Carolyn Podruchny
University Professor
Office: Kaneff Tower, 718
Email: carolynp@yorku.ca
Primary website: http://www.carolynpodruchny.ca/
Carolyn Podruchny, PhD, is a Professor of History at York University. Her research focuses on the relationships forged between Indigenous peoples and French colonists in northern North America. Her first monograph, Making the Voyageur World: Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade (2006), examines French Canadian voyageurs who worked in the North American fur trade based out of Montreal, and ranging to the Great Lakes, the Great Plains, northern woodlands, and the subarctic. She has co-edited three books: Decentring the Renaissance: Canada and Europe in Multidisciplinary Perspective, 1500-1700 (2001), which examines colonial encounters in early Canada; Gathering Places: Aboriginal and Fur Trade Histories (2010), which illuminates theories and methodologies in ethnohistory in central North America, spanning the Canadian and U.S. borderlands; and Contours of a People: Metis Family, Mobility and History (2012), which traces Metis history in diverse corners of northwestern North America. She has several projects in the works. The first is writing a book about the meeting of stories in the fur trade and the work stories perform in shaping encounters and making places. Second, she is preparing a scholarly edition of the writings of the North West Company partner John McDonald of Garth (along with Germaine Warkentin) for the Champlain Society. Third, she is co-editing two collections about Indigeneity in the Philippines, one to the submitted to the University of Hawai’i Press and the other to the University of the Philippines Baguio Cordillera Studies Centre. Recent articles have explored Metis women’s history in 19th-century buffalo brigades. She has served as co-editor for the Journal of the Canadian History Association / Revue de la Société historique du Canada and Histoire sociale / Social History (for which she is currently the director) and she co-edits a series with McGill-Queen's University Press.
Degrees
Doctorate of Philosophy, University of TorontoMaster of Arts, University of Toronto
Cours de français, Université Laval
Bachelor of Arts Joint Honours, McGill University
Professional Leadership
Membership in Professional Organizations
American Society for Ethnohistory
Canadian Historical Association
Institut d’histoire de l’Amérique française
French Colonial Historical Society
Centre for Rupert’s Land Studies
Champlain Society
Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Art and Culture (GRASAC)
2009-10 On Program Committee for Canadian Historical Association
2010 Annual Meeting at Concordia, Montreal, May 30-June 1, 2010.
2008-09 Principal Organizer mini-conference “Patterns of Genesis: Fur Trade and Metis History,” hosted by the Canadian Historical Association, Carleton University, Ottawa, May 2009.
2008 Member of Program Committee, Thirteenth Rupert’s Land Colloquium, Rocky Mountain House, AB.
2006-07 Principal Organizer for the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Thirty-ninth Algonquian Conference, York University, October 2007.
2006-07 Member of Organizing Committee for the conference Disease in Global Environmental History, History Department, York University, March 2007.
2006-07 Member of Organizing Committee for conference “Fur Trade and Metis Days,” co-sponsored by the Canadian Historical Association and the Canadian Indigenous and Native Studies Association, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, May 2006.
2005-06 Member of Program Committee and Local Arrangements Committee, Canadian Historical Association
2006 Annual Meeting, York University, Toronto, ON.
2003 Member of Coordinating Committee, Eleventh Rupert’s Land Colloquium, Kenora, ON.
2001 Member of Coordinating Committee, Indian – French Encounters in New France Colloquium, The Newberry Library, Chicago, IL.
2000 Fund-raiser, Ninth Rupert’s Land Colloquium, Vancouver, WA.
2000 Member of the Coordinating Committee, Colonial Saints: Hagiography and the Cult of Saints in the Americas, 1500-1800, Toronto, ON.
2007-08 Secretary, American Society for Ethnohistory
2004-07 Secretary-Treasurer, American Society for Ethnohistory
2006- Member of the Advisory Council, Centre for Rupert's Land Studies
2005- Publications Committee, The Champlain Society
2004- Council Member, The Champlain Society
2001 Member of the President’s Advisory Council, The Newberry Library
1999-2001 Member of the Development Committee, Centre for Rupert’s Land Studies
1999 - 2001 Member of the Advisory Council, Centre for Rupert's Land Studies
1999 – 2001 Member of the Advisory Board, Omushkegowak Oral History Project
Community Contributions
UNIVERSITY SERVICE
Committees
2009-10 History Department Executive Committee, York University
2007-09 Senate Review Committee on Tenure and Promotion for the Faculty of Arts, York University
2007-08 Research Committee, History Department, York University
2006-08 Admissions Committee for Graduate Program in History, York University
2006-08 Curriculum Committee, History Department, York University
2005-07 Nominations Committee, History Department, York University
2005-06 Graduate Program Executive Committee, History Department, York University
2005-06 Undergraduate Studies Prize Committee, History Department, York University
2002-04 Faculty Senate, Western Michigan University
2001-04 Advisory Council, Program in American Studies, Western Michigan University
2001-04 Ethnohistory Coordinating Committee, Western Michigan University
2001-04 Canadian Studies Coordinating Committee, Western Michigan University
2002-04 Informational Technology Committee
2003-04 Research Committee, History Department, Western Michigan University
2001-03 Events Committee, History Department, Western Michigan University
2000 Experimental Ethics Committee, Department of History, University of Winnipeg
2000 Aboriginal People of Manitoba/Canada Working Group, University of Winnipeg
Searches
2005-06 Member, Search for tenure-track assistant professor in Medieval / Early Modern European history with a specialization in religion, History Department, York University
2001-02 Member, Search for tenure-track assistant professor in Mexican / American borderlands and Latino-American culture, cross-appointed in American Studies and Spanish Foreign Language, Western Michigan University
2001-02 Member, Search for tenure-track assistant professor in Archaeology and Ethnohistory, Department of Anthropology, Western Michigan University
1996 Member, Search for Early Modern British tenure-track position, History Department, University of Toronto
Editorial Boards
2006- Histoire sociale / Social History
2006- Labour / Le travail
2003-09 Papers of the Algonquian Conference / Actes du Congrès des Algonquinistes
Scholarship and Prize Committees
2010 Committee member, Canadian Historical Association, Canadian Aboriginal History Book Prize
2005 Committee member, Ramsay Cook Award for Graduate Students, Graduate Program in History, York University
2001-04 Chair, Canadian Historical Association Clio Prize, Prairie Region
2000-01 Committee member, Canadian Historical Association Clio Prize, Prairie Region
2003 Manuscript reviewer, Great Lakes American Studies Association Publication Competition with the University of Ohio Press
2001 Chair, Frances C. Allen Fellowship for American Indian Women, The Newberry Library
2001 Member, Lloyd Lewis Fellowship in American History, The Newberry Library
2001 Member, Short-term Fellowship Committee, The Newberry Library
Research Interests
- York University Faculty of Arts Dean's Award for Outstanding Research 2004-2005 - 2004-2005
- Short-listed for the Margaret McWilliams Award for best book in Manitoba history published in 2007 - 2008 - 2008
- Short-listed for the Canadian Historical Association’s Sir John A. MacDonald Prize for the best book in Canadian history published in 2006 - 2007 - 2007
- Canadian Historical Review Award for best article in the journal for 2002 - 2003 - 2003
- Canadian Association of Geographers’ Undergraduate Award for McGill University 1990 - 1990
- Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Heritage Award for Excellence in Conservation for the Manitoulin Island Summer Historical Institute (MISHI) Program - 2019
- Honorary University Professorship, York University - 2021
- Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, York University Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies - 2018
Nicole St-Onge, Carolyn Podruchny and Brenda Macdougall, eds. Family, Mobility and Territoriality in Metis History. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, fall October 2012. Forthcoming.
