Canada: A Very Short Introduction with Donald Wright
09/16/21 • 40 min
In this last episode of the season, I chat with Dr. Donald Wright. Don is a Canadian historian at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, a small city in Atlantic Canada. His research interests include Canadian political, intellectual, and cultural history. For this episode, Don and I will be talking about his book Canada: A Very Short Introduction , which is a book he published as part of Oxford University Press's Very Short Introduction series.
His research interests include Canadian political, intellectual, and cultural history. His first book, The Professionalization of History in English Canada, looks at the transition from amateur historians working outside the university in the nineteenth century to professional historians, with advanced degrees, working inside the university. His second book was a biography of Donald Creighton, English Canada’s leading historian. Working with two colleagues, he next published an edited volume called Symbols of Canada which includes essays on, among other symbols, the beaver, hockey, and maple syrup and how these symbols have been used and how they have changed over time. He is now working on a book about the Canadian historian Ramsay Cook, 1931-2016, although like everyone else, he has been slowed by the pandemic.
An award-winning teacher, Don teaches courses in Canadian and American history and in the politics of climate change.
When he isn’t at his desk or in the classroom, Don likes to trail run with his black lab named Bruce and listen to podcasts on history, politics, and climate change.
Bio:
https://www.unb.ca/faculty-staff/directory/arts-fr-political-science/wright-donald.html
Artwork by Nacer Ahmadi: IG @x.filezzz
Audio by TwistedLogix
In this last episode of the season, I chat with Dr. Donald Wright. Don is a Canadian historian at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, a small city in Atlantic Canada. His research interests include Canadian political, intellectual, and cultural history. For this episode, Don and I will be talking about his book Canada: A Very Short Introduction , which is a book he published as part of Oxford University Press's Very Short Introduction series.
His research interests include Canadian political, intellectual, and cultural history. His first book, The Professionalization of History in English Canada, looks at the transition from amateur historians working outside the university in the nineteenth century to professional historians, with advanced degrees, working inside the university. His second book was a biography of Donald Creighton, English Canada’s leading historian. Working with two colleagues, he next published an edited volume called Symbols of Canada which includes essays on, among other symbols, the beaver, hockey, and maple syrup and how these symbols have been used and how they have changed over time. He is now working on a book about the Canadian historian Ramsay Cook, 1931-2016, although like everyone else, he has been slowed by the pandemic.
An award-winning teacher, Don teaches courses in Canadian and American history and in the politics of climate change.
When he isn’t at his desk or in the classroom, Don likes to trail run with his black lab named Bruce and listen to podcasts on history, politics, and climate change.
Bio:
https://www.unb.ca/faculty-staff/directory/arts-fr-political-science/wright-donald.html
Artwork by Nacer Ahmadi: IG @x.filezzz
Audio by TwistedLogix
Previous Episode
Decolonizing Surf Tourism with Tara Ruttenberg and Pete Brosius
In this episode, we discuss critical surf studies as a field of academic research, speak to the merit of surf-related experiential learning programs, and share highlights from our research into decolonizing sustainable surf tourism. We offer background into the critical ethnographic focus of our study abroad program, Surfing & Sustainability: Political Ecology in Costa Rica, explain our critique of the sustainable surf tourism-for-sustainable development paradigm, explore links between regenerative agriculture networks and surf tourism communities, and describe the political ecology of real estate as a conceptual frame for analyzing surfscape occupation. We end with a few ideas on how surfers can engage with critical surf studies concepts to support greater socio-ecological well being in the places we travel to surf.
Resources:
We’ve been helped in this work by recent revisions of the historiography of surfing – Scott Laderman’s Empire in Waves, Isaiah Walker’s Waves of Resistance, Krista Comer’s Surfer Girls in the New World Order, Kevin Dawson’s Undercurrents of Power, Dexter Zavalza Hough-Snee and Alexander Sotelo Eastman’s The Critical Surf Studies Reader (including Dina Gilio-Whitaker’s chapter on Appropriating Surfing and the Politics of Indigenous Authenticity), and Allison Rose Jefferson’s Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites during the Jim Crow Era.
Additional Resources:
Surfing and Sustainability: Political Ecology in Costa Rica • Summer | Anthropology (uga.edu)
Lost But Not Forgotten, virtual reality project on surfing history and coastal development in Long Beach, California - Lost But Not Forgotten VR TRAILER - YouTube. Bryce Leisy is in the Applied Anthropology MA program in the Department of Anthropology at Cal State Long Beach and is the Surf Coach for Wilson High School in Long Beach, California.
Bios:
Tara Ruttenberg is Ph.D. Candidate in Development Studies at the Wageningen School of Social Sciences, specializing in critical surf studies and alternatives to development in sustainable surf tourism. She is a member of the Institute for Women Surfers, hosts women’s surf retreats in Costa Rica, and writes stories and articles for alternative surf magazines and her personal website, Tarantula Surf. Tara’s current research includes decolonizing sustainable surf tourism, surfeminism as emancipatory politics in surfing culture, and a diverse economies approach to development alternatives in occupied Global South surfscapes.
Pete Brosius is Distinguished Research Professor of Anthropology at the University of Georgia and Founding Director of UGA’s Center for Integrative Conservation Research. He is widely recognized for his work with Penan hunter-gatherers in Sarawak, Malaysia, and for his contributions to the development of Political Ecology. Throughout his career he has been engaged with issues of environmental degradation, indigenous rights and conservation. Brosius has been a surfer since 1969, and for the past ten years he has been the director of UGA’s Surfing & Sustainability: Political Ecology in Costa Rica study abroad program. His current research includes projects on the Tolak Reklamasi movement in Bali, Indonesia, and the political ecology of real estate in occupied surfscapes in the Global South.
Together, Pete and Tara run the study abroad program, Surfing and Sustainability: Political Ecology in Costa Rica, the first of its kind, now in its 10th year running. Their recent work critiquing sustainable surf tourism and proposing diverse economic alternatives to tourism development has been published in books including The Critical Surf Studies Reader (Duke University Press 2017) , and The Ecolaboratory: Environmental Governance and Economic Development in Costa Rica (University of Arizona Press 2020). Their forthcoming research on localisms of resistance in occupied surfscapes is currently under review with Geoforum and a new critical surf studies collection edited by Lydia Heberling, David Kamper and Jess Ponting.
Artwork by Nacer Ahmadi: IG @x.filezzz
Audio by TwistedLogix
Next Episode
Season Two Trailer
Welcome back for Season Two! This season we’ll explore the origins of surfing itself, from its roots, rituals, and the existential allure of the waves, to the stigmas of being a surf studies scholar—all of which underscore the personal motivations for writing my dissertation, “The Politics of Waves: A Transnational and Cultural Surfing History of Popoyo, Nicaragua.”
A huge shout out to our loyal listeners from last season, and to all of the new listeners just tuning in! We’re stoked to have you all as part of another amazing season of The Surfing Historian. So let’s paddle out together and ride through the world of academia!
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Artwork by Nacer Ahmadi: IG @nacerfilez
Production by TwistedLogix and Morrisound Studios
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