Research

SELECTED RESEARCH CURRENTLY UNDERWAY BY DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY FACULTY

Department of History instructors conduct research to expand our understanding of earlier times and their meanings. They engage actively in their studies, not only in the cause of good scholarship, but to serve the broad public interest in the past and in defining its influence on today’s world.

Below are a few samples of research projects currently underway by the department’s faculty in 2024-25.

TENURE/TENURE TRACK FACULTY

CARL BENN

1. Book tentatively titled The Royal Ontario Museum: A History to 1947.

2. Article exposing a fraudulent treaty “document” engraved on a large rock in Awenda Provincial Park near Georgian Bay.

CATHERINE ELLIS

1. Book chapter on the coronation of King Charles III for an upcoming edited collection in Bloomsbury Academic’s Mass-Observation Critical Series.

2. Book tentatively entitled Young People, Youth Culture, and the British Government, c.1945-1970.

3. Article on 1950s coffee bars and youth culture in Britain.

4. Article on royal jubilees and English popular culture.

YUNXIANG GAO

1. A biography tentatively titled Soo Yong (杨秀, c.1903-1984): Hollywood Actress and Asian Diaspora Cosmopolitan.

2. A biography tentatively titled Wang Yung (王莹, c.1913-1974): From Child Bride, Shanghai’s “Literary Star,” to the Transpacific “Drama Queen.”

INGRID HEHMEYER

1. Book chapter on the use of water in magical rituals.

2. Journal article on “The Pharmaceutical Profession in Medieval Miniature Painting.”

ARNE KISLENKO

1. Book on Soviet intelligence in the West in the 1920s.

2. Book tentatively titled Modern Thailand: History, Politics, and Culture for ABC-CLIO Publishers.

3. Article on Thailand’s intelligence agencies.

4. Documentary film on spies in the Second World War.

SESSIONAL/CONTRACT FACULTY

EVGENY EFREMKIN

1. Book tentatively titled At the Intersection of Diasporas, Nations, and Modernities: North American Finns in the Soviet Union in the 1930s.

2. Book chapter tentatively titled “Celebratory Narratives, Transnationalism, and ‘Hard-Working’ Left-Wing Immigrants” to appear in a Collection of Essays in Memory of Gabrielle Scardelatto.

CHRISTOPHER B. ZEICHMANN

1. Book on anarchistic and radically democratic communities of Mediterranean antiquity.

2. Book chapter discussing the role of the Roman military in the monetization of the Palestinian economy after the Roman-Jewish War.

3. Journal articles on Roman astrological speculation and its reception by early Christians.