Carolyn Podruchny and Laura Peers, eds. Gathering Places: Aboriginal and Fur Trade Histories. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2010, in press. 330 pp.
Germaine Warkentin and Carolyn Podruchny, eds. Decentring the Renaissance: Canada and Europe in Multidisciplinary Perspective, 1500-1700. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. xii + 387 pp.
2019: Émilie Pigeon and Carolyn Podruchny, “The Mobile Village: Metis Women, Bison Brigades, and Social Order on the Nineteenth-Century Plains” Violence, Order, and Unrest: A History of British North America, 1749-1876, edited by Elizabeth Mancke, Scott See, Jerry Bannister, and Denis McKim, 236-63 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press). 27 pp.
Brenda Macdougall, Carolyn Podruchny and Nicole St-Onge, “Introduction: Cultural Mobility and Contours of Difference.” In Family, Mobility and Territoriality in Metis History, edited by Nicole St-Onge, Carolyn Podruchny and Brenda Macdougall. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, fall October 2012. Forthcoming.
Nicole St-Onge and Carolyn Podruchny, “Scuttling Along a Spider’s Web: Mobility and Kinship in Metis Ethnogenesis.” In Family, Mobility and Territoriality in Metis History, edited by Nicole St-Onge, Carolyn Podruchny and Brenda Macdougall. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, fall October 2012. Forthcoming.
Bethel Saler and Carolyn Podruchny. "Glass Curtains and Storied Landscapes: The Fur Trade, National Boundaries, and Historians.” In Bridging National Borders in North America: Transnational and Comparative Histories, edited by Benjamin H. Johnson and Andrew R. Graybill, 275-302. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. 27 pp.
Laura Peers and Carolyn Podruchny. “'Complex subjectivities, multiple ways of knowing’: Introduction.” In Gathering Places: Essays in Aboriginal and Fur Trade Histories, edited by Carolyn Podruchny and Laura Peers, 1-21. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2010. 21 pp.
Carolyn Podruchny, Frederic W. Gleach and Roger Roulette. “Putting Up Poles: Power, Navigation, and Cultural Mixing in the Fur Trade.” In Gathering Places: Essays in Aboriginal and Fur Trade Histories, edited by Carolyn Podruchny and Laura Peers, 26-47. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2010. 21 pp.
Carolyn Podruchny. “Writing, Ritual, and Folklore: Imagining the Cultural Geography of Voyageurs.” In Method and Meaning in Canadian Environmental History, edited by Alan MacEachern and William Turkel, 55-74. Toronto: Thompson-Nelson, 2008. 19 pp.
Germaine Warkentin and Carolyn Podruchny. “Introduction: ‘Other Land Existing.’” In Germaine Warkentin and Carolyn Podruchny, eds. Decentring the Renaissance: Canada and Europe in Multidisciplinary Perspective, 1500-1700. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. 13 pp.
Sarah Carter, The Importance of Being Monogamous: Marriage and Nation Building in Western Canada to 1915 (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2008) in Western Historical Quarterly (spring 2010): 87-8.
New Histories for Old: Changing Perspectives on Canada’s Native Pasts, edited by Ted Binnema and Susan Neylan (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007) forthcoming in Ethnohistory.
Jean-Claude Dubé, The Chevalier de Montmagny (1601-1657): First Governor of New France, translated by Elizabeth Rapley (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2005) in Choice Magazine (February 2006).
Internet Resource: France in America / La France en Amérique, Library of Congress and Bibliothèque nationale de France URL : http://international.loc.gov/intldl/fiahtml/ in Choice Magazine (January 2006).
Louis Bird, Telling Our Stories: Omushkego Legends and Histories from Hudson Bay, edited by Jennifer S. H. Brown, Paul W. Depasquale, and Mark F. Ruml (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005); Louis Bird, The Spirit Lives in the Mind: Omushkego Stories, Lives and Dreams, edited by Susan Elaine Gray (Rupert’s Land Record Society Series 9, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007); and website: Omushkego Oral History Project, by Louis Bird and the University of Winnipeg, http://www.ourvoices.ca/ in The Canadian Historical Review 89: 3 (September 2008), 436-39.
Brendan Frederick R. Edwards, Paper Talk: A History of Libraries, Print Culture, and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada before 1960 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2005) in Papers/Cahiers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada 43: 1 (Spring 2005), 68-9.
Rhoda R. Gilman, Henry Hastings Sibley: Divided Heart (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2004) in Choice Magazine (January 2005).
Nicole St.-Onge, Saint-Laurent, Manitoba: Evolving Métis Identities, 1850-1914 (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre, University of Regina, 2004) in Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 59: 3 (hiver 2006), 377-9.
Timothy J. Kent, Birchbark Canoes of the Fur Trade, 2 vols. (Ossineke: Silver Fox Enterprises, 1997) in Ontario History (Spring 2004).
Undelivered Letters to Hudson’s Bay Company Men on the Northwest Coast of America, 1830-57, edited by Judith Hudson Beattie and Helen M. Buss (Vancouver: University British Columbia Press, 2003) in BC Studies 148 (Winter 2005/06): 129-30.
Laton McCartney, Across the Great Divide: Robert Stuart and the Discovery of the Oregon Trail (New York: Free Press, 2003) in Choice Magazine (March 2004).
“Mixing Disciplines in Fluid Environs: A Review of the Museum Exhibit ‘Shared Waters: Natives and French Newcomers in the Great Lakes.’” The Centre for Rupert’s Land Studies Newsletter, No. 14 (Spring 2003).
