Alan MacEachern

Associate Professor
PhD, Queen's University, 1997

Director of the SSHRC Strategic Knowledge Cluster
NiCHE: Network in Canadian History & Environment / Nouvelle initiative canadienne en histoire de l'environnement

 

 

Doctoral study opportunity.  UWO History and NiCHE are offering a special funding opportunity for new Ph.D. students in Environmental History.  Two successful candidates will receive a full funding package from UWO plus $5000/year from NiCHE, for four years beginning in fall 2010. The students will be supervised by one of the department’s three environmental historians – Alan MacEachern, Pierre Reynard, or William J. Turkel – and will work with NICHE in promoting the mobilization and dissemination of environmental history research in Canada. The students will be encouraged during their first year of doctoral study to participate in the UWO Environment & Sustainability Collaborative Research Program, as a value-added component to their Ph.D. in History.  Please contact Prof. MacEachern, Reynard, and/or Turkel if you are interested in working with them, and Prof. MacEachern for more information about this funding opportunity.

 

Research

I am a Canadian historian whose research gravitates to topics on humans' past relations with nature: environmental history. To me, this is a field too pertinent to present-day concerns, and too interesting, to stay within the academic domain. An attempt I made to describe and lobby for the field may be found in "An Introduction, in Theory and Practice," from Method and Meaning in Canadian Environmental History (2009).

Much of my time these days is spent as director of NiCHE, which works to assist Canadian environmental history researchers in developing their projects, to facilitate collaboration, and to make the field better known to governments, public history organizations, environmental groups, and the public.

Method and Meaning in Canadian Environmental HistoryEnvironmental HistoryThe Institue of Man and Resources: An Environmental FableNatural Selections: National Parks in Atlantic Canada, 1935-1970

 

 

 

 

 

Teaching

This fall, I am introducing His3813E, a seminar course in Public History. At the graduate level, I am supervising two Ph.D. students, Ryan O'Connor, writing on the emergence of the environmental movement in Toronto, and Jess Van Horssen, writing an environmental history of Asbestos, Quebec. I have supervised fields in Modern Canada and Environmental History, and am also available to supervise in Public History. I directed our Master's program in Public History from 2001-07. 

In all the courses I teach, I want students to come away interested in some small part of past human experience, able to develop an argument and realize why doing so has value in life, believing that good writing is important and recognizing what that writing looks like, and understanding that even if they never spend their careers or their spare time "doing" history, it is still worth thinking about the past and its role in the present.

Selected publications 

[forthcoming] with Ryan O'Connor, eds., Talking Green: Oral History and the Environment, a special issue of Oral History Forum, 2010.

[forthcoming] "M.B. Williams and the Early Years of the National Parks Branch," A Place for the People: Canada's National Parks, 1911-2011, Claire E. Campbell, ed., 2011.
~ see an accompanying 5-minute video, as a sample for the 2009 NiCHE Slidecast Competition, here.

"A Far Different Place,” University Affairs 50th anniversary issue, November 2009.

with William J. Turkel, eds., Method and Meaning in Canadian Environmental History, Toronto: Nelson Education, 2009.

with Ryan O'Connor, "Back to the Island: The Back-to-the-Land Movement on PEI," 2009.

with William. J. Turkel and Adam Crymble, The Programming Historian, 2008-09.
~ this open access monograph is presently being translated into Spanish by a digital humanities blogger, here.

"Writing the History of Canadian Parks: Past, Present, and Future," proceedings of the Canadian Parks for Tomorrow: 40th Anniversary Conference, 2008.
~ podcast (20.1 Mb)

"The Academic Alphabet" column, University Affairs, 2006-08.

with Matthew Evenden, eds., a special issue on Canada, Environmental History, Oct 2007.

Utopian U: The Founding of the University of Prince Edward Island, 1968-1970, Charlottetown: University of Prince Edward Island, 2005.

The Institute of Man and Resources: An Environmental Fable, Charlottetown: Island Studies Press, 2003.
~ winner of the PEI Museum & Heritage Foundation's Award for Writing, 2003

Natural Selections: National Parks in Atlantic Canada, 1935-1970, Montreal/Kingston: McGill Queen's University Press, 2001. 
 ~ available online as part of the OCUL Canadian Public Policy Collection
 ~ honourable mentions for the Canadian Historical Association's Sir John A. Macdonald Prize (best book in Canadian history, 2001) and the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences' Raymond Klibansky Prize (best English-language book in the Humanities, 2001)

   

Also from this web page:

Courses

  • HIS 3813E - Public History.  Mondays, 12:30-2:30. SSC3014. 
  • An examination of how history is understood by and presented for the public in varied venues and media, including museums, historic sites, historical fiction, the internet, and film.

Upcoming & Recent Activities