TMU AND THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY HOSTS 71ST ANNUAL MIDWEST CONFERENCE ON BRITISH STUDIES
TMU and the Department of History hosts 71st Annual Midwest Conference on British Studies
Toronto Metropolitan University hosted the 71st Annual Midwest Conference on British Studies, on September 27-28, 2024. Both the Faculty of Arts and the Department of History contributed financial support for the event.
The MWCBS is a broad community of institutionally-based and independent scholars working on diverse topics related to the British Isles (including Ireland), the Empire and Commonwealth, and British engagement with the world from Roman Britain to modern times. The community includes scholars from many disciplines, including History, English and Literature, Political Science, Gender Studies, Art, and Music.
The Department of History’s Dr. Martin Greig is the president of the MWCBS and served as the local conference organizer. A keynote speaker was Dr. Carl Benn, who explored the “big picture” story of the War of 1812. In contrast to widespread and confused notions about the conflict’s outcomes, he discussed how Britain accomplished its primary war aims of keeping its North American possessions and defending its maritime policies on the high seas, while the United States failed to achieve its principal goals in its struggle against the United Kingdom. Indigenous people living within America’s borders who allied with Britain, however, only had their pre-war rights restored in the peace treaty rather than realize their objective of securing independent homelands. A third member of the Department of History, Dr. Catherine Ellis, gave a paper exploring contemporary and scholarly perspectives on the significance of coffee bars in the creation of new youth cultures in Britain in the 1950s and ’60s. Professor Ellis highlighted intersections between the coffee bar as a new type of social space and postwar anxiety about issues such as unsupervised teen sociability, the “Americanization” of British culture, and the promotion of community and active citizenship in Britain’s nascent welfare state. She recently completed an article on coffee bars that will be published later this year. Joining Drs. Benn and Ellis was Professor Sarah Bull from the Department of English. Building on some findings in her forthcoming book with Cambridge University Press, Selling Sexual Knowledge: Medical Publishing and Obscenity in Victorian Britain, Dr. Bull examined how mid-19th-century pornographers popularized contraception by reframing radical political pamphlets as advice literature for people seeking sexual pleasure and reproductive autonomy.
