Historiann

August 21, 1749

The meals here are in many respects different from those in the English provinces.  This depends upon the difference of custom, taste, and religion, between the two nations.  French Canadians eat three meals a day, viz. breakfast, dinner, and supper.  They breakfast commonly between seven and eight, for the French here rise very early, and the governor-general can be seen at seven o’clock, the time when he has his levee.  Some of the men dip a piece of bread in brandy and eat it; others take a dram of brandy and eat a piece of bread after it.  Chocolate is likewise very common for breakfast, and many of the ladies drink coffee.  Some eat no breakfast at all.  I have never seen tea used here, perhaps because they can get coffee and chocolate from the French provinces in America, in the southern part, but must get tea from China.  They consider it is not worth their while to send the money out of the country for it.  I never saw them have bread and butter for breakfast.

Dinner is exactly at noon.  People of quality have a great many dishes and the rest follow their example, when they invite strangers.  The loaves are oval and baked of wheat flour.  For each person they put a plate, napkin, spoon, and fork.  (In the English colonies, a napkin is seldom or never used.)  Sometimes they also provide knives, but they are generally omitted, all the ladies and gentlemen being provided with their own knives.  The spoons and forks are of silver, and the plates of Delft ware.  The meal begins with a soup with a good deal of bread in it.  Then follow fresh meats of various kinds, boiled and roasted, poultry, or game, fricasees ragouts, etc. of several sorts, together with different kinds of salads.  They commonly drink red claret at dinner, either mixed with water or clear; and spruce beer is likewise much in use.  The ladies drink water and sometimes wine.  Each one has his own glass and can drink as much as he wishes, for the bottles are put on the table. Continue Reading »

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It’s Stampede season here, friends, and we’re all excited about rodeo days and the world’s largest Independence Day rodeo, right here in Potterville!  Heck’s’a'poppin’.

• First up, the hearings for Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court start today.  Tenured Radical has a nice round-up of her own, with some quality links for your enjoyment.  I liked this article by Deborah L. Rhode of Stanford University, “Why Elena Kagan’s Looks Matter.”  (Answer, paraphrased by me:  That ol’ devil, patriarchal equilibrium.)  Don’t miss the part in the article where she describes how hateful, anonymous insults about her looks after publishing an op-ed illustrated the point of her new book rather perfectly.  Rhode writes, “Yet pointing this out is likely to unleash the prejudices at issue. I got a recent taste after publishing an op-ed in The Washington Post. The editorial summarized themes from my just released book, The Beauty Bias, which documents the price of prejudice and proposes some legal and cultural strategies to address it. It was surprising to discover how many individuals were willing to take time from their busy day to send hate mail on the order of ‘I just bet that you yourself are one ugly c—.’ Some readers, annoyed that no author picture accompanied the article, felt strongly enough to do independent research. One explained: ‘knowing there had to be a reason why [you would write about bias] I looked you up in the Stanford Faculty Directory and then all the pieces fell together… I’m sure Stanford has to tie a bone around your neck to get even the campus dogs not to run away from you.’ Several hundred online posts following the article included more of the same. One reader proposed taking up a collection so I could ‘buy …a burqa: This would certainly improve the aesthetics around Stanford.’”  Lovely.  (Does the WaPo realize that comments like this reflect poorly on them?  Once again, and with feeling:  either moderate your comments or eliminate them!  Same goes for you, Daily Beast.  Why give these douchebags a forum when they can start their own damn blogs, for free?)
• Paul Krugman has some bad news for us all.  (Well, those of us who aren’t fabulously rich enough to eschew employment and live off of interest income, anyway.) Sucks for us, friends!
• Randall Stephens has some interesting reflections on Glenn Beck’s use of history and style of historical argumentation.  He writes, “Beck’s political grandstanding and maudlin theatrics are offensive enough. (I can think of no better ipecac for the typical humanities professor.) But it’s his ahistorical theories of the past that disturb me most. Continue Reading »

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If you just can’t get enough Historiann, or you’ll click on anything having to do with women’s and gender history, borderlands history, Native American history, or colonial North American history, or you’re just reallyreally bored, you can check out “Inroads:  Episode #2,” the podcast that graduate student Justin Carroll made of my talk at the CIC-American Indian Studies Consortium at Michigan State University earlier this month.  (At least you can find out what I sound like, if not what I look like!)  Those of you who are technologically adept can probably figure out how to put it on your i-Pods so that you can take me with you on your jog or trip to the gym.  (And who wouldn’t love working out to a discussion of religious education, self-mortification, and artistic expression among women in Wabanakia and Quebec in the eighteenth century?  Talk about “Sweatin’ to the Oldies!”)

The AISC has other podcasts that might be of interest to many of you:  Carroll also has posted a podcast of “From Ph.D. to Professor,” in which three MSU faculty members (Heather Howard, Susan Applegate Krouse, and Kimberli Lee) plus Susan Lobo of the University of Arizona discuss their professional development and the process of publishing their books.  Continue Reading »

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Sorry for the radio silence these last few days–I’ve been on the road, in the air, and on the ground at Michigan State University to give a talk about my current research project and to discuss my book with a class here.  (More news–including a podcast!–coming soon.)  I’m always happy to visit what we in Colorado call the East:  it’s a beautiful spring here, with lovely green grass and flowers bursting open everywhere I look.  The accomodations are far from spartan–in fact, they and the hospitality here have been downright stately.  And who wouldn’t love to visit a university campus with its own dairy and retail store? 

Scented white magnolias!

