Department of History Graduate Theses
Recent Submissions
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Marrying a Redcoat: Women's Experiences of Marriage in the British Garrison of Quebec City, 1763-1820
In 1763, following the Treaty of Paris, Quebec City officially became a major British garrison. As a result, there was a constant and substantial presence of Anglophone and Protestant young men, the majority of them single, ... -
Disturbing Silence: How the Student Movement Shaped Nixon’s Presidency and the Policies of America
President Richard M. Nixon’s fear and hatred of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) resulted in the SDS having an undue influence on his foreign policies. The SDS was a small faction of the larger Anti-Vietnam War ... -
“Author and Audience: Creating ‘Sanctifiction’ in Middle Byzantine Hagiography”
This project examines the authorial role in writing a successful hagiography during the so-called Middle Byzantine Period between the ninth and eleventh century. In this skeptical pre-modern society, authorial agency ... -
From the Physical Body to the Body Social: The Development of Enlightenment French Materialism
This thesis examines the development of materialism in the French Enlightenment from 1745 to 1789. As a relatively new intellectual category in the eighteenth century, materialism was systematized after the 1740s in France ... -
The Ultranationalist International: Fascism in Global Historical Perspective
The following is an effort to conceptualize fascism as a global historical problem. Given its ultra-nationalistic bent, approaching fascist movements as a phenomenon entirely distinct to particular national contexts seems ... -
Crime and Punishment in the Patriarchal Court of Constantinople in Late Byzantium, 1261-1453
The Patriarchal court was one of the two major courts in Constantinople in the Late Byzantine period together with the imperial tribunal. Although it is an ecclesiastical court per se, its jurisdiction was never clearly ... -
Restoring a Neglected Queen: Re-Examining Catherine of Braganza's Role in the Restoration Period
In her reign as Queen Consort, issues with Catherine of Braganza (1638-1705) brought up questions of power between the Church and State, helped heighten anti-Catholicism, and brought up questions of exclusion years before ... -
Animal Ascension: Elevation and Debasement Through Human-Animal Associations in English Satire, 1700-1820
Animals were integral to conceptions of human identity and society in the long eighteenth century. English satirists employed human-animal associations in their undermining and subversion of authority, and wielded animal ... -
Speaking Volumes: Publishers’ Bindings in English-Canada 1870-1920
The nineteenth century saw a significant shift in how books were produced. Industrialization and the emergence of a mass reading public, whose members also had increased leisure time and money, led to the need for less ... -
A Laboratory of Social Policy: California, The New Right and the Gubernatorial Administration of Ronald Reagan, 1967-1975
The traditional historiographical narrative locates the revival of grassroots conservatism in the postwar decades, the subsequent reemergence of conservatives in mainstream American politics by the mid 1970s and the ... -
Inequities in Education: A Study of Left-behind Children and Migrant Children
In the 1950s, China’s household registration system (hukou) was set up to serve the planned economy, becoming in turn a vital tool to manage migration. After the launching of Reform and Opening policies in 1978, the planned ... -
Enlightened Hobbism: Aspects of the Eighteenth-Century Reception of Hobbes in Britain
Hobbes was Britain’s quintessential atheist at the dawn of the eighteenth century, and Hobbism (a widely recognized creed) was commonly used to identify and police theological and ecclesiological heterodoxy. A competing ... -
Racializing Subalternity: Space, Caste, and Gender in Muslim Mohallas of Lucknow (1947-1993)
The dissertation seeks to examine systems of racialization that produce the “Indian Muslim” subaltern biologically, discursively, and historically while bearing in mind the material consequences for the group circumscribed ... -
Mythical Families: the Small Family Norm and Everyday Governance of Population in India, 1954-1977
In the first two decades of decolonization in India, the slogan ‘Hum Do Hamare Do’ (we two, our two) and its associated symbol ‘red triangle’ became synonymous with the nuclear family. This project traces the creation and ... -
And Chaos Whence? Canadian Energy Politics, 1973-1984
This thesis investigates the impact of the 1973 oil shock, its sequel in 1979, and the counter-shock of the mid-1980s on Canada’s socio-economy. Over a decade of uncertainty, beginning when members of the Organization for ... -
“La fédération impériale, voilà notre ennemie”: Honoré Mercier and Public Opinion on Imperial Federalism as Seen Through the Montreal Press, 1885-1893
This thesis examines Québec Premier Honoré Mercier's (1887-1891) critique of imperial federalism from 1885-1893 and its impact on public opinion in Montreal by analysing press coverage. Hostility to imperial federalism was ... -
The Racial Mosaic: Race, Cultural Pluralism, and Canadian Multiculturalism
This dissertation examines the intellectual origins of the Canadian federal government’s official policy of multiculturalism. The first half employs the methodology of historical biography and examines the life and thought ... -
"Transient Beauties": Early Nineteenth-Century British Women and the Construction of a Global Imperial Science Culture
Botanical collecting and illustrating had been a key part of an Enlightened education for elite women during the eighteenth century, and botanical practices were an established part of many women’s activities. As British ... -
Ruin and Redemption: Losing and Regaining Honour in the Canadian Officer Corps, 1914—1945
This dissertation is the first comprehensive study to trace the evolution of military dishonour and dismissal from an historical perspective in the Canadian armed forces during the First and Second World Wars. Using extensive ... -
A Methodological Reconsideration of Early English-Indigenous Communication in Sixteenth Century Northeastern America
In August 1576 five men serving the Elizabethan explorer Martin Frobisher disappeared following an Inuk guide at Baffin Island. Over the next two years the English tried various methods of communication with the Inuit – ...
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