Category: oral history

Manitoba Food History Project

Janis Thiessen1 Comment

My latest SSHRC-funded research project is the Manitoba Food History Project. I’m honoured that the Oral History Centre‘s Kimberley Moore and Kent Davies are collaborators on this research. The project’s two key research questions are:

“How has food been produced, sold, and consumed in Manitoba?”

and

“How has this changed over time?”

Interested in learning more? Check out the project’s website, manitobafoodhistory.ca, where you’ll find the Food History Truck, upcoming events, and The Pantry (which holds Story Maps and the project’s podcast series, Preserves).

Manitoba Food History Truck.jpg
The Manitoba Food History Truck. (Photo by Kimberley Moore)

Interviewees wanted: Descendants of the Winnipeg General Strike

Janis Thiessen1 Comment

Do you have a grandparent or other relative who was involved in the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike?

Did that person share stories with you about their experiences?

1919 Strike troops
Troops on Main Street, Winnipeg, 21 June 1919. University of Manitoba Libraries, Winnipeg Tribune Photo Collection, PC 18/7188/18-6233a-010.

Consider commemorating their participation by sharing those stories in a recorded oral history interview.

Interviews so conducted will used in teaching and research, including publications. For further details (including potential benefits and risks), contact Janis Thiessen, History Department, University of Winnipeg, ja.thiessen@uwinnipeg.ca, 204-786-9947.

1919 Strike streetcar
Winnipeg General Strike, 21 June 1919. Archives of Manitoba, Still Images Section, Foote Collection, Item no. 1696, Negative 2762.

 

 

Necessary Idealism: A History of Westgate Mennonite Collegiate

Janis Thiessen
Mural inside Westgate’s front entrance. Photo copyright Janis Thiessen.

Manitoba Mennonites’ ethno-religious identity was transformed in the last half of the 20th century. As a school situated in the heart of the city, Westgate Mennonite Collegiate‘s history offers a unique means of exploring generational and class differences within the Mennonite community. Westgate has been a significant site of contested power and social integration: authorities (government officials, church leaders, and school administrators) struggled with others (parents, students, faculty and staff, church members, neighbourhood residents, and non-Mennonites) to (re)define Mennonitism for the post-Second World War generations.

Continue reading “Necessary Idealism: A History of Westgate Mennonite Collegiate” →

Not Talking Union book launch

Janis Thiessen

Hot off the press! Please join me for the launch of Not Talking Union: An Oral History of North American Mennonites and Labour.

NTU cover

The launch will take place at Winnipeg’s McNally Robinson on Wednesday, 18 May 2016 at 7 pm.

The book examines why the majority of North American Mennonites rejected labour unions in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Continue reading “Not Talking Union book launch” →

Not Talking Union: An Oral History of North American Mennonites and Labour

Janis Thiessen
WPA mural depicting a ’30s era lunch counter, Coit Tower, San Francisco. Photo copyright Janis Thiessen.

Not Talking Union: An Oral History of North American Mennonites and Labour is the title of my forthcoming book from McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Continue reading “Not Talking Union: An Oral History of North American Mennonites and Labour” →

Canadian Food History Symposium 2015

Janis Thiessen

UPDATE: Audio recordings of the five presentations at this event are available online: Andrea Guimond on poverty and diet; Daniel Pastuck on miso and soy; Madison Connolly on wine and Canadian identity; Emily Nikkel on hog farming in Manitoba; and Aisha Entz on the decline of First Nations peoples since European contact.

You’re invited to the third annual Canadian Food History Symposium!

Thursday, 2 April 2015, 9:30 AM

at the University of Winnipeg Oral History Centre

Room 2B23 (Bryce Hall)

CFHS 2015 poster

Manufacturing Mennonites: public lectures and reviews

Janis Thiessen

Manufacturing Mennonites: Work and Religion in Post-War Manitoba has received its first review! Historian James Naylor (Brandon University) reviewed the book for Oral History Forum d’histoire orale, the journal of the Canadian Oral History Association. You can read his review here.

Mfg Mennos

I’ll be discussing the book at public lectures in Winnipeg on the following dates:

4 December 2013, 12:30 PM, Fred Douglas Place (333 Vaughan St.)
10 December 2013, 2:00 PM, The Wellington (3161 Grant Ave.)
7 April 2014, 2:00 PM, The Portsmouth (125 Portsmouth Blvd.)

Manufacturing Mennonites will also be discussed by registrants in Canadian Mennonite University’s theology book discussion group “Take and Read” on 9 April 2014.

UPDATE:
Reviews of the book have been published in Oral History Review, Mennonite Quarterly Review (see pages 131-33), the Journal of Mennonite Studies, The Canadian Historical Review, Great Plains Research, Labour/Le Travail, Canadian Ethnic Studies, and University of Toronto Quarterly.