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History Program

  Faculty

 

 

Dr. Auerbach 
 
Dr. Sascha Auerbach
Assistant Professor
BA (Oberlin), MA, PhD (Emory)


                OFFICE:   ADM 3092
                 Tel:          250.960.5314
                 Email:     auerbach@unbc.ca
 
Dr. Auerbach was born in London and often returns there to conduct his research, which focuses on Britain and the British Empire in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. His first book, Race, Law, and "The Chinese Puzzle" in Imperial Britain (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), examines the legal, social, and cultural impact of Chinese immigration to Britain, Australia, and South Africa. His research has been published in the Journal of Social History, the Journal of British Studies, the Journal of Policy History, and The Historian. Dr. Auerbach is currently working on his second book manuscript, "Armed with Sword and Scales": Law, Identity, and the Culture of the Courtroom in Modern Britain. In 2011, he was the inaugural Fulbright-King's College London Scholar, and he will be returning to King's as a visiting research fellow in summer 2012.
 
Dr. Auerbach teaches courses on modern Britain, the British Empire (esp. South Africa and India), European imperialism, and historical theory.
 
Research Interests:
Modern Britain, Imperialism, Law, Race,  Nationalism, South Africa

Race, Law, and "The Chinese Puzzle" in Imperial Britain
 

 

 
 
Dr. Theodore Binnema
Professor
BA (Calvin), MA, PhD (Alberta)
 
 
               Office:  ADM 3020
               Tel:       250.960.6662
               Email:   binnemat@unbc.ca 
 
Dr. Binnema entered the historical profession after teaching high school English and social studies for several years. He has been teaching at UNBC since 2000, where he now teaches HIST 191 The West and the World since 1660, HIST 210 Pre-Confederation Canada, and several undergraduate and graduate courses in aboriginal and environmental history.
 
His research interests span various aspects of environmental history and aboriginal history. His first book, Common and Contested Ground (2001), for example, examines the human and environmental history of the northwestern plains of North America from AD 200 to 1806. He has also co-edited two books, New Histories for Old: Changing Perspectives on Canada's Native Pasts (2007) and From Rupert's Land to Canada (2001). Dr. Binnema has also published many scholarly articles including articles in Environmental History, The Canadian Historical Review, Western Historical Quarterly, and The Journal of Canadian Studies.
 
To view a list of Dr. Binnema's refereed publications - click here
 
Research interests:
Canadian and US Aboriginal and Environmental History;
History of Indian Policy
 

 

 
 
We bade a fond farewell to
Dr. Stephanie Cousineau
in June 2011.
 
Dr. Cousineau, we enjoyed
your time with us and
wish you well in your
future endeavors


 

 
 
 
Dr. Jacqueline Holler
Associate Professor and Program Chair

BA & MA (Simon Fraser), PhD (Emory)
 
                 Office:    Adm 3003
                 Tel:         (250) 960-6343
                  Email:     holler@unbc.ca
 
 
Dr. Holler is a specialist in colonial Latin America and women’s/gender history who joined UNBC in 2003. She is the author of Escogidas Plantas: Nuns and Beatas in Mexico City, 1530-1601 (Columbia University Press, 2003/205). She is also author of articles and book chapters on early colonial Mexico; co-author, with Peter Bakewell, of the third edition of his History of Latin America (Blackwell, 2009); and co-author of the forthcoming Gendered Society: Canadian Edition (Oxford, 2010). Her current research projects include a SSHRC-funded book-length study of the Cortes Conspiracy of 1566 and a project on women's bodies, health, emotion, and sexuality in early colonial New Spain. A past winner (2005) of UNBC's teaching award, Dr. Holler teaches fourth-year seminars on childbirth and women's bodies and the history of masculinity; History 190 (The West and the World to 1660); and courses on the history of Latin America. She also teaches an introduction to gender studies (WMST 103) in the Women's Studies Program, of which she is coordinator.
 
Research Interests:
Early colonial New Spain, particularly Inquisition, gender, religion, and political culture

 
 
Dr. Dana Wessell Lightfoot
Assistant Professor
BA, MA, PhD (Toronto)
 
 
                  OFFICE:   ADM 3010
                  Tel:          250.960.5706
                  Email:     lightfoot@unbc.ca
 
Dr. Lightfoot received her PhD from the University of Toronto in 2005. She has published articles in Viator, the Women's History Review and book collections including "The Power to Divide? Germania Marriage Contracts in Early Fifteenth-Century Valencia" in Across the Religious Divide: Women, Property and the Law in the Wider Mediterranean (ca. 1300-1800) (Routledge, 2010). Her article "The Projects of Marriage: Spousal Choice, Dowries and Domestic Service in Early Fifteen-Century Vanencia" Viator 40.1 (2009) was named the 2009 article of the year by the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women. Dr. Lightfoot is currently revising her manuscript Negotiating Agency: Labouring-Status Wives and their Dowries in Early fifteenth-Century Valencia. She teaches courses on medieval and early modern European history, medieval Spain, European women's history, the witch hunts and the medieval Mediterranean.