From Rupert's Land to Canada: Essays in Honour of John E. Foster, edited by Theodore Binnema, Gerhard Ens, and R. C. MacLeod (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2001) in Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 56: 2 (fall 2002).
North of Athabasca: Slave Lake and Mackenzie River Documents of the North West Company, 1800-1821, edited by Lloyd Keith, (Montreal / Kingston: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2001) in Canadian Historical Review 83:3 (September 2002), 437-8.
Exhibition “Hudson’s Bay Company Gallery” at the Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature, curated by Katherine Pettipas and designed by Gordon Filewych, in Muse, Canadian Museums Association/ Association des Musées Canadiens 18, no. 4 (2000), 16-19.
Talking on the Page: Editing Aboriginal Oral Texts, edited by Laura J. Murray and Keren Rice in The Centre for Rupert’s Land Studies Newsletter, No. 8, (Spring 2000).
The Fur Trade Revisited; Selected Papers of the Sixth North American Fur Trade Conference, Mackinac Island, Michigan, 1991, edited by Jennifer S. H. Brown and others in Ontario History LXXXVII: 1, (Spring 1995): 213-15.
Carolyn Podruchny. Making the Voyageur World: Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press and Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. xx + 414 pp. Translated into French as: Les voyageurs et leur monde: Voyageurs et traiteurs de fourrures en Amérique du Nord. Translated by Anne-Hélène Kerbiriou. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2009. xix + 405 pp.
Émilie Pigeon and Carolyn Podruchny, “Bannock Diplomacy: How Metis Women Fought Battles and Made Peace in North Dakota, 1850s-1870s” Ethnohistory 69: 1 (January 2022), 29-52. 23 pp.
2019: Carolyn Podruchny, Jesse Thistle, and Elizabeth Jameson, “Women on the Margins of Imperial Plots: Farming on Borrowed Land” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de la Société historique du Canada 29: 1 (158-81). 23 pp. Link to article: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1065722ar
Carolyn Podruchny and Katie Magee Labelle. “Jean de Brébeuf and the Wendat Voices of Seventeenth-Century New France.” Part of a special issue on Relazioni/ Relations for the journal Renaissance & Reformation, edited by Tom Cohen and Germaine Warkentin. Forthcoming fall 2011.
Carolyn Podruchny. “Werewolves and Windigos: Narratives of Cannibal Monsters in French-Canadian Voyageur Oral Tradition.” Ethnohistory 51: 4 (fall 2004), 677-700. 23 pp.
Carolyn Podruchny. “Un homme-libre se construit une identité: Voyage de Joseph Constant au Pas, de 1773 à 1853.” Cahiers franco-canadiennes de l’Ouest, Numéro spécial sur La question métissage : entre la polyvalence et l’ambivalence identitaires 14 :1 et 2 (2002), 33-59. 26 pp.
Carolyn Podruchny. “Baptizing Novices: Ritual Moments Among French Canadian Voyageurs in the Montreal Fur Trade, 1780-1821." Canadian Historical Review 83: 2 (June 2002), 165-95. 30 pp.
Carolyn Podruchny. "Unfair Masters and Rascally Servants? Labour Relations Between Bourgeois, Clerks and Voyageurs in the Montreal Fur Trade, 1780-1821." Labour/ Le Travail: Journal of Canadian Labour Studies 43, (spring 1999), 43-70. 27 pp. Reprinted in Canadian History Reader, Volumes I and II, edited by Margaret Conrad and Alvin Finkel (Toronto: Pearson Education Canada, 2003); in Readings in Canadian History Pre-Confederation, Seventh Canadian Edition, edited by R. Douglas Francis and Donald B. Smith, (Toronto: Thomson Nelson, 2007); and in Labouring Canada: Class, Gender, and Race in Canadian Working-Class History, edited by Bryan D. Palmer and Joan Sangster (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press Canada, 2008).
April 2011. Seventh Annual Pierre Savard Conference, History Graduate Student Association of the University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON. "Narrative Transformations and Miraculous Escapes: Telling Tales in the Fur Trade Along the Ottawa River."
May 2011. Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Conference, Sacramento, CA. “French-Descended Metis in Northwestern North America: Making Sense of Ethnogenesis.”
November 2010. De Pierre-Esprit Radisson à Louis Riel: Voyageurs et Métis, Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface, Winnipeg, MB. “Tough Bodies, Fast Dogs, and Well-Dressed Wives: Measures of Manhood among French Canadian and Métis Voyageurs.”
June 2010. French Colonial Historical Society, Thirty-Sixth Congress, Paris, France. “French-Descended Metis in Northwestern North America: Making Sense of Ethnogenesis.”
May 2010. Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting, Montreal, QC. Presented jointly with Kathryn Magee Labelle. “'Onontio, lend me your ear’: Wendat Voices in the Jesuit Relations.”
May 2010. Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting, Montreal, QC. “From the Other Side of the Line: A French Catholic Priest Ministers to his Metis Flock at Pembina, 1840s-50s.”
October 2009. Environments, Movements, Narratives in the Circumpolar North, BOREAS Conference. Arctic Centre, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland. “The Lone Trickster? Exploring Individualism in Anishinaabe and Omushkego Oral Traditions in Early Canadian Indigenous History.”*
October 2009. Annual Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory. New Orleans, LA. “Becoming Metis in Fur Trade Folklore: The Case of Jean Cadieux.”
September 2009. Out of the Cold: Scientific Ways of Knowing in Histories of the Circumpolar Artic, BOREAS – ESF Workshop. Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada. “Dreaming of Wooden Boats, Booming Thunder, and Castaways: Narratives of Cree and European Encounters on Hudson Bay.”
April 2009. The Early Modern “Relation”: Family Tree and Hermeneutics. Victoria College, University of Toronto, Ontario. “In Search of the Voice of the Other: North American Indigenous People Speaking Through European Relations.”
December 2008. Reorienting Whiteness. Melbourne, Australia. “Can a White Man Kill a Bear? Constructing Race and Masculinity in Adversity Narratives in North American Fur Trade Folklore.”
November 2008. The Canadian Studies Program, International & Area Studies University of California at Berkeley Symposium “Québec and the seventeenth-century Atlantic World: Quatercentennial perspectives.” Berkeley, CA. "Dreaming of Pale Skin, Hairy Faces and Sharp Knives: Anishinaabe Narratives of Discovering the French and English."
November 2008. Annual Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory. Eugene, OR. “Mixing Stories and Making Identities: The Role of Narrative in the Encounters Between French and Anishinaabe in the Great Lakes Region in the 18th Century.”`
May 2008. Thirteenth Rupert’s Land Colloquium. Rocky Mountain House, AB. “Mukwa Meets L’Ours: Exploring Bear Tales in Fur Trade Folklore.”
February 2008. Seventh European Social Science History Association, Lisbon, Portugal. "The Problem of Migration and Metis Ethnogensis: Exploring the Identities of Joseph Constant, Charles Racette, and Peter Erasmus."
May 2007. Fur Trade and Metis Days, jointly sponsored by the Canadian Historical Association and the Canadian Indigenous and Native Studies Association, Saskatoon, SK. “Mobile Communities and Mental Spaces in a River-Based World.”
March 2007. Bridging National Borders in North America Symposium, Part II, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. Presented jointly with Bethel Saler. “‘Storied Landscapes and Glass Curtains’: The Fur Trade, National Borders, and Historians.”
May 2007. Canadian Historical Association 2005 Annual Meeting, Saskatoon, SK. Commentator for Panel “Aboriginal People Captured on Film and the Web.”
September 2006. Bridging National Borders in North America Symposium, Part I, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC. Presented jointly with Bethel Saler. “‘Glass Curtains and Storied Landscapes’: The Fur Trade, National Borders, and Historians.”
May 2006. Ninth North American Fur Trade Conference and Twelfth Rupert's Land Colloquium, St. Louis, MO. Presented jointly with Roger Roulette, “Colliding Spirit Worlds: Belcourt's French-Anishinaabe Dictionary.”
May 2006. French Colonial Historical Society, Thirty-Second Congress, Dakar, Senegal. “The Long Journey of the Turtle Who Wanted to Fly: Oral Motifs and Cultural Exchange in the Fur Trade.”
May 2006. Ninth North American Fur Trade Conference and Twelfth Rupert’s Land Colloquium, St. Louis, MO. Roundtable discussion: The Future of Fur Trade Studies and Conferences.*
2005. Thirty-seventh Algonquian Conference, Ottawa, ON. Presented jointly with Roger Roulette, “Bear Tales: Exploring Ojibwe and French-Canadian Oral Communication in the Fur Trade.”
2005. French Colonial Historical Society, Thirty-first Congress, Wolfville, NS. “Regulating Resistance: A Roman Catholic Priest Incites the Métis and Acadians, 1840s-1860s.”
2005. Canadian History Association Annual Meeting, London, ON. Commentator for Panel “Collaborative Research in Aboriginal History on the Pacific Coast.”
2004. Cinquante-septième Congrés annuel, Institut d'histoire de l'Amérique français, Chicoutimi, QC. "Fuites miraculeuses dans la tradition orale canadienne-française des voyageurs : la chanson, l'histoire et la complainte gravée dans le bois de Jean Cadieux."
2004. Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting, Winnipeg, MB. “Voyageurs too enjoy their carnival: French Canadian Servants, Dirty Tricks, and Bodily Pleasures.”
2004. Eleventh Rupert’s Land Colloquium. Kenora, ON. Presented jointly with Graham MacFarlane, “The Long Journey of the Turtle Who Wanted to Fly: Oral Motifs and Cultural Exchange in the Fur Trade.”
2004. Feminism and the Making of Canada: Historical Reflections. Montreal, QC. “Bear Tales: Voyageurs and Masculinity in the Montreal Fur Trade.”
2003. Thirty-fifth Algonquian Conference. London, ON. “Putting Up Poles: Power, Navigation, and Cultural Mixing in the Fur Trade.”
2003. Ninth Annual Conference of the Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture. New Orleans, LA. “Miraculous Escapes in French-Canadian Voyageur Oral Tradition: Jean Cayeux’s Song, Story and Wood-Carved Lament.”
2002. Annual Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory. Quebec City, QC, Canada, 2002. “Linguistic Encounters: A Nineteenth-Century French-Ojibwe Dictionary.”
2002. Thirty-fourth Algonquian Conference. Kingston, ON. “Peopling Georges-Antoine Belcourt’s Unpublished Nineteenth-Century French-Ojibwe Dictionary: Surveying Terms of Ethnic and Group Identity.”
2002. Tenth Rupert’s Land Colloquium. Oxford University, England. Presented jointly with Dr. Bethel Saler, “’Peering Through the Glass Curtain.’ Comparing Recent Trends in Fur Trade Historiography in Canada and the United States.”
2002. Thirty-second Popular Culture Association and Twenty-fourth American Culture Association Annual Conference. Toronto, ON. “Songlines of Adventure and Adversity: French Canadian Voyageurs Traveling in 18th- and 19th-Century Northwestern Borderlands.”
2002. Annual Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory. Quebec City, QC. Commentator for Panel “(Re)Appropriated Indian Voices.”
2001. Annual Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory. Tuscon, AZ. “The Meaning of Cannibal Monsters.”
2001. Indian - French Encounters in New France Colloquium, The Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. Panel Speaker, Commented on the film “Kenata: Legacy of the Children of Aataentsic,” directed by René Sioui-Labelle (1998).
2000. Annual Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory. London, ON. “Lords of the Lakes: Freemen in 18th and 19th-Century Rupert’s Land.”.
2000. Sixth Annual Conference of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History. Toronto, ON. “Werewolves and Windigos: Narratives of Cannibalism and Mental Illness in Voyageur Oral Tradition, 1780-1820.”
1999. Colloque en marge d’un millénaire vers un bilan missionaire. Organized by Western Canadian Publishers and the Société Historique de Saint Boniface. Winnipeg, MB. "Dieu, Diable and the Trickster: Voyageur Religious Syncretism in the Pays d'en haut, 1770-1821."
1998. Eighth Rupert's Land Colloquium. Winnipeg and Norway House, MB. "The Sexfiles: Towards an Understanding of Voyageur Sexuality, Part II: Cultural Hybridity, Trading Sex, Tender Ties and Fluid Monogamy."
1998. Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting. Ottawa, ON. "The Sexfiles: Towards an Understanding of Voyageur Sexuality, Part I: The Bourgeois Gaze and the North American Don Juan."
1997. Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting. St. John's, NF. "Baptizing Novices: Forming a Voyageur Identity in the Montreal Fur Trade."
1996. Twenty-Eighth Algonquian Conference. Toronto, ON. “Shifting Identities and Constructing Communities: Joseph Constant’s Journey to The Pas, 1773 to 1853.”
1996. Seventh Rupert's Land Colloquium. Whitehorse, YK. "Unfair Masters and Rascally Servants? Labour Relations Between Voyageurs and Bourgeois in the Montreal Fur Trade, 1770-1821."
1995. Seventh North American Fur Trade Conference, Halifax, NS. “Festivities, Fortitude and Fraternalism: Fur Trade Masculinity and the Beaver Club, 1785-1827.”
1994. Twenty-Sixth Algonquian Conference. Winnipeg, MB. "Diplomacy, Misunderstanding and Factionalism: Relations Between the Peguis Band and the Church Missionary Society, 1820-1838."
1992. Forty-First Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association of Geographers. Vancouver, BC. “Exploring Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Rupert’s Land: Samuel Hearne, John Franklin and George Back in the Barrens.”
1991. Fourth Annual Manitoba History Conference. Winnipeg, MB. "'Farming the Frontier': Agriculture in the Fur Trade, A Case Study of the Provisional Farm at Lower Fort Garry, 1857-70."
Carolyn Podruchny, “The Lone Trickster? Exploring Individualism in Anishinaabe and Omushkego Oral Traditions in Early Canadian Indigenous History” in Histories from the North: Environments, Movements, and Narratives, edited by John P. Ziker and Florian Stammler (Boise State University, Department of Anthropology / University of Lapland, Arctic Centre, 2012).
Carolyn Podruchny. "Dieu, Diable and the Trickster: Voyageur Religious Syncretism in the Pays d'en haut, 1770-1821." Western Oblate Studies 5 Études Oblates de l'Ouest 5 Actes du cinquième colloque sur l'histoire des Oblats dans l'Ouest et le Nord canadiens/ Proceedings of the fifth symposium on the history of the Oblates in Western and Northern Canada, edited by Raymond Huel and Gilles Lesage, 75-92. Winnipeg: Western Canadian Publishers, La Société historique de Saint Boniface, Presses universitaires de Saint Boniface and Centre d'études franco canadiennes de l'Ouest, 2000. 17 pp.
Carolyn Podruchny. “Festivities, Fortitude and Fraternalism: Fur Trade Masculinity and the Beaver Club, 1785-1827." In New Faces in the Fur Trade: Selected Papers of the Seventh North American Fur Trade Conference, edited by William C. Wicken, Jo-Anne Fiske and Susan Sleeper-Smith, 31-52. East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press, 1998. 21 pp. Reprinted in Rethinking the Fur Trade: Cultures of Exchange in an Atlantic World, edited by Susan Sleeper-Smith, 593-620 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009); and Race and Gender in the Northern Colonies, edited by Jan Noel (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2000).
Carolyn Podruchny. "'I have embraced the White man's religion': Relations between the Peguis Band and the Church Missionary Society in the Red River Valley, 1820-1838." In Papers of the 26th Algonquian Conference, edited by David H. Pentland, 350-78. Winnipeg: Algonquian Conference, 1996. 28 pp.
2011. Canadian Studies Program, York University, “Canada Like You Have Never Heard it Before.” “Tough Bodies, Fast Dogs, Well-Dressed Wives: Measures of Manhood Among French-Canadian Voyageurs in the North American Fur Trade.”
2011. Living and Learning in Retirement, Glendon College, “Some Extraordinary Canadians.” “Louis Riel: Father of Confederation or False Traitor?”
2010. Shannon Lecture Series in Canadian Social History, History Department, Carleton University, Ottawa. “Miraculous Escapes: Telling Stories in the North American Fur Trade.”
2009. North American Studies Klubi Lectures, Renvall Institute, University of Helsinki, Finland. “Carried Away by a Bear: Exploring Masculinity and Bear Tales in North American Fur Trade Folklore.”
2009. York Graduate History Students’ Association’s speaker series, The Historian’s Craft, “Miraculous Escapes in French-Canadian Voyageur Oral Tradition: Jean Cadieux’s Song, Story and Wood-Carved Lament.”
2009. Black Creek Pioneer Village Speaker Series on Manly Men, “Tough Bodies, Fast Dogs, Well-Dressed Wives: Measures of Manhood Among French-Canadian Voyageurs in the North American Fur Trade.”
2008. History Thursdays: Research and Reflections by Faculty Doing Historical Research at York. Speaker on panel (with Alan Durston and Keith Weiser), “History and Language.”
Speaker, “Workshop on Non-Tri-Council Humanities Funding Opportunities,” Faculty of Arts and Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies, York University
2007. York Alumni Christmas By Lamplight Event, Black Creek Pioneer Village, “Victorian Christmas and Women in British North America.”
2007. Black Creek Pioneer Village, Metis Arts Festival, John A. McGinnis Heritage Lecture, “French Canadian Voyageurs in the Montreal –Based Fur Trade.”
2007. Montreal History Group: Jeudis d’histoire, Montreal, QC. "Politics, Dictionaries and Sex Scandals: How to Write the Biography of a Missionary."
2005. Friends of Grand Portage Annual Dinner, St. Paul, MN. “Telling Tales Along the Ottawa River: The Sad Story of French-Canadian Voyageur Jean Cadieux.”
2005. Toronto Area Early Canada and Colonial North America Seminar Series, Toronto, ON. “Putting Up Poles: Power, Navigation, and Cultural Mixing in the Fur Trade.”
2004. Champlain – St. Lawrence Seminar in Early American Studies, State University of New York – Plattsburg, NY. “Miraculous Escapes in French-Canadian Voyageur Oral Tradition: Jean Cayeux’s Song, Story and Wood-Carved Lament.”
2004. Smithsonian Institute Study Tours, "Discover Quebec." Lectured on selected topics on the history of New France, Lower Canada, and the province of Quebec for educational tour groups in Quebec.
2004. Historica Teachers’ Institute, Université de Montréal. “Cultural Encounters in the Montreal Fur Trade: The Case of French Canadian Voyageurs.”
2003. American Studies Speakers’ Series, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI. “Werewolves and Windigos: Oral Tradition in the Fur Trade.”
2003. History Department Research Colloquia, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, MB. “Miraculous Escapes in French-Canadian Voyageur Oral Tradition: Jean Cadieux’s Song, Story and Wood-Carved Lament.”
2001. Fulbright Summer Institute, Rolling on the River: Waterways to Diversity in America, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI. “Rivers and the Fur Trade.”
2001. The Newberry Library Colloquium, Chicago, IL. “Baptizing Novices: Ritual Moments and Social Geography Among French-Canadian Voyageurs Working in the Fur Trade, 1740s-1830s.”
2001. Brown Bag Colloquium, D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian History, The Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. “Windigos and Werewolves: Narratives of Cannibal Monsters Among Algonquians and French Canadians, 1720s – 1860s.”
2001. The D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian History Visiting Committee (of donors), The Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. “Algonquian Linguistics and Georges-Antoine Belcourt’s Nineteenth-Century French – Ojibwe Dictionary: A Workshop on Publishing Language Materials.”*
2000. Winnipeg Fort Whyte Nature Centre Bison Discussion Series, Winnipeg, MB. “Real Men Eat Pemmican: Voyageurs, Bison and Masculinity.”
