Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Selected problems in the social, cultural, economic and political development of British Columbia.

COURSE DETAILS:

Land of Incomplete Empire and Unfinished Conquest

This senior seminar course examines the history of the region currently known as British Columbia from social, cultural, economic, art historical and political perspectives beginning with British, Russian and Spanish competition for North America’s Pacific Coast in the late eighteenth century. Making use of Matthew Restall’s concept of the “Myth of Completion” (Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest), students will engage with British Columbia as in incompletely conquered and colonized place and with its political boundaries as just one of a set of competing claims of political jurisdiction and title.

Similarly, due to the late date that the region claimed as British Columbia came to be bounded within its current borders, students will be acquainted with early colonial interventions in the region in a non-teleological fashion. By the same token, early Chinese, Japanese and Hawaiian settlers and entrepreneurs will be examined both as traditionally subordinated and racialized migrants and as occupying the limits of Asian and Pacific imperial projects. In addition to connective approaches to settlement, migration and conquest, students will be offered a variety of comparative metrics for understanding BC, placing BC in context with other rentier states, white settler states, etc.

Students will also be introduced to genres of academic writing required in graduate-level history courses and to MA and PhD-level seminar discussion and presentation protocols.

It is expected that students enrolling in the course will be equipped to participate in focused seminar discussion and share some discussion leadership duties with the instructor. Similar co-leadership and self-direction will be expected of students with respect to research and writing. They will also be expected to participate in discussion in a way that is focused on the assigned readings in a disciplined manner. In addition to course objectives with respect to method (i.e. proposal-writing, academic book reviewing, etc.), students will also be acquainted with the broad region historiographies within which BC falls, of the West and of Canada and with topical historiographies such as diaspora and colonization.  

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: