Full Description
In 2021, McGill University celebrated its bicentennial anniversary, reflecting on contributions to research, education, and other successes. The university's founding within the context of nineteenth-century Atlantic capitalism requires that a deeper account engage with the more complex and difficult elements of its history.
McGill in History brings together diverse historiographies and perspectives to critically examine how McGill has been implicated in power structures and is the product of conflicting ideologies. James McGill, the university's namesake, owned and profited from the sale of enslaved Black and Indigenous people, a legacy highlighted by the removal of his statue and ongoing debates over the racially charged Redman name used by the men's sports teams. Imperialism, settler colonialism, slavery, sexism, and homophobia are elements of McGill's story that must be fully integrated into a broader understanding of the university's institutional history. Challenging siloed narratives with new research, the contributors to this volume emphasize the important task of scholars to scrutinize and confront history that is unflattering and to rethink their institution's own story - a reckoning happening across many institutions of higher education around the world.
McGill in History broadens the historical frame of critical university studies, showing how the university can serve as a model for understanding power in modern society.
Contents
Figures vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 3
Brian Lewis, Don Nerbas, and Melissa N. Shaw
1 McGill's Glasgow: City, University, Atlantic Slavery, and Abolition, 1744-66 19
Stephen Mullen
2 A North Atlantic "Provincial": James McGill, Empire, "Property," and "Improvement" 41
Andrew Mackillop
3 James McGill and Constructing the History of a University 60
Brian Young
4 "To Relieve It from Present Embarrassments": Fiduciary Colonialism in Service to McGill College 83
Brian Gettler
5 Willie McDonald's McGill: A Student's Experience in the Late Nineteenth Century 104
Don Nerbas
6 "What Is Money?" Stephen Leacock and Jacob Viner at McGill 132
E.A. Heaman
7 "Risky Business": Social Sciences, McGill, and the Interwar Years 164
Marlene Shore
8 "A Distinct Blow to Our Esteem of That Outstanding Institution": McGill University's Racial Exclusion of Japanese Canadians, 1943-45 194
Tess Elsworthy
9 Beyond the Headlines: Heinz Lehmann and the History of McGill Psychiatry 223
Andrea Tone
10 "A Perfect Storm": Operation McGill Français, 28 March 1969 250
Jean-Philippe Warren
11 The Queering of McGill 271
Brian Lewis
Epilogue 293
Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey
Contributors 301
Index 305