2000. Early Canada Research Group, Toronto, ON. “Classing Freemen: The Emergence of an Occupational Category in Eighteenth-Century Rupert’s Land.”
2000. Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature Training Program for Volunteers, Winnipeg, MB. Conducted workshop “The Culture of French Canadian Voyageurs in the Montreal Fur Trade.”
2000. Primo Seminario Annuale di Storia Atlantica, course in Facoltà di Scienze Politiche, co-sponsored by the Centro di Ricerca in Studi Canadesi e Colombiani and the Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, Università di Genova, Italia. “The Fur Trade in North-Western North America from Amerindian Perspectives, 1660-1820.”
2000. Women and History Association of Manitoba Workshop, Winnipeg, MB. “Doing It in a Canoe: Algonquian Women, Euro-American Men and Sexuality in the Montreal Fur Trade, 1770-1821.”
1999. Women and History Association of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB. “Pork Men, North Men, Ladies’ Men and Free Men: Masculinities and Voyageurs in 18th-Century Rupert’s Land.”
1999. Sources and Methodologies in Comparative Perspective Discussion Series, History Department, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON. “Four Ways to See Through the Bourgeois Gaze in Fur Trade Documents.” Presented as Part of a Panel “Native-European Relations.”
1998. University of Toronto Early Modern European Study Group, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON. "'Othering' the New World: Strategies for Understanding Early Modern History." Presented as part of a Panel "Concepts of ‘the Other’ in Early Modern Studies: Useful or Not?"
1997. Early Canada Research Group, Toronto, ON. “Ritual, Play and Sociability Among Voyageurs in the Montreal Fur Trade.”
1995. Early Canada Research Group, Toronto, ON. "Festivities, Fortitude and Fraternalism: Fur Trade Masculinity and the Beaver Club, 1785-1827."
Current Courses
| Term | Course Number | Section | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fall/Winter 2024 | AP/HIST2900 6.0 | A | Global Indigenous Histories | ONLN |
Upcoming Courses
| Term | Course Number | Section | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fall/Winter 2024 | AP/HIST2900 6.0 | A | Global Indigenous Histories | ONLN |
Carolyn Podruchny, PhD, is a Professor of History at York University. Her research focuses on the relationships forged between Indigenous peoples and French colonists in northern North America. Her first monograph, Making the Voyageur World: Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade (2006), examines French Canadian voyageurs who worked in the North American fur trade based out of Montreal, and ranging to the Great Lakes, the Great Plains, northern woodlands, and the subarctic. She has co-edited three books: Decentring the Renaissance: Canada and Europe in Multidisciplinary Perspective, 1500-1700 (2001), which examines colonial encounters in early Canada; Gathering Places: Aboriginal and Fur Trade Histories (2010), which illuminates theories and methodologies in ethnohistory in central North America, spanning the Canadian and U.S. borderlands; and Contours of a People: Metis Family, Mobility and History (2012), which traces Metis history in diverse corners of northwestern North America. She has several projects in the works. The first is writing a book about the meeting of stories in the fur trade and the work stories perform in shaping encounters and making places. Second, she is preparing a scholarly edition of the writings of the North West Company partner John McDonald of Garth (along with Germaine Warkentin) for the Champlain Society. Third, she is co-editing two collections about Indigeneity in the Philippines, one to the submitted to the University of Hawai’i Press and the other to the University of the Philippines Baguio Cordillera Studies Centre. Recent articles have explored Metis women’s history in 19th-century buffalo brigades. She has served as co-editor for the Journal of the Canadian History Association / Revue de la Société historique du Canada and Histoire sociale / Social History (for which she is currently the director) and she co-edits a series with McGill-Queen's University Press.
Degrees
Doctorate of Philosophy, University of TorontoMaster of Arts, University of Toronto
Cours de français, Université Laval
Bachelor of Arts Joint Honours, McGill University
Professional Leadership
Membership in Professional Organizations
American Society for Ethnohistory
Canadian Historical Association
Institut d’histoire de l’Amérique française
French Colonial Historical Society
Centre for Rupert’s Land Studies
Champlain Society
Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Art and Culture (GRASAC)
2009-10 On Program Committee for Canadian Historical Association
2010 Annual Meeting at Concordia, Montreal, May 30-June 1, 2010.
2008-09 Principal Organizer mini-conference “Patterns of Genesis: Fur Trade and Metis History,” hosted by the Canadian Historical Association, Carleton University, Ottawa, May 2009.
2008 Member of Program Committee, Thirteenth Rupert’s Land Colloquium, Rocky Mountain House, AB.
2006-07 Principal Organizer for the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Thirty-ninth Algonquian Conference, York University, October 2007.
2006-07 Member of Organizing Committee for the conference Disease in Global Environmental History, History Department, York University, March 2007.
2006-07 Member of Organizing Committee for conference “Fur Trade and Metis Days,” co-sponsored by the Canadian Historical Association and the Canadian Indigenous and Native Studies Association, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, May 2006.
2005-06 Member of Program Committee and Local Arrangements Committee, Canadian Historical Association
2006 Annual Meeting, York University, Toronto, ON.
2003 Member of Coordinating Committee, Eleventh Rupert’s Land Colloquium, Kenora, ON.
2001 Member of Coordinating Committee, Indian – French Encounters in New France Colloquium, The Newberry Library, Chicago, IL.
2000 Fund-raiser, Ninth Rupert’s Land Colloquium, Vancouver, WA.
2000 Member of the Coordinating Committee, Colonial Saints: Hagiography and the Cult of Saints in the Americas, 1500-1800, Toronto, ON.
2007-08 Secretary, American Society for Ethnohistory
2004-07 Secretary-Treasurer, American Society for Ethnohistory
2006- Member of the Advisory Council, Centre for Rupert's Land Studies
2005- Publications Committee, The Champlain Society
2004- Council Member, The Champlain Society
2001 Member of the President’s Advisory Council, The Newberry Library
1999-2001 Member of the Development Committee, Centre for Rupert’s Land Studies
1999 - 2001 Member of the Advisory Council, Centre for Rupert's Land Studies
1999 – 2001 Member of the Advisory Board, Omushkegowak Oral History Project
Community Contributions
UNIVERSITY SERVICE
Committees
2009-10 History Department Executive Committee, York University
2007-09 Senate Review Committee on Tenure and Promotion for the Faculty of Arts, York University
2007-08 Research Committee, History Department, York University
2006-08 Admissions Committee for Graduate Program in History, York University
2006-08 Curriculum Committee, History Department, York University
2005-07 Nominations Committee, History Department, York University
2005-06 Graduate Program Executive Committee, History Department, York University
2005-06 Undergraduate Studies Prize Committee, History Department, York University
2002-04 Faculty Senate, Western Michigan University
2001-04 Advisory Council, Program in American Studies, Western Michigan University
2001-04 Ethnohistory Coordinating Committee, Western Michigan University
2001-04 Canadian Studies Coordinating Committee, Western Michigan University
2002-04 Informational Technology Committee
2003-04 Research Committee, History Department, Western Michigan University
2001-03 Events Committee, History Department, Western Michigan University
2000 Experimental Ethics Committee, Department of History, University of Winnipeg
2000 Aboriginal People of Manitoba/Canada Working Group, University of Winnipeg
Searches
2005-06 Member, Search for tenure-track assistant professor in Medieval / Early Modern European history with a specialization in religion, History Department, York University
2001-02 Member, Search for tenure-track assistant professor in Mexican / American borderlands and Latino-American culture, cross-appointed in American Studies and Spanish Foreign Language, Western Michigan University
2001-02 Member, Search for tenure-track assistant professor in Archaeology and Ethnohistory, Department of Anthropology, Western Michigan University
1996 Member, Search for Early Modern British tenure-track position, History Department, University of Toronto
Editorial Boards
2006- Histoire sociale / Social History
2006- Labour / Le travail
2003-09 Papers of the Algonquian Conference / Actes du Congrès des Algonquinistes
Scholarship and Prize Committees
2010 Committee member, Canadian Historical Association, Canadian Aboriginal History Book Prize
2005 Committee member, Ramsay Cook Award for Graduate Students, Graduate Program in History, York University
2001-04 Chair, Canadian Historical Association Clio Prize, Prairie Region
2000-01 Committee member, Canadian Historical Association Clio Prize, Prairie Region
2003 Manuscript reviewer, Great Lakes American Studies Association Publication Competition with the University of Ohio Press
2001 Chair, Frances C. Allen Fellowship for American Indian Women, The Newberry Library
2001 Member, Lloyd Lewis Fellowship in American History, The Newberry Library
2001 Member, Short-term Fellowship Committee, The Newberry Library
Research Interests
Awards
- York University Faculty of Arts Dean's Award for Outstanding Research 2004-2005 - 2004-2005
- Short-listed for the Margaret McWilliams Award for best book in Manitoba history published in 2007 - 2008 - 2008
- Short-listed for the Canadian Historical Association’s Sir John A. MacDonald Prize for the best book in Canadian history published in 2006 - 2007 - 2007
- Canadian Historical Review Award for best article in the journal for 2002 - 2003 - 2003
- Canadian Association of Geographers’ Undergraduate Award for McGill University 1990 - 1990
- Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Heritage Award for Excellence in Conservation for the Manitoulin Island Summer Historical Institute (MISHI) Program - 2019
- Honorary University Professorship, York University - 2021
- Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, York University Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies - 2018
All Publications
2019: Émilie Pigeon and Carolyn Podruchny, “The Mobile Village: Metis Women, Bison Brigades, and Social Order on the Nineteenth-Century Plains” Violence, Order, and Unrest: A History of British North America, 1749-1876, edited by Elizabeth Mancke, Scott See, Jerry Bannister, and Denis McKim, 236-63 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press). 27 pp.
Brenda Macdougall, Carolyn Podruchny and Nicole St-Onge, “Introduction: Cultural Mobility and Contours of Difference.” In Family, Mobility and Territoriality in Metis History, edited by Nicole St-Onge, Carolyn Podruchny and Brenda Macdougall. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, fall October 2012. Forthcoming.
Nicole St-Onge and Carolyn Podruchny, “Scuttling Along a Spider’s Web: Mobility and Kinship in Metis Ethnogenesis.” In Family, Mobility and Territoriality in Metis History, edited by Nicole St-Onge, Carolyn Podruchny and Brenda Macdougall. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, fall October 2012. Forthcoming.
Bethel Saler and Carolyn Podruchny. "Glass Curtains and Storied Landscapes: The Fur Trade, National Boundaries, and Historians.” In Bridging National Borders in North America: Transnational and Comparative Histories, edited by Benjamin H. Johnson and Andrew R. Graybill, 275-302. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. 27 pp.
Laura Peers and Carolyn Podruchny. “'Complex subjectivities, multiple ways of knowing’: Introduction.” In Gathering Places: Essays in Aboriginal and Fur Trade Histories, edited by Carolyn Podruchny and Laura Peers, 1-21. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2010. 21 pp.
Carolyn Podruchny, Frederic W. Gleach and Roger Roulette. “Putting Up Poles: Power, Navigation, and Cultural Mixing in the Fur Trade.” In Gathering Places: Essays in Aboriginal and Fur Trade Histories, edited by Carolyn Podruchny and Laura Peers, 26-47. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2010. 21 pp.
Carolyn Podruchny. “Writing, Ritual, and Folklore: Imagining the Cultural Geography of Voyageurs.” In Method and Meaning in Canadian Environmental History, edited by Alan MacEachern and William Turkel, 55-74. Toronto: Thompson-Nelson, 2008. 19 pp.
Germaine Warkentin and Carolyn Podruchny. “Introduction: ‘Other Land Existing.’” In Germaine Warkentin and Carolyn Podruchny, eds. Decentring the Renaissance: Canada and Europe in Multidisciplinary Perspective, 1500-1700. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. 13 pp.
Sarah Carter, The Importance of Being Monogamous: Marriage and Nation Building in Western Canada to 1915 (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2008) in Western Historical Quarterly (spring 2010): 87-8.
New Histories for Old: Changing Perspectives on Canada’s Native Pasts, edited by Ted Binnema and Susan Neylan (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007) forthcoming in Ethnohistory.
Jean-Claude Dubé, The Chevalier de Montmagny (1601-1657): First Governor of New France, translated by Elizabeth Rapley (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2005) in Choice Magazine (February 2006).
Internet Resource: France in America / La France en Amérique, Library of Congress and Bibliothèque nationale de France URL : http://international.loc.gov/intldl/fiahtml/ in Choice Magazine (January 2006).
Louis Bird, Telling Our Stories: Omushkego Legends and Histories from Hudson Bay, edited by Jennifer S. H. Brown, Paul W. Depasquale, and Mark F. Ruml (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005); Louis Bird, The Spirit Lives in the Mind: Omushkego Stories, Lives and Dreams, edited by Susan Elaine Gray (Rupert’s Land Record Society Series 9, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007); and website: Omushkego Oral History Project, by Louis Bird and the University of Winnipeg, http://www.ourvoices.ca/ in The Canadian Historical Review 89: 3 (September 2008), 436-39.
