Jarett Henderson

Education:
BA (History) University of Manitoba
Explore: French-Language Bursary Program, Université Laval
MA (History) University of Manitoba
PhD (History) York University
Post Doctoral Fellow, L.R. Wilson Institute for Canadian History, McMaster University

Office: EA 3181
Phone: 403.440.8465
E-mail: jhenderson@mtroyal.ca

Main areas of instruction at MRU:
Hist 1100 Introduction to History
Hist 1131 Origins, Canada to 1867
Hist 2207 Histories of Western Sexualities
Hist 2232 Canadian Social History
Hist 2241 Britain and Its Empire in the 19th Century
Hist 3319 Conflict and Violence in Canadian History
Hist 3356 Topics in Canadian History
Hist 4451 History of British North America

Main areas of scholarly interest:
Comparative Colonialism
Political and Social Reform
Gender, Family and Sexuality
Race, Rebellion, and Responsible Government
Canada, Quebec, and the British Empire
Convict Transportation
Archives and Historical Methodologies

Current research interests:
“Convicts, Colonists, and the Colonial Office, 1824-1841”
This project focuses on 25 Lower Canadians transported to Bermuda and New South Wales between 1824 and 1841. It uses the life histories of these men to not only shed light on their individual itineraries; it also provides new insight into the unstudied history of convict migration from Lower Canada to Bermuda and New South Wales. This study seeks to determine how colonists who became convicts in these three racially divided and hierarchical colonial societies negotiated their unfreedom during the Age of Liberty.

“Arthur G. Doughty and the Archives of Canada’s Colonial Past”
Between 1904 and 1936 Arthur G. Doughty worked tirelessly to secure for the Public Archives of Canada a wealth of historical sources that future generations of historians could, and have since used, to write the history of colonial Canada. This project examines various “milepost” moments in the history of 19th century Canada though an analysis of the archival collections that Doughty and his staff collected and catalogued. Doughty not only paid particular attention to moments when French, English, and Indigenous peoples encountered each other, but also archived documents that contained both personal and political information, or, what he called: inner histories. Ultimately, this project illustrates the central role that archivists like Doughty played, not simply as gatekeepers of knowledge, but also as historical actors who selected for preservation the very documents that historians have used to perform their craft.

Current projects:
“Uncivil Civil Subjects: Race, Reform, and Lord Durham’s 1838 Administration of Lower Canada”
Based on my doctoral research, “Uncivil Civil Subjects” uses Lord Durham’s 1838 mission to push the histories of gender/family, imperial networks, and elite politics in Canada and the British Empire in new and innovate directions. It situates Lower Canada/Quebec and the Lambton family within the global, imperial history of race, reform and rebellion; a historiography that has become in recent years saturated with studies of other imperial spaces and races. It argues that the struggle to abolish “irresponsible government” in Lower Canada must be considered alongside other political debates in Britain and its empire in the 1830s such as abolition and convict transportation.
 

Publications:
Articles:
“Patriots in Paradise,” Histoire sociale/ Social History, (Nov 2013).
“Lives, Liberties, and the Struggle for Self Government,” Contribution to Roundtable on Le concept de liberté au Canada a l’époque des révolutions atlantique, 1776-1838, Canadian Historical Review, 94: 1 (March 2013): 97–105.
“‘I Am Pleased With My Lambton Loot’: Arthur George Doughty and the Making of the Durham Papers,” Archivaria 70 (Fall 2010): 153–176.

Book Chapters:
With Bettina Bradbury, “A Difference of Race? Governing Racialized Difference in Lower Canada in the 1830s,” in Living in Quebec: Ethnicity, Race, and Gender from the 19th to the 21st Century, Edited by Mary Anne Poutenan (Forthcoming).
“Histories of Unfreedom in Early Canada,” Visions: The Canadian History Module Project, (Toronto: Nelson Publications, Forthcoming).
““‘No Money, But Muscle and Pluck’: Cultivating Trans-Imperial Manliness for the Fields of Empire,” Making It Like A Man! Canadian Masculinities in Practice, Edited by, Christine Ramsay. (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press: 2011).

Book Reviews:
“Introduction: Roundtable on Salvation and Globalization in Early Jesuit Missions,” Histoire sociale/ Social History, Vol. XLV, No. 90, (November 2012): 393-94.
Rushforth, Brett. Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slavery in New France, (Chapel Hill, NC: North Caroline University Press, 2012), Histoire sociale/ Social History, Vol. XLV, No. 90, (November 2012): 454–55.
Edmonds, Penelope. Urbanizing Frontiers: Indigenous Peoples and Settlers in 19th-century Pacific Rim Cities. (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2010), The Canadian Journal of Native Studies, 31:1 (Fall 2011).
Morgan, Cecilia. ‘A Happy Holiday’: English Canadians and Transatlantic Tourism, 1870-1930. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), Labour/Le Travail, 66 (Fall 2010).
Browne, G.P. and Janet Asjzenstat (eds.), Documents on the Confederation of British North America, (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2009), Canadian Historical Review, 91:3 (Sept 2010).

Other relevant activities, associations, qualifications and experiences:
Co-Book Review Editor, Histoire sociale/ Social History
Co-Organizer, British North America’s Global Age Conference, 24/25 May 2012
Co-Coordinator, Department of Humanities Colloquia Series, MRU, 2011-12
Vice-Chair, Political History Group, Canadian Historical Association, 2009 to present
Member, Canadian Historical Association
Journal of the Canadian Historical Association (Peer Reviewer)
History Australia (Peer Reviewer), Australian Historical Association