IAN MOSBY, PhD

Over at ActiveHistory.ca, Crystal Fraser and I have just published a joint essay about Canada’s Indian residential schools and the politics of history. It was written as a response to an earlier Ken Coates essay (“Second Thoughts About Residential Schools“) that was published in the Dorchester Review. We challenge Coates’ account of the current residential schools historiography, particularly his argument that not enough has been done to capture the positive impacts of residential schools and that, “Perhaps it is time to refocus attention away from Residential Schools, the devastating impact of which is well known and the constructive elements largely ignored.”

To read the full essay, click on the link below:

Setting Canadian History Right?: A Response to Ken Coates’ ‘Second Thoughts about Residential Schools’

Dr. Schreiber of San Augustine giving a typhoid innoculation at a rural school, San Augustine County, Texas (LOC)

Over at ActiveHistory.ca, Jim Clifford, Erika Dyck and I have co-edited a series of posts on the topic of  “Infectious Disease, Contagion and the History of Vaccines.” This “#InfectiousHistory” theme week – as we dubbed it on Twitter – brought together some of the leading global historians of infectious disease and vaccination in order to provide some much needed context for contemporary debates and news stories that have proliferated following the return of infectious diseases like measles and ebola as major public health threats over the past year.

Below, I’ve included the introductory essay we wrote as part of this series as well as links to all of the different articles. It was a lot of fun to work with Jim and Erika and I think we can all agree that the contributors made the theme week a real success beyond any of our expectations.

(more…)