Brendan Frederick R. Edwards, Paper Talk: A History of Libraries, Print Culture, and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada before 1960 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2005) in Papers/Cahiers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada 43: 1 (Spring 2005), 68-9.
Rhoda R. Gilman, Henry Hastings Sibley: Divided Heart (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2004) in Choice Magazine (January 2005).
Nicole St.-Onge, Saint-Laurent, Manitoba: Evolving Métis Identities, 1850-1914 (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre, University of Regina, 2004) in Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 59: 3 (hiver 2006), 377-9.
Timothy J. Kent, Birchbark Canoes of the Fur Trade, 2 vols. (Ossineke: Silver Fox Enterprises, 1997) in Ontario History (Spring 2004).
Undelivered Letters to Hudson’s Bay Company Men on the Northwest Coast of America, 1830-57, edited by Judith Hudson Beattie and Helen M. Buss (Vancouver: University British Columbia Press, 2003) in BC Studies 148 (Winter 2005/06): 129-30.
Laton McCartney, Across the Great Divide: Robert Stuart and the Discovery of the Oregon Trail (New York: Free Press, 2003) in Choice Magazine (March 2004).
“Mixing Disciplines in Fluid Environs: A Review of the Museum Exhibit ‘Shared Waters: Natives and French Newcomers in the Great Lakes.’” The Centre for Rupert’s Land Studies Newsletter, No. 14 (Spring 2003).
From Rupert's Land to Canada: Essays in Honour of John E. Foster, edited by Theodore Binnema, Gerhard Ens, and R. C. MacLeod (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2001) in Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 56: 2 (fall 2002).
North of Athabasca: Slave Lake and Mackenzie River Documents of the North West Company, 1800-1821, edited by Lloyd Keith, (Montreal / Kingston: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2001) in Canadian Historical Review 83:3 (September 2002), 437-8.
Exhibition “Hudson’s Bay Company Gallery” at the Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature, curated by Katherine Pettipas and designed by Gordon Filewych, in Muse, Canadian Museums Association/ Association des Musées Canadiens 18, no. 4 (2000), 16-19.
Talking on the Page: Editing Aboriginal Oral Texts, edited by Laura J. Murray and Keren Rice in The Centre for Rupert’s Land Studies Newsletter, No. 8, (Spring 2000).
The Fur Trade Revisited; Selected Papers of the Sixth North American Fur Trade Conference, Mackinac Island, Michigan, 1991, edited by Jennifer S. H. Brown and others in Ontario History LXXXVII: 1, (Spring 1995): 213-15.
Nicole St-Onge, Carolyn Podruchny and Brenda Macdougall, eds. Family, Mobility and Territoriality in Metis History. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, fall October 2012. Forthcoming.
Carolyn Podruchny and Laura Peers, eds. Gathering Places: Aboriginal and Fur Trade Histories. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2010, in press. 330 pp.
Germaine Warkentin and Carolyn Podruchny, eds. Decentring the Renaissance: Canada and Europe in Multidisciplinary Perspective, 1500-1700. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. xii + 387 pp.
Carolyn Podruchny. Making the Voyageur World: Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press and Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. xx + 414 pp. Translated into French as: Les voyageurs et leur monde: Voyageurs et traiteurs de fourrures en Amérique du Nord. Translated by Anne-Hélène Kerbiriou. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2009. xix + 405 pp.
Émilie Pigeon and Carolyn Podruchny, “Bannock Diplomacy: How Metis Women Fought Battles and Made Peace in North Dakota, 1850s-1870s” Ethnohistory 69: 1 (January 2022), 29-52. 23 pp.
2019: Carolyn Podruchny, Jesse Thistle, and Elizabeth Jameson, “Women on the Margins of Imperial Plots: Farming on Borrowed Land” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de la Société historique du Canada 29: 1 (158-81). 23 pp. Link to article: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1065722ar
Carolyn Podruchny and Katie Magee Labelle. “Jean de Brébeuf and the Wendat Voices of Seventeenth-Century New France.” Part of a special issue on Relazioni/ Relations for the journal Renaissance & Reformation, edited by Tom Cohen and Germaine Warkentin. Forthcoming fall 2011.
Carolyn Podruchny. “Werewolves and Windigos: Narratives of Cannibal Monsters in French-Canadian Voyageur Oral Tradition.” Ethnohistory 51: 4 (fall 2004), 677-700. 23 pp.
Carolyn Podruchny. “Un homme-libre se construit une identité: Voyage de Joseph Constant au Pas, de 1773 à 1853.” Cahiers franco-canadiennes de l’Ouest, Numéro spécial sur La question métissage : entre la polyvalence et l’ambivalence identitaires 14 :1 et 2 (2002), 33-59. 26 pp.
Carolyn Podruchny. “Baptizing Novices: Ritual Moments Among French Canadian Voyageurs in the Montreal Fur Trade, 1780-1821." Canadian Historical Review 83: 2 (June 2002), 165-95. 30 pp.
Carolyn Podruchny. "Unfair Masters and Rascally Servants? Labour Relations Between Bourgeois, Clerks and Voyageurs in the Montreal Fur Trade, 1780-1821." Labour/ Le Travail: Journal of Canadian Labour Studies 43, (spring 1999), 43-70. 27 pp. Reprinted in Canadian History Reader, Volumes I and II, edited by Margaret Conrad and Alvin Finkel (Toronto: Pearson Education Canada, 2003); in Readings in Canadian History Pre-Confederation, Seventh Canadian Edition, edited by R. Douglas Francis and Donald B. Smith, (Toronto: Thomson Nelson, 2007); and in Labouring Canada: Class, Gender, and Race in Canadian Working-Class History, edited by Bryan D. Palmer and Joan Sangster (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press Canada, 2008).
April 2011. Seventh Annual Pierre Savard Conference, History Graduate Student Association of the University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON. "Narrative Transformations and Miraculous Escapes: Telling Tales in the Fur Trade Along the Ottawa River."
May 2011. Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Conference, Sacramento, CA. “French-Descended Metis in Northwestern North America: Making Sense of Ethnogenesis.”
November 2010. De Pierre-Esprit Radisson à Louis Riel: Voyageurs et Métis, Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface, Winnipeg, MB. “Tough Bodies, Fast Dogs, and Well-Dressed Wives: Measures of Manhood among French Canadian and Métis Voyageurs.”
June 2010. French Colonial Historical Society, Thirty-Sixth Congress, Paris, France. “French-Descended Metis in Northwestern North America: Making Sense of Ethnogenesis.”
May 2010. Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting, Montreal, QC. Presented jointly with Kathryn Magee Labelle. “'Onontio, lend me your ear’: