New exhibit symbolizes the Chinese-Canadian struggle for a “seat at the table”
Professor Henry Yu remembers speaking with his writing professor in his office decades ago as an undergraduate student at the University of British Columbia. The professor made an offhand comment that Yu “writes well for an Asian.” When asked today what inspired a new exhibit in Vancouver’s Chinatown that challenges the notion that Chinese-Canadians don’t […]
Online Course Preparation Q&A
“Online teaching really means re-thinking teaching from the ground up. Every aspect of a traditional course is open for re-imagining.” With the start of term on September 8th, the UBC History Department will be fully online for the very first time. To prepare the department for this challenge, three graduate students have been working together […]
Q&A with María Muñoz
“My research and teaching aim to excavate and understand the complexities of human systems, cultures and hierarchies.” María Muñoz is an associate professor of history at Susquehanna University, and will be joining the UBC History Department for one year. I talked with her about her historical interests, the several exciting courses she’ll be teaching at […]
HIST 104F: Cultures in Contact – a Q&A with Joy Dixon
“ [W]e will spend a lot of time working through traces of the past together – old maps, poems, stories, images, newspaper clippings, census data – to see what kinds of answers that they can give us, and what kinds of connections we can make.” Joy Dixon researches the history of religion in Britain, as well […]
HIST 440: History of Health in the Modern West- a Q&A with Benjamin Bryce
“[H]istorical examples give us food for thought about our current experience with COVID-19, and how many of the same factors are at play.” Dr. Benjamin Bryce is joining the UBC History Department after teaching for six years at the University of Northern British Columbia. He completed his PhD at York University in 2013, and he […]
Q&A with UBC History PhD graduate Alexey Golubev
“A degree will … open new career prospects and immerse you in a vibrant academic environment. You will connect with interesting people and will learn things that you would have never learned otherwise.” Alexey Golubev is a scholar of Russian history, with a focus on social, cultural, and transnational history. After teaching at Petrozavodsk University for […]
UBC Senate approves new Middle East Studies minor
The UBC senate has approved a new Middle East studies minor, to be offered for the first time in the 2020/21 academic year.
Pandemics and History – a roundtable on COVID-19 and its historical connections
“I feel that it’s a moment when all of history is kind of rising up and being revealed before us, and we’re provoked to think about a million different questions.” – Robert Brain. How has history been impacted by pandemics? How do we understand pandemics, and how do we study them? How do historians interact […]
Prof. Ivan Avakumovic, noted historian of 20th-century political movements, dies at 86
The Department of History records with sorrow the recent death of Professor Emeritus Ivan Avakumovic, a noted historian of twentieth-century political movements and a memorable teacher of modern international history. Professor Avakumovic died in Vancouver on July 16, 2013 at the age of 86. Ivan Avakumovic was born in what was then the Kingdom of Yugoslavia […]
Theresa Wong and Olivia Brocklehurst: Studying History Abroad in London
“History in London, and in Europe is… layers, upon layers, all with their own unique stories and narratives, jostling alongside modernity.”