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Dr. Dan Horner

Associate Professor
JOR 823A
416-979-5000 Ext. 554090

Spotlight

Dan Horner joined the Department of Criminology in 2014. He is a historian of 19th century cities whose research examines issues related to public order, migration, governance, and authority. He has published a number of academic articles and book chapters on collective violence and epidemic disease in 19th century Montreal and Liverpool. In 2020, McGill-Queen’s University Press published his first monograph, entitled Taking to the Streets: Crowds, Politics, and the Urban Experience in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Montreal. It examines how the streets became a vital political space during a tumultuous decade in the city’s history. It delves into the way that riots, parades, religious processions, and other crowd events shaped notions of legitimate authority and justified the marginalization of women, the poor, and racialized people from the city’s public life. His current project, which is funded by an Insight Grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, examines the transformation of Montreal’s urban fringe in the first half of the nineteenth century. It traces the social and environmental transformation of this space, and the crucial role it played in the integration of people from all walks of life into a cosmopolitan community, from migrant labourers living in ramshackle shanty towns to the elites building grand estates on the slopes of Mount Royal. It outlines how people used the edge of town to escape the reach of the state, like bandits seeking refuge from the police and business owners establishing unlicensed garbage dumps. It examines how this area became a contact zone between different kinds of European settlers and the region’s Indigenous peoples. In doing so, this work will consider how the processes associated with capitalism and colonialism made an enormous impact on a small patch of the urban fabric.

At Ryerson, Dan has taught courses that link the histories of crime reporting, the regulation of public space, and the Canadian criminal justice system to the contemporary concerns that shape the field of Criminology.

Education

Year Univeristy Degree
2010 York University PhD
2004 York University MA
2002 McGill University BA (Hons)

Courses

Course Code Course Title
CRM 100 Introduction to the Canadian Criminal Justice System
CRM 201 Making Public Order in Canada
CRM 311 The Regulation of Public Space
CRM 312 Representing Crim
CRM 406 Historical Criminology
CR 8001 The Law, The State, and the Pursuit of Social Justice

Selected Publications

Peer Reviewed Publications

  • “Behind Strong Palings: Producing Knowledge in The Modern City at Montreal's Emigrant Sheds, 1832-1852.” Revue d'histoire urbaine / Urban History Review 49.2 (Spring 2022): 172-193.
  • Taking to the Streets: Crowds, Politics, and the Urban Experience in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Montreal. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020. 311p. *Winner of the Canadian Historical Association’s Clio Award for the Best Book on Quebec History, 2021.
  • “Trouble at the Edge of Town: Policing Montreal's Urban Periphery in the Middle of the Nineteenth Century.” In Jon Stobart and Dag Lindstrom. Eds.,Micro-geographies of the Western City, 1750-1900. London: Routledge Press, 2021, 203-217.
  • “To muse within these peaceful portals’: Urban Space, Public Order and the Makings of Montreal’s Viger Square, 1818-1870.” In Elizabeth Mancke, Jerry Bannister, Denis McKim and Scott See, eds., Unrest, Violence, and the Search for Social Order in British North America. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019, 359-382.
  • “A Population Takes Flight: Irish Famine Migration in Boston, Montreal, and Liverpool, and the Politics of Marginalization and Criminalization.” In Idil Atak and James Simeon, eds. The Criminalization of Migration: Context and Consequences. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018, 257-280.
  • “Like a Thread of Gold’: Tracing Alfred Perry’s Lifelong Engagement with Montreal’s Politics of Ethnic Confrontation.” In Mary Anne Poutanen, Stéphan Gervais et Raffaele Iacovino, eds.,Engaging with Diversity: Multidisciplinary Reflections on Plurality from Quebec. New York: Peter Lang, 2018, 327-346.
  • “Port Cities in Crisis: Considering Urban Governance, Modernity and Migration in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Montreal and Liverpool in a Transnational Context.” In Nicolas Kenny and Rebecca Madgin, eds.. Cities Beyond Borders: Comparative and Transnational Approaches to Urban History. London: Ashgate Press, 2015, 43-60.
  • “If the evil now growing around us be not staid’: Montreal and Liverpool Confront the Irish Famine Migration as a Transnational Crisis in Urban Governance.” Social History / Histoire sociale 12.38 (November 2013): 83-100.  *Nominated for the Committee on Migration, Ethnicity and Transnationalism’s Article Prize by the editorial board of Histoire sociale / Social History.
  • “The Public Has The Right to be Protected From A Deadly Scourge’: Debating Quarantine, Authority and Liberal Governance during the 1847 Typhus Outbreak in Montreal.”  Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de la Société historique du Canada 24.1 (2013): 65-100.
  • “Shame upon you as men!: Competing Visions of Masculine Authority in the Aftermath of Montreal’s Gavazzi Riot.” Social History / Histoire sociale 44.87 (May 2011): 29-52.  *Reprinted in Willeen Keough and Lara Campbell, eds., Gender History: Canadian Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
  • “Solemn Processions and Terrifying Violence: Spectacle, Authority and Citizenship during the Lachine Canal Strike of 1843.” Urban History Review / Revue d’histoire urbaine 38.2 (Spring 2010): 36-47.
     

Forthcoming Peer Reviewed Publications

  • “Encountering a Ravaged People in the Modern City: The Irish Famine’s Impact on Montreal’s Urban Landscape.” Accepted in a forthcoming edited collection on the Irish Famine Migrations impact on British North America, edited by William Jenkins, under contract with McGill-Queen’s University Press.
  • “Pageantry in the Shadow of Violence: Celebrating Fête-Dieu on the Streets of Mid-Nineteenth-Century Montreal.” Accepted in a forthcoming edited collection on the global history of anti-Catholic violence, edited by Eveline Bouwers, under contract with Routledge Press.
     

Other Publications

Book Reviews

  • Review of Eric Reiter, Wounded Feelings: Litigating Emotions in Quebec, 1870-1950. Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 75.1-2 (Été-Automne 2021): 228-231.
  • Review of Ruth Bleasdale, Rough Work: Labourers on the Public Works of British North American and Canada, 1841-1882. University of Toronto Quarterly 89.3 (Summer 2020): 536-538.
  • Review of William Reimer, Revisiting Toronto the Good: Violence, Religion, and Culture in Late Victorian Toronto. Ontario History CIX.1 (Spring 2017): 145-147.

    Review of Robert Sweeny, Why Did We Choose to Industrialize? Montreal, 1818-1849. Urban History Review / Revue d’histoire urbaine 44.1-2 (Fall 2015): 84-85.
  • Review of Harold Bérubé, Des sociétés distinctes: Gouverner les banlieues bourgeoises de Montréal, 1880-1939. H-Urban (December 2015), Online.
  • Review of Benjamin Jones, Republicanism and Responsible Government: The Shaping of Democracy in Australia and Canada. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 16.3 (Winter 2015).
  • Review of William Jenkins, Between Raid and Rebellion: The Irish in Buffalo and Toronto, 1867-1916. Urban History (UK) 42.03 (August 2015): 536-538.
  • Review of Sherry Olson and Patricia Thornton, Peopling the North American City: Montreal, 1840-1900.  Histoire sociale / Social History 46.1 (May 2013): 251-253.

    Review of James Jackson, The Riot That Never Was: The Military Shooting of Three Montrealers in 1832 and the Official Cover-Up.  Canadian Historical Review 92.3 (September 2011): 553-555.
  • Review of Robert Gagnon, Questions d’égouts: Santé publique, infrastructures et urbanization à Montréal au XIXième siècle.  Left History 12.2 (Fall 2007): 190-192.
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