Nancy Christie
- Adjunct Research Professor
Email: nchrist8@uwo.ca
Office: TBA
Personal Website
Research Interests
Professor Christie is a cultural historian with a primary interest in the history of gender, the state, the history of consumption, the history of political thought, and the history of the British empire\transatlantic world.
Teaching Philosophy
My goal is a simple one: I encourage students to think broadly, across the terrain of cultural, social and political history, and to draw on a wide range of theoretical approaches, in order to expand their perspective to the point where they can creatively elaborate their own synthetic conclusions. I aim to introduce students to the best in Canadian historiography, and also, to consider Canada as a case study within international frameworks of debate. For senior undergraduate and graduate students, I wish them to immerse themselves in a wide range of archival records, from newspapers, to private papers, public documents, and legal records, so that they can develop a wide expertise in documentary sources.
Major Research Projects
I am presently completing a book length study of early Quebec entitled A Northern Bastille: A Cultural and Political History of Quebec, 1760 – 1820, which is based on a large data base from the criminal records of both Montreal and Quebec and newspaper records.
Select Publications
Books
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, January 2020) The Formal and Informal Politics of British Rule in Post-Conquest Quebec: A Northern Bastille
(Palgrave-Macmillan 2018) (with Michael Gauvreau) Bodies, Sex and Faith in the First World War: Dardanella and Peter
(2012) The Sixties and Beyond: Dechristianization in North America and Western Europe
(2010) (with Michael Gauvreau) MicChristian Churches and their Peoples, 1840-1965: A Social History of Religion in Canada
(2008) Transatlantic Subjects: Ideas, Institutions and Social Experience in Post-Revolutionary British North America
(2004) Mapping the Margins: Family and Social Discipline in Canada
(2003) Cultures of Citizenship in Postwar Canada
(2002) Households of Faith: Family, Gender, and Community in Canada
(2000) Engendering the State: Family, Work and Welfare in Canada
(1996) A Full-Orbed Christianity: The Protestant Churches and Social Welfare in Canada, 1900-1940
Book Chapters
- (forthcoming) “’A Government Fit for British Subjects’: Opposition to the Quebec Act and the Construction of a Masculine Citizenship,” in François Furstenburg and Ollivier Hubert, eds., The Quebec Act : 1774 (New York : Oxford University Press), 38pp.
- (2014) “Affliction: le théâtre des émotions en face de la maladie et de la mort au Canada post-révolutionnaire”, in Anne-Claude Ambroise-Rendu, dir., Émotions contemporaines (Paris: Armand Colin, 2014), 87-101.
- (2012) “’Belief Crucified upon a Rooftop Antenna’: Pierre Berton, the Comfortable Pew and Dechristianization,” in Nancy Christie & Michael Gauvreau, eds., The Sixties and Beyond: Dechristianization as History in Britain, Canada, the United States and Western Europe, 1945-2000 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press).
- (2011) “Proper Government and Discipline: Family Religion and Masculine Authority in Nineteenth-Century Canada,” in John Arnold & Sean Brady, ed., Comparative Masculinities (London & New York: Palgrave Macmillan), 389-412.
- (2010) “From Secularisation to Resacralisation?: The Canadian Case, 1760-2000,” in Callum G. Brown & Michael Snape, eds., Secularisation in the Christian World, 1800-2000 (London: Ashgate Press), 93-118.
- (2009) “Time, Space, Modernity and the Transatlantic Family,” in Brigitte Caulier and Yvan Rousseau, dirs., Temps, espaces, modernites (Ste-Foy: Les Presses de l’Universite Laval), 69-82.
- (2008) “’The Plague of Servants’: Female Household Labour and the Making of Classes in Upper Canada,” in Nancy Christie, ed., Transatlantic Subjects: Ideas, Identities, and Institutions in Post-Revolutionary British North America (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press), 83-132.
- (2008) “Theorizing A Colonial Past: Canada as a Society of British Settlement,” in Nancy Christie, ed., Transatlantic Subjects: Ideas, Institutions, and Social Experience in Post-Revolutionary British North America (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press), 3-41.
- (2007) “Nationalism and Nature in Canadian and Australian Popular Histories, 1880-1920,” in Monique Lebrun, dir., Le Manuel scolaire d’ici et d’ailleurs, d’hier a demain (Quebec: Les Presses de l’Universite du Quebec) CD-Rom
Refereed Journal Publications:
- (Spring 2017) (with Michael Gauvreau), "'Freedom of the Fassions': The Politics of the Street in Montreal, and the Struggle against the British Fiscal-Military State," Critical Historical Studies.
- (April 2017) “Women in the Formal and Informal Economies of Late Eighteenth-Century Quebec, 1760-1820,” Gender and History, 42 pp.
- (Oct. 2016) (with Michael Gauvreau), “Marital Conflict, Ethnicity and the Regime of Legal Hybridity in Post-Conquest Quebec,” Journal of Family History, 43:4, pp. 1-21.
- (2015) “Merchant and Plebeian Commercial Knowledge in Montreal and Quebec, 1760-1820,” Early American Studies, 13:4 (Oct. 2015), 856-80.
- (2008) “Women, the Public Sphere and Middle Class Culture,” Journal of Women’s History 20:1 (spring 2008), 237-46.
- (2007) “Strangers in the Family: Work, Gender and the Origins of Old Age Homes,” Journal of Family History, (Oct. 2007), 1-21.
- “From Interdependence to ‘Modern’ Individualism: Families and the Emergence of Liberal Society in Canada,” History Compass.
- “’qu’il etoit maitre chez lui’ (he is the master of his house): Families and Political Authority in Counterrevolutionary Montreal,” William and Mary Quarterly (special issue on Centering Atlantic Families).
Conferences Organized
- (2009) Dechristianization in North America and Western Europe (McMaster University)
- (2004) Transatlantic Subjects (McMaster University)
- (2001) Mapping the Margins (McMaster University)
- (2000) Cultures of Citizenship in Post War Canada (Massey College, University of Toronto)
- (1998) Households of Faith (Toronto)
Awards & Distictions
- SSHRC Grant (2013-18)- " The Hidden Hand of Modernity"
- SSHRC Grant Co-investigator on "Canada as Projects" (2013-14)
- Project coordinator for "A Synthesis of Canadian History, 1627-1982" University of Toronto Press
- SSHRC Conference Grants (2004, 2009)
- SSHRC Research Grants (2007-10, 2012-13)
- 2001 - Sir John A Macdonald Prize, Best Book in Canadian History, awarded by the Canadian Historical Association
- 1998 - H.A. Innis Prize, Best Book in the Social Sciences in the English Language, awarded by the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada
