Off-Campus History Louis Reed-Wood

I have a new podcast, Listening T.O. History! Here's a quick announcement about it and the trailer. Check it out here: https://open.spotify.com/show/17OnQyM5pOXgcflZbBBlno.

Today we’re digging into the history of urban planning in twentieth-century Canada and the US! Particularly, we discuss why our cities came to be oriented around car-dependent suburbs, and what consequences that style of design has for our lives today.
In this episode, I’m joined by fellow Torontonian and historian, Dr. Hana Suckstorff. Our conversation today responds to ongoing political debates about urban design in the Greater Toronto Area; anyone living in southern Ontario knows that we have had multiple recent provincial and municipal elections (and soon will have another) in which our urban design has been a major political issue. While our discussion centers on these debates in the GTA, many of the themes we get into are applicable to cities across Canada and the US. We get into why governments, businesses, and ordinary people took up car-dependent suburbanization in the mid-twentieth century; the roles of race, class, and gender in this history; why this history matters for current political debates about the issue; and much more.
For those interested in learning more local Toronto history on this topic, check out Richard Harris's Unplanned Suburbs: Toronto’s American Tragedy, 1900-1950 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). For those interested in a more general history focused on the US, have a look at Kenneth T. Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). Also, if you’re interested in learning more about Hana’s work in educating people about WWII in Asia, check out ALPHA Education’s website here: https://www.alphaeducation.org/.
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Podcast logo is made by https://www.instagram.com/nethkaria; music is from “Mystery,” recorded in 1919 by Paul Biese and his Novelty Orchestra. Follow the show on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/offcampushistory/) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/offcampushistory)! You can also email the show at offcampushistory[at]gmail.com.

On today’s episode, we chat about all things historical movies! I’m joined by Kevin Winterhalt, previous Off-Campus History alumnus and PhD Candidate at the University of Colorado-Boulder. His research examines the intersection of professional sports and politics in the modern United States.
It’s a bit more of an informal chat today as we dive into our thoughts on historical films generally. When it comes to movies, what does “historical accuracy” really mean to us? What are some of the best historical films we’ve seen, and what are some of the worst? Plus, we talk about some historical events and figures that would make for interesting and/or important movies!
For those who’d like to learn more about on-screen portrayals of history, check out Monica MacDonald’s book Recasting History: How CBC Television Has Shaped Canada’s Past (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s, 2019). Also, for those interested in the biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer biography mentioned toward the end of the episode, that was Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (New York: A.A. Knopf, 2005).
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Podcast logo is made by https://www.instagram.com/nethkaria; music is from “Mystery,” recorded in 1919 by Paul Biese and his Novelty Orchestra. Follow the show on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/offcampushistory/) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/offcampushistory)! You can also email the show at offcampushistory[at]gmail.com.

Today we’re discussing the 1992 Heritage Minute “Nitro” and its depiction of Chinese Canadian history, as well as Heritage Minutes more generally!
For those unfamiliar, Heritage Minutes are a series of 60-second short films intended to depict major moments in Canadian history. “Nitro” introduces viewers to the experiences of Chinese workers who built the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 1880s. You can watch it here: https://youtu.be/EE3ISzalVuo.
To discuss this clip, I’m joined by Melanie Ng. Melanie is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Toronto, a museum educator with the Royal Ontario Museum, and a trained public school teacher. Her research focuses on clandestine Chinese migration to North America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries! In our conversation today, we get into the history of Chinese migration, what aspects of Chinese Canadian history this Heritage Minute reveals and what it obscures, and the genre of Heritage Minutes themselves.
For those who would like to learn more about the history of racist immigration restrictions in Canada and abroad (which we discuss in the episode), check out Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds’s book Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Those interested in the history of Canada’s Chinese community should also check out Lisa Rose Mar’s Brokering Belonging: Chinese in Canada’s Exclusion Era, 1885-1945 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010). Also check out the RepresentASIAN Project, which discusses Asian representation and seeks to elevate Asian voices in popular media: https://representasianproject.com/!
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Podcast logo is made by https://www.instagram.com/nethkaria; music is from “Mystery,” recorded in 1919 by Paul Biese and his Novelty Orchestra. Follow the show on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/offcampushistory/) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/offcampushistory)! You can also email the show at offcampushistory[at]gmail.com.

On today’s episode, we dig into the history of the Mau Mau Rebellion with someone working on a film about it!
I’m joined by Julie MacArthur, Associate Professor of History at the University of Toronto, to discuss a feature film she is presently co-writing. The film, currently with a working title of Kimathi at War, will centre on the experiences of Mau Mau rebels who fought against British colonial rule in Kenya during the 1950s. Julie is herself an expert on the history of the Mau Mau, as well as on African cinema!
In our conversation today, we discuss the history of the Mau Mau Rebellion, why it makes for a fascinating film topic, and how it and other aspects of African colonial and anti-colonial history have been depicted in film. We also get into what it’s like to research and write a historical film.
In interviewing Julie, I learned a lot about the history of the Mau Mau Rebellion, a topic I knew very little about coming into it. The interview is also a rare chance to peek behind the curtain of the early stages of an early historical film. So I think you’re going to really enjoy our conversation!
For those interested in learning more about the history of the Mau Mau Rebellion, I strongly recommend checking out Julie’s edited volume Dedan Kimathi on Trial: Colonial Justice and Popular Memory in Kenya’s Mau Mau Rebellion (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2017). The book features a combination of scholarly interpretations and primary-source historical documents that together make it a really useful and fascinating read. For those interested in learning more about the origins of the Mau Mau rebellion, also have a look at Tabitha Kanogo’s Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau 1905-63 (London: James Currey, 1987).
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Podcast logo is made by https://www.instagram.com/nethkaria; music is from “Mystery,” recorded in 1919 by Paul Biese and his Novelty Orchestra. Follow the show on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/offcampushistory/) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/offcampushistory)! You can also email the show at offcampushistory[at]gmail.com.

On today’s episode, we’re talking about the history of fast food! Specifically, our conversation today focuses on the 2016 film The Founder. The film follows the early years of McDonald’s as a fast food chain in the 1950s, with Ray Kroc employing cutthroat business tactics to transform the restaurant into a huge chain and achieve what he views as success. Michael Keaton stars as Ray Kroc; Nick Offerman, John Carroll Lynch, Laura Dern, Linda Cardellini, and B.J. Novak all also star in key roles.
Today we dig into the history behind The Founder. Why do fast food franchises take off when they do, after the Second World War? How does the fast food industry fit into the bigger picture of the history of capitalism? How innovative was McDonald’s in its business model and system of food production? And what do we make of this historical film genre that traces the biography of a successful businessperson?
To discuss all this with me and much more, I’m joined by Steve Penfold. Steve is a Professor of History at the University of Toronto whose research interests include the history of fast food, as well as capitalism, car culture, and consumerism in Canada. For anyone interested in a fascinating case study in fast food history, read Steve’s book The Donut: A Canadian History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008)!  For those interested in learning more about the history of McDonald’s and fast food generally, check out Steve’s chapter “Fast Food,” in The Oxford Handbook of Food History, ed. Jeffrey M. Pilcher (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 279-302.
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Podcast logo is made by https://www.instagram.com/nethkaria; music is from “Mystery,” recorded in 1919 by Paul Biese and his Novelty Orchestra. Follow the show on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/offcampushistory/) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/offcampushistory)! You can also email the show at offcampushistory[at]gmail.com.