Glasstry news

A trend in historical writing?  Two of the nominees for the $78,000 Cundill Prize in History this year were cultural histories that combined a biography of a novelist with an exploration of the historical milieu in which they wrote. The winner, announced in Montreal the other night, was Harvard historian Maya Jasanoff for her book, The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World . Neither Conrad nor anyone else was thinking about climate change in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when he wrote his most acclaimed novels. But many of the issues he tackled have endured. Conrad, as Jasanoff tells it, was a witness and a participant in globalization. He was a migrant, during a time of mass migration, when a hundred million people were on the move, but before there were closed borders and even official passports. And he witnessed the pushback to globalization, with the emergence of border controls and rising xenophobia, terrorism and the fear of the other. This, just as East Euro...

It was not all memoir in the noms for the Hilary Weston Nonfiction Prize awarded by the Writers' Trust last night, but indeed not much history again, and Elizabeth Gray's memoir was indeed the winner. (It's the Charles Taylor Nonfiction Prize , I think, that has rewarded  historians in recent years: Richard Gwyn, Tim Cook, Ross King....) But writing about the Canadian past came up in the Vicky Metcalf Award -- given for a body of work in literature for children.  The winner was Christopher Paul Curtis , honoured for his admired and popular novels about the black experience in Canada in the nineteenth century. Curtis, in his acceptance speech, described his thirteen years on an autobody assembly line in Flint, Michigan, writing on his break periods  -- not a common historical or writerly apprenticeship any more, I guess. (My fave among the literary bunfights of fall, the Writers's Trust Awards. Writers getting honours and casth in a room full of writers, what's not ...

Particularly during the fall book prize season, I like to note history prize winners. Since there were none among the Governor General's Awards winners announced yesterday, I thought I'd just pass them over. But Daniel Francis has a thoughtful response to the awards at his blog, specifically about the Non-Fiction prize: I cannot help noting that each of the five finalists for this year's award is a memoir. I am not sure what that says about non-fiction writing in the country, if anything...  Where were the historians, the biographers, the science writers, I wondered?...   ...Naturally, as a writer of history, I'd prefer to see some history titles in the mix. But I accept that these things go in cycles. Maybe next year. Read the whole thing , particularly for the salute to the winner, Darrel McLeod for Mamaskatch . Meanwhile, another source for prizeworthy history, the Cundill Prize for History, announced its final shortlist of three for this year's prize, the winne...

More memoir than history on the shortlist for the 2018 Governor-General's Award in nonfiction, an intriguing list released this morning, including a couple of books and authors I have heard some buzz about and some unknown to me. The Cundillians Getting more historical, the Cundill Prize, the Montreal based $75,000 prize for the world's best history book, recently released its longlist of nominated titles.  A shortlist of three will appear at the end of October, and a winner in November. Meanwhile, here are the first-round Cundill contenders , and gee, this year, I have actually read one in advance and on my own initiative.

Julie Payette, the newish Governor General of Canada, is being criticized for not being active enough in her role and for withholding her patronage from events and honours traditionally associated with her office.  One such award program is the Governor General's History Awards and the Awards for Excellence in Teaching History. Merna Forster of heroines.ca weighs in on a historical honour usually conferred by (and usually at) Rideau Hall: I had the honour of receiving the 2016 Governor General's History Award for Popular Media (Pierre Berton Award) from David Johnston at Rideau Hall .I was dismayed to learn that Governor General Payette has decided that she will not present the awards for the 2018 Governor General's History Awards, nor will she permit the ceremony to be held at Rideau Hall. I believe these awards provide important recognition to exemplary history teachers, historians and community groups who strive for excellence in the field of history. Surely they should...

The Champlain Society has announced the 2018 winner of the Chalmers Award -- for the best book in Ontario history of 2017 -- has been awarded to Georgian Bay: Discovering A Unique North American Ecosystem , edited by Nick Eyles and published for the Georgian Bay Land Trust by Fitzhenry and Whiteside. Eyles is a professor of geology at the University of Toronto and an experienced writer on geological topics. Contributors to the book include ecologists, earth scientists, archaeologists, ornithologists, local community leaders, and others.

Britain's History Today magazine recently announced that Emily Jones has won its annual book prize for her  Edmund Burke & the Invention of Modern Conservatism, 1830-1914: An Intellectual History. Here is the whole shortlist . They are from a mix of academic and trade presses. A pretty impressive range of titles, not that I have read (or indeed previously hear of) any of them. What silos we live in. James Delbourgo, Collecting the World: The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane Tera W. Hunter, Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century Emily Jones, Edmund Burke & the Invention of Modern Conservatism, 1830-1914: An Intellectual History Tom Lambert, Law & Order in Anglo-Saxon England Chris Renwick, Bread for All: The Origins of the Welfare State Zo� Waxman, Women in the Holocaust: A Feminist History

The Canadian Historical Association Book Prize has been awarded at the CHA Annual Meeting in Regina.  The CHA website  is still calling it the John A. Macdonald Prize, but you can make your own edits of that if you wish. Anyway it's an stellar list this year, topped by a book that historians are going to continue to read and grapple with for a long time.  Here's the full shortlist, and then the winner.  From the link you can also find all the other prizes -- kudos to Eric Adams and Jordan Stranger-Ross for two awards on a single article! The Sir John A. Macdonald Prize is awarded to the non-fiction work of Canadian history judged to have made the most significant contribution to an understanding of the Canadian past: SHORT LIST in alphabetical order E.A. Heaman, Tax, Order, and Good Government: A New Political History of Canada, 1867-1917 . Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen�s University Press, 2017. Susan M. Hill, The Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure ...

The Canadian Historical Association, meeting in Saskatchewan, has voted to remove the name of John A. Macdonald from its premiere prize, the one for the year's best work in Canadian history.  In the name of the good cause of reconciliation, though removal of names and statues was not one of the long list of projects the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has put forward as useful steps toward that goal. Naming this prize for Macdonald has always seemed a bit odd, since he was not a scholar or a historian and did not donate the prize himself.  So there may have been a more appropriate name to be found all along, and indeed the CHA will now simply call it the CHA Prize. But removing the old name punitively....  Well meant, but not wise, I'd say. [Hat tip to Allen Levine for the link.]

The Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences has announced the finalists for its Canada Prize , given annually to scholarly works about Canada that were aided by the Aid to Scholarly Publishing Program. A good representation of historians this year, and four out of five from McGill-Queen's Press. Christopher Dummitt, Unbuttoned: A History of Mackenzie King's Secret Life (McGill-Queen�s University Press) E.A. Heaman, Tax, Order, and Good Government: A New Political History of Canada, 1867-1917   (McGill-Queen�s University Press) Adam Montgomery, T he Invisible Injured: Psychological Trauma in the Canadian Military from the First World War to Afghanistan (McGill-Queen�s University Press) Cheryl Suzack, Indigenous Women's Writing and the Cultural Study of Law (University of Toronto Press) Donald G. Wetherell, Wildlife, Land, and People: A Century of Change in Prairie Canada   (McGill-Queen�s University Press) I hear rumours about the shortlist for the J.W. Dafoe Prize f...

Christopher Dummitt's Unbuttoned: A History of Mackenzie King's Secret Life is among the nominees for the 2018 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing .  The other nominees, including three strong women contenders, are: Carol Off,  All We Leave Behind: A Reporter�s Journey into the Lives of Others Sandra Perron, Out Standing in the Field: A Memoir by Canada�s First Female Infantry Officer Ted Rowe,  Robert Bond: The Greatest Newfoundlander Tanya Talaga,  Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City It's not entirely clear just what the Cohen means by "political writing," beyond the idea that anything may be political and it's up to juries to find the boundaries.  So this year's nominees are as eclectic as ever -- and not such a bad thing, since it seems like a quality list. I'm sorry I hadn't previously know about the Robert Bond biography , the other historical work (if we can set booundaries for that!) on the li...

The other day, the Charles Taylor Prize in Literary Nonfiction was awarded to journalist Tanya Talaga, for Seven Fallen Feathers , her study of seven indigenous youth who ended up dead after coming to Thunder Bay to continue their schooling. Talaga will be among the presenters at Writing True, the Creative Nonfiction Collective annual conference , being held in Toronto May 4 to 8.  Talaga will also be interviewing Sto:lo writer Lee Maracle during the conference.