toronto from the 1970s to the 1990s. In the mid-1970s, there was a surge of ... -
"Our Kind of Love": Black and White Interracial Relationships in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Ontario
The subject of Black and White interracial relationships is one that has been neglected in the existing historiography of Black Canadian studies. Historically, scholars have treated these relationships as salacious stories ... -
The Magician, the Magical Creature, and the Priest: The Division of Labour Between Magical Beings and the Church in Kievan Rus’ and Muscovy
This thesis explores how magicians and magical creatures worked with the church and Christianity in Kievan Rus’ and Muscovy from the tenth to seventeenth centuries. By using folk tales, chronicles, statutes, household ... -
Back to their Ancient Roots: A Comparative Analysis between The Tale of Bygone Years and the Historia Regum Britanniae
Historians have usually focused on the history of Kyivan Rus′ either by itself or in relation to Byzantine history. This is especially evident in the way that scholars have labeled allusions to antiquity in the PVL as ... -
War Criminal, Multiculturalism, and Post-war Liberalism in Canada
In 1985, the federal government of Canada responded to concerns that Nazi war criminals were resident in the country by establishing a Royal Commission. Under the leadership of Judge Jules Deschênes the Commission of Inquiry ... -
Retracing Eternity: Freemasonry, Theosophy and the Occult Revival, 1875-1925
In 1875, in a small apartment in New York City, a handful of freemasons and spiritualists gathered to create a new occult society. What emerged, after hours of debating, drinking and smoking, was the Theosophical Society. ... -
The Useable Past: History and Collective Identity in Nova Scotia, 1835-1920
This dissertation examines the writing of history in Nova Scotia between 1835 and 1920, beginning with the promotional loyalist works of Thomas Chandler Haliburton and ending in the early twentieth-century when tourism ... -
A Contextual Analysis of Hotman’s Francogallia
This thesis analyzes Francogallia, a sixteenth century text which claimed that the historical foundations of France could be traced back to the sixth century with the union of the Franks and Gauls. Composed during the ... -
Out of Their Grasp: Space, Power, and the American Revolution
Over the course of twenty years after 1763, thirteen of the Britain’s most-prized colonies tore away from their imperial fold, erupting eventually into a bloody civil war and a global revolution. Central to this all too ... -
Breaking the Cycle: Oral Histories of Trauma & Resilience among Unhoused Queer & Trans Youth in Ontario, from the 1970s to the 2010s
This dissertation is about queer and trans folks who experienced houselessness during their youth, between the 1970s and the 2010s in Ontario, Canada. These archival and oral history stories serve to mobilize knowledge ... -
Metamorphosis in the Ifriqiyan Cocoon: Ḥafṣid State Formation, Diplomacy, and Transformation, 1220-1450
Over the course of three centuries, from 1229 to 1574, Ifriqiya was ruled by the Ḥafṣid dynasty. Claiming to be inheritors of the great Almohad administrative and ideological tradition, the Ḥafṣids came to power when the ... -
In the lie of this Multicultural Land: An Analysis of Barbados-Canada Relations, 1966 -1990.
Barbados-Canada relations spanned many decades, from November 30, 1966, those relations entered a new dimension, since Barbados now an independent state, was no longer ruled by Britain. This new relationship witnessed new ... -
The path to Antioch: an analysis of the Norman and Greek relationships of Bohemond of Taranto
Bohemond of Taranto has been painted by modern scholars as an opportunistic knight who embarked for the east from Sicily with the Latin armies of the First Crusade in order to acquire a significant lordship for himself. ... -
Diagnosing Witchery: Early Modern Medical Discourses, Public Health, and the Gendered Body in the Seventeenth Century English Witch-Panics
This research examines the nexus of witchcraft and early modern healthcare. It draws on witchcraft studies and history of medicine to frame witchcraft as a public health crisis originating in, and investigated through, ... -
“The Severity of This Service…” Canadien Inland Mariners in the Early Post-Conquest Era, 1760 to 1817
Abstract Beginning just a long decade after New France became part of the British Empire in 1763, a half-century of major crises engulfed British North America; the American Revolutionary War (1775-83), the postwar ... -
Capturing Kinship: Visualizing the History of Chinese Adoption in Canada
The Chinese government enacted the one-child policy during the late 1970s and early 1980s to curb the growth of the country’s swelling population. This extreme form of family planning marked the beginning of a radical ... -
BLACKNESS AND BRITISH ‘FAIR PLAY’: BURGEONING BLACK SOCIAL ACTIVISM IN ONTARIO AND ITS GRASSROOTS RESPONSES TO THE CANADIAN COLOUR LINE, 1919-1939
“Blackness and British ‘Fair Play’: Burgeoning Black Social Activism in Ontario and its Grassroots Responses to the Canadian Colour Line, 1919-1939” centres community-building as an effective method to reject the notion ... -
A MUSICAL MONARCH: QUEEN VICTORIA’S INTEREST IN THE MUSIC AND COMPOSERS OF HER AGE
This thesis explores Queen Victoria’s engagement with the musical world of the nineteenth century and seeks to identify the impact that she had on the music of her age. This research is undertaken using the queen’s journals ... -
Experiential Blackness: Race, Identity, and Memory in Contemporary Dominican Society
The controversial subject of blackness resides at the center of discussions of race in the Dominican Republic. Traditionally, scholars have painted the Dominican Republic as a society ignorant of its own history of blackness ...
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