To read more on Dr. Lightfoot's award, click here.
 
Research Interests:
Medieval Spanish History with a focus on Gender and Medieval European history.
 

 
 
Dr. Jonathan Swainger
Professor   
BA (Lethbridge), MA (Calgary), PhD (Western) 
 

 
              Office:     Adm 3091
               Tel:         (250) 960-5310
                Email:    swainger@unbc.ca
 
 
Dr. Swainger was born in Calgary, Alberta but was raised in Rocky Mountain House in west-central Alberta. He graduated from the University of Lethbridge with a BA in History and a Masters from the University of Calgary. His doctoral studies were undertaken at the University of Western Ontario from where he graduated in 1992. After working at the University of Calgary during 1991 and 1992, he joined UNBC in September 1992 as one part of the Quick-Start contingent of instructors. His first year was spent at the Terrace campus where he taught some of the first students who would graduate from UNBC. For his second year with the university he was relocated to Fort St. John where he assumed his place as the busiest distance education instructor at the university, delivering courses to students from Fort Nelson in the north to Williams Lake in the south and the Nass Valley in the west. After eight years of teaching and research in the Peace River region, he relocated to the main cmapus in Prince George where he has worked for the past three years. Since July 2004 he has been chair of the History program.
 
His first book The Canadian Department of Justice and the Completion of Confederation came out with UBC Press in 2000. In that work he examined the role of the Canadian Department of Justice in the completion of the Confederation scheme and, more specifically, the connection between notions of the legal system and community identity. His work in the Peace River region, however, alerted him to that area's crime history and he is currently writing a book length study on crime in the Peace from 1910 to 1960. Based on archival records, newspapers, and oral history interviews, the project details the intricate relationship between the sense of locale in the Peace and the operation of the criminal justice system. He has also edited two essay collections, one already in print with UBC Press and entitled People and Place - Historical Influences on Legal Culture which was co-edited with Professor Constance Backhouse. The second Essay collection - Laws and Societies in the Prairie West, 1670-1940 is co-edited with Louis Knafla, formerly of the University of Calgary has been released by UBC Press in early 2005. Given his research interests, Dr. Swainger has been called upon by various media outlets to comment upon contemporary legal issues such as perceptions of crime rates, juvenile delinquncy, and the recent trial of a local judge.
 
Research Interests:
Canadian legal and crime history with an emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries
   

Professors Emeritus
 
Dr. Charles Jago, Professor
BA (Western Ontario), PhD (Cambridge)
 
Dr. Jago has retired from UNBC and remains Professor Emeritus
The History Program thanks you for you years of service and wishes you well.

 
Dr. Gordon Martel, Professor
BA (Simon Fraser), MA Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy), PhD (Toronto)
 
Dr. Martel is now retired from UNBC and remains Professor Emeritus
The History Program wishes you well in your retirement.

 
Dr. William Morrison, Professor
BA (McMaster), MA (McMaster), PhD (Western Ontario), DLit (Brandon)
 
Dr. Morrison is now retired from UNBC and remains Professor Emeritus
The History Program wishes you well in your retirement.

 
Adjunct Professors
 
 
 
Dr. Neil Lettinga,
Adjunct Professor
BA (Calvin College, Michigan),
BSc (Montreal), PhD (Johns Hopkins)
 
Tel: 250-960-5285
Email:  lettinga@unbc.ca
or   chaplain@unbc.ca
Office:  4-154

Pictured with his wife Virginia; Neil and Virginia job share a position as a full-time chaplain at UNBC
 
 
Dr. Lettinga's teaching specialties include European history from 1500 to the present and African history. Dr. Lettinga and his wife Virginia also serve in a joint position as chaplains assigned to UNBC. Before coming to Prince George he spent 19 years teaching at Bethel College, St. Paul, Minnesota, where he chaired the history department.
 
Research Interests:
17th Century English history of ideas, specifically the development of Anglican theological language; development of the new Protestant churches in Ethiopia in the second half of the 20th century. 
 

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