I am an historian of the modern body interested in how people made sense of themselves and others. Recent publications include Canadian Carnival Freaks and the Extraordinary Body (University of Toronto Press, 2018), The Modern Girl: Feminine Modernities, The Body and Commodities in the 1920s (University of Toronto Press, 2015) and two co-edited collections of original essays - Contesting Bodies and Nation in Canadian History with Patrizia Gentile (University of Toronto Press, 2013) and Feminist Pedagogy in Higher Education: Critical Theory and Practice with Tracy Penny Light and Renee Bondy (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2015). My new project is a history of grief, childhood, and the body in Ontario, 1870-1940.
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About Us
Jane Nicholas
Jane Nicholas
Associate Professor
Department of History
Cross appointment to Department of Sexuality, Marriage, and Family Studies
PhD, University of Waterloo
MA, Queen's University
BA, Lakehead University
519-884-8111
28273
SH 2014
BIOGRAPHY
PUBLICATIONS
The content that follows may only represent a portion of the Faculty member’s work.
Books
Nicholas, Jane. Canadian Carnival Freaks and the Extraordinary Body, 1900-1970s (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2018). 320 pp Listen to the podcast about this publication.
Nicholas, Jane. The Modern Girl: Feminine Modernities, The Body, and Commodities in the 1920s (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2015) 288 pp.
Penny Light, Tracy, Jane Nicholas, and Renee Bondy eds., Feminist Pedagogy in Higher Education: Critical Theory and Practice (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2015) 342 pp.
Gentile, Patrizia and Jane Nicholas, eds., Contesting Bodies and Nation in Canadian History (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2013) 428 pp.
Chapters
Nicholas, Jane. “Scales of Manliness: Masculinity and Disability in the Displays of Little People as Freaks in Ontario, 1900s-1950s” Masculinities in Canadian History edited by Robert Rutherdale and Peter Gossage (Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press, 2018).
Nicholas, Jane. “Child Freak Performers in Early-to Mid-Twentieth-Century Canada,” Bringing Children and Childhood into Canadian History: The Difference Kids Make: edited by Mona Gleason and Tamara Myers (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2017), 308-324.
Nicholas, Jane and Jamilee Baroud. “Rethinking ‘Students These Days’: Feminist Pedagogy and the Construction of Students” in Feminist Pedagogy in Higher Education: Critical Theory and Practice Tracy Penny Light, Jane Nicholas, and Renee Bondy eds., (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2015), 245-262.
Bondy, Renee, Jane Nicholas, and Tracy Penny Light, “Feminist Pedagogy in Higher Education” in Feminist Pedagogy in Higher Education: Critical Theory and Practice Tracy Penny Light, Jane Nicholas, and Renee Bondy eds., (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2015), 1-9.
Nicholas, Jane and Patrizia Gentile. “Introduction: Contesting Bodies, Nation, and Canadian History” in Contesting Bodies and Nation in Canadian History, Patrizia Gentile and Jane Nicholas, eds.,(Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 3-27.
Nicholas, Jane. “Beauty Advice for the Canadian Modern Girl in the 1920s” in Consuming Modernity: Changing Gendered Behaviours and Consumerism, 1919-1940, eds. Cheryl Krasnick Warsh and Dan Malleck, (Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press, 2013), 181-199.
Nicholas, Jane. “Representing the Modern Man: Beauty Culture and Masculinity in Early Twentieth Century Canada” in Canadian Men and Masculinities: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, eds. Wayne Martino and Christopher Grieg, (Canadian Scholars’ Press/Women’s Press, 2012), 42-60.
Articles
Nicholas, Jane. “The Children’s Séance: Child Death, the Body, and Grief in Interwar Ontario” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, 11, no. 2 (Summer 2018)
Nicholas, Jane and Lori Chambers, “In Search of Monkey Girl: Disability, Child Welfare, and the Freak Show in Ontario in the 1970s” Journal of Canadian Studies, 50, no. 2 (Summer 2016), (backdated issue published in 2017).
Nicholas, Jane. “A Debt to the Dead? Ethics, Photography, History and the Study of Freakery” Histoire sociale/Social History 47, no. 93 (May 2014), 141-157.
GRANTS, FELLOWSHIPS, AWARDS
Grants
SSHRC Insight Grant, Sorrow: Child Death and Grief in Ontario, 1867-1940 (2018)
Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences, Aid to Scholarly Publications Program, (for Canadian Carnival Freaks and the Extraordinary Body) (2017)
St. Jerome’s University, Faculty Research Grant, (2018 and 2015)
St. Jerome’s University, Aid to Scholarly Publishing, (2018 and 2015)
Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences, Aid to Scholarly Publications Program, (for The Modern Girl) (2012)
SSHRC Standard Research Grant (2010)
SSHRC Aid to Scholarly Workshops (with Dr. P Gentile, Carleton University – funds managed through Carleton University) (2010)
COURSES TAUGHT
HIST 313: History of the Family in the United States
HIST 318/SMF 318: History of Sexuality: The Modern Period
SMF 101: Introduction to Relationships and Families
SMF 215: Sexuality and Popular Culture
SMF 494: Seminar in Sexuality
AREAS OF GRADUATE SUPERVISION
Canadian women’s and gender history
The history of the body
Canadian cultural history
For more information, please see the Tri-University Graduate Program in History.
PROFESSIONAL, ADMINISTRATIVE, AND COMMUNITY SERVICES
The content that follows may only represent a portion of the Faculty member’s work.
Professional
Ontario Representative, Canadian Committee on Women's History - Comité canadien de l'histoire des femmes (2018-)
Society for the History of Childhood and Youth Fass-Sandin Prize Committee (2017)
Chair, Article Prize Committee for the Canadian Historical Association’s Canadian Committee on Migration, Ethnicity and Transnationalism (2016-2018)
Administrative
Acting Chair, Department of History (2018)
Member, Committee on Research and Scholarship (2016-2017)
Member, Academic Planning Committee (2015-2017)