The former Michigan Agricultural College has a lot in common with Baa Ram U., which was originally called Colorado Agricultural College (“for Eighth Grade graduates!”)  Our Deans and Provosts like to call MSU a “peer institution,” but from my perspective in the History department, that’s ridiculous:  MSU’s history department has 54 faculty members, 100 graduate students, and a Ph.D. program.  They also get pre-tenure leave.  We got nothin’ compared to that. Continue Reading »

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Here is U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Quebec on Tuesday, making an important point with respect to abortion, contraception, and maternal health:  ”I’ve worked in this area for many years, and If we’re talking about maternal health, you cannot have maternal health without reproductive health, and reproductive health includes contraception and family planning, and access to legal, safe abortion. . . and finally, I do not think governments should be involved in making these decisions.”

In Canada, the opposition (and some of the newspapers, apparently) are enjoying this smackdown of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his government, which wants to make maternal health the center of his initiative for the G8 meeting in Ottawa in June, but which denies that contraception or abortion play a role in ensuring maternal health.   Continue Reading »

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He’s mad as hell, and he’s not going to take it any more!  (WARNING:  the language is NSFW or children.  Just sayin’.)  Via The Daily Beast:

How many of us can relate to the “expert” in this video?  “I spent my entire life attending the nation’s most prestigious schools to talk about bull$h!t like this.  I’m really just happy to be on TV.”  Awesome! Continue Reading »

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Why watch the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics on the teevee, when you can participate in winter sports yourself?  (Well, those of us near the snowy mountains have a bitof an advantage!)  No, I’m not going to Mt. Tremblant or anything near Quebec–we in Colorado can ski on lovely, fresh powder much more conveniently.  Easterners:  how do you ski on all of that ice?  How is it any fun?  I’ve only tried it once, in Vermont in 1994, and it was the antithesis of fun, unless your definition of fun includes adjectives like “terrifying,” “damp,” “cold,” and “miserable.”  (Well, I suppose the definition of “fun” for most New Englanders might include one or more of these terms.  But, they fetishize discomfort and view it as a sign of moral rectitude.)

Here’s a fun, if slightly creepy, fact about this blog:  every day, dozens of people click here because they’re searching “women athletes,” “hot women athletes,” “athletic women,” “olympic women,” or some other similar phrases.  And as you regular readers know, this is a blog that only very rarely comments on sports or athletic affairs, if ever.  So, enjoy the images of women on vintage ski posters here! Continue Reading »

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Ann Bartow at Feminist Law Profs reminds us that today is the twentieth anniversary of the murders of women engineering students at l’École Polytechnique in Montreal on December 6, 1989.  Because of this terrible event, today is also the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women day in Canada, which has been commemorated since 1991.  In case you’re unacquainted with this terrible massacre, here’s a CBC link with a video clip of a report and a description of the murders (emphases Historiann’s):

A gunman confronts 60 engineering students during their class at l’École Polytechnique in Montreal on Dec. 6, 1989. He separates the men from the women and tells the men to leave the classroom, threatening them with his .22-calibre rifle. The enraged man begins a shooting rampage that spreads to three floors and several classrooms, jumping from desk to desk while female students cower below. He roams the corridors yelling, “I want women.” Continue Reading »

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I’m so glad I’m not the only historian with a dolly fetish!  Clio Bluestocking, the intrepid CC instructor and scholar of Frederick Douglass and the women in his family sent in her report about what she did this summer at an NEH institute in Baltimore.  On a field trip to a  Civil War museum in Virginia, she found a Frederick Douglass action figure!  Go check it out.  She writes, “He even has a small copy of The Narrative, as well as a pissed off expression.  Notice, too, that he was on sale.  This picture was not taken in the gift shop, but in my hotel room because, yes, I bought it. (And I just realized how creepy it sounds to say that I bought a Frederick Douglass.)”  This of course connects back to my post on Thursday about Marla Miller opening her book with a discussion of Colonial Barbie, and our discussion in the comments.  Why do some dolls based on historical periods or individuals get produced, and others don’t?  Many of you noted the elite and healthy bias of the historical dolls, compared to the miserable reality of the lives of most people in the past.

Can you see your book on my shelf?

A few years ago, Dr. Mister Historiann found some Seven Years’ War era lead figurines–made by a company that mostly makes lead soldiers, I’m sure, but to their credit they also made some civilian victims of war, too–and he gave them to me for my birthday.  So here are my English captives with their co-captors, who appear to be both Iroquois and Algonquian.  (Unlikely, unless they were Catholic mission Indians, but wev.)  You’ve never seen a 30-something year old woman so excited about a birthday gift as I was that year!  Continue Reading »

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Abraham in Arms:  War and Gender in Colonial New England won an Honourable Mention for the 2008 Albert B. Corey Prize/Prix Corey from the Canadian Historical Association.  The prize is awarded every other year jointly with the American Historical Association to the best book in Canadian-American history.  Should the winner of the 2008 Corey Prize (Sharon A. Roger Hepburn, for Crossing the Border: A Free Black Community in Canada, University of Illinois Press, 2007) be unable to fulfill her duties, I’ll be happy to swing into action.  Here’s the flattering and generous citation from the CHA:

Abraham in Arms argues that religious ideas about gender and family provided the vital context in which the people of colonial New England, New France, and “Indian Country” understood the cross-cultural warfare between them through the 17th and 18th centuries. It is a richly imaginative and theoretically innovative fusion of religion, gender, family, diplomacy, and war that offers yet another persuasive argument that no study of war can avoid addressing the social role of gender and family life in animating the normative use of violence. It is a book destined to be influential to historians of other times and places.  Continue Reading »

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