I am a Professor in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies (GSWS) at Simon Fraser University (Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada), where I am also the Department Chair.
I teach undergraduate and graduate courses in Canadian women’s history, the history of social protest, the history of the 1960s, feminist theory, and an introduction to gender studies. I am co-organizer of Vancouver’s Café Minerva. I am currently accepting graduate students interested in Canadian women’s and gender history.
Research and Publications
My past research explored the impact of unemployment in the Great Depression on family life and masculinity; the emergence of the gendered welfare state; and survival strategies adopted by poor and unemployed families. My current research is on the history of the Vietnam war and the gendered politics of the draft resistance and antiwar movements in Canada.
I was awarded the Dean’s Medal for Excellence in Academic research, teaching, and service (Simon Fraser University, 2015); the National Capital Committee on the Scholarship, Preservation and Dissemination of Women’s History, Marion Dewar Prize, 2011 [Outstanding scholar based on record of research, teaching and administrative work]; Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Cormack Teaching Award, 2010-11; and two Honourable Mentions for Respectable Citizens: Gender, Family, and Unemployment in Ontario’s Great Depression (UTP, 2009): the Sir John A. MacDonald Prize in Canadian History, Canadian Historical Association, 2010 and the Canadian Women’s Studies Association, 2011 (for Respectable Citizens).
- Heroes, Havens, Cowards: Gender and the Politics of Vietnam Antiwar Resistance (In Progress)
- Human Rights and the Struggle for Democracy: The History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement in British Columbia. University of British Columbia Press, 2017. Under contract.
- Rethinking Canada: The Promise of Women’s History (Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2016). Co-edited with Tamara Myers and Adele Perry.
- Worth Fighting For: War Resistance in Canadian History from 1812 to the War on Terror (Toronto: Between the Lines Press, 2015). Co-edited with Catherine Gidney and Michael Dawson.
- Gender History: Canadian Perspectives (Oxford: 2014). Co-authored with Willeen Keough
- Debating Dissent: Canada and the 1960s (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012). Co-edited with Dominique Clément and Greg Kealey.
- Respectable Citizens: Gender, Family, and Unemployment in Ontario’s Great Depression (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009).
Upcoming/Recent Talks
I will be giving a paper at the upcoming BC Studies Conference in May 2017: ‘Why self-supporting women need the ballot’: The Working-Class Women’s Suffrage Movement in British Columbia.
The Herstory Cafe met for the last time in February, 2016. Jolene Cumming and I would like to thank all of our supporters for a wonderful nine years of women’s history events in Vancouver. I am now working with Willeen Keough (Department of History, SFU) on a women’s and gender history public lecture series called Café Minerva. Our third event was Friday 14 October, 7 p.m. Sandrine Sanos spoke on “The Philospher’s Body: Simone de Beauvoir and the Sex of Violence.” Follow us on twitter @Cafe_Minerva for upcoming events. Stay tuned for a Fall 2017 event on 100 years of the women’s suffrage movement in British Columbia.