History Subject Guide: Find Books & AV

At the Ocean's Edge offers a vibrant account of Nova Scotia's colonial history, situating it in an early and dramatic chapter in the expansion of Europe. Between 1450 and 1850, various processes - sometimes violent, often judicial, rarely conclusive - transferred power first from Indigenous societies to the French and British empires, and then to European settlers and their descendants who claimed the land as their own. This book not only brings Nova Scotia's struggles into sharp focus but also unpacks the intellectual and social values that took root in the region. By the time that Nova Scotia became a province of the Dominion of Canada in 1867, its multicultural peoples, including Mi'kmaq, Acadian, African, and British, had come to a grudging, unequal, and often contested accommodation among themselves. Written in accessible and spirited prose, the narrative follows larger trends through the experiences of colourful individuals who grappled with expulsion, genocide, and war to establish the institutions, relationships, and values that still shape Nova Scotia's identity."--

Most historians rely principally on written sources. Yet there are other traces of the past available to historians: the material things that people have chosen, made, and used. This book examines how material culture can enhance historians' understanding of the past, both worldwide and across time. The successful use of material culture in history depends on treating material things of many kinds not as illustrations, but as primary evidence. Each kind of material thing-and there are many-requires the application of interpretive skills appropriate to it. These skills overlap with those acquired by scholars in disciplines that may abut history but are often relatively unfamiliar to historians, including anthropology, archaeology, and art history. Creative historians can adapt and apply the same skills they honed while studying more traditional text-based documents even as they borrow methods from these fields. They can think through familiar historical problems in new ways. They can also deploy material culture to discover the pasts of constituencies who have left few or no traces in written records. The authors of this volume contribute case studies arranged thematically in six sections that respectively address the relationship of history and material culture to cognition, technology, the symbolic, social distinction, and memory. They range across time and space, from Paleolithic to Punk.

"Through rigorous engagement with Indigenous literary art, Carrying the Burden of Peace highlights the decolonial potential of Indigenous masculinities. Can a critical examination of Indigenous masculinities be an honour song—one that celebrates rather than pathologizes; one that seeks diversity and strength; one that overturns heteropatriarchy without centering settler colonialism? Can a critical examination of Indigenous masculinities even be creative, inclusive, erotic? Carrying the Burden of Peace answers affirmatively. Countering the perception that masculinity has been so contaminated as to be irredeemable, the book explores Indigenous literary art for understandings of masculinity that exceed the impoverished inheritance of colonialism. Carrying the Burden of Peace weaves together stories of Indigenous life, love, eroticism, pain, and joy to map the contours of diverse, empowered, and non-dominant Indigenous masculinities. It is from here that a more balanced world may be pursued."--

In centering Black women's stories, two award-winning historians seek both to empower African American women and to show their allies that Black women's unique ability to make their own communities while combatting centuries of oppression is an essential component in our continued resistance to systemic racism and sexism. Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross offer an examination and celebration of Black womanhood, beginning with the first African women who arrived in what became the United States to African American women of today. A Black Women's History of the United States reaches far beyond a single narrative to showcase Black women's lives in all their fraught complexities. Berry and Gross prioritize many voices- enslaved women, freedwomen, religious leaders, artists, queer women, activists, and women who lived outside the law. The result is a starting point for exploring Black women's history and a testament to the beauty, richness, rhythm, tragedy, heartbreak, rage, and enduring love that abounds in the spirit of Black women in communities throughout the nation.

The Politics of the Death Penalty and the Problem of Sex Murder -- Sex Fiends and the Death Penalty at the Turn of Canada's Century -- Contesting Convictions and Questioning Culpability between the Wars -- Sexual Psychopathy and Penal Severity in the Post-War Era -- Sexual Psychopathy, Insanity, and the Death Penalty under Scrutiny in the 1950s -- Sex Murder in the Sixties and the Demise of the Death Penalty -- Epilogue: The problem of sex murder in the shadow of abolition.
"From Confederation to the partial abolition of the death penalty a century later, defendants convicted of sexually motivated killings and sexually violent homicides in Canada were more likely than any other condemned criminals to be executed for their crimes. Despite the emergence of psychiatric expertise in criminal trials, moral disgust and anger proved more potent in courtrooms, the public mind, and the hearts of the bureaucrats and politicians responsible for determining the outcome of capital cases. Outsiders of all types--drifters, the unemployed, the unconventional--were the first to fall within the radar of police who were pressured to catch culprits. Although the vast majority of convicted sex killers were white, Canada's racist notions of "the Indian mind" meant that Indigenous defendants faced the presumption of guilt. Black defendants were also subjected to discriminatory treatment, including near lynchings. Even prior to Steven Truscott's controversial death sentence for a sex murder in 1959, abolitionists expressed concern that prejudices and poverty created the prospect of wrongful convictions. Unique in the ways it reveals the emotional drivers of capital punishment in delivering inequitable outcomes, The Death Penalty and Sex Murder in Canadian History provides a thorough overview of sex murder and the death penalty in Canada. It serves as an essential history and a richly documented cautionary tale for the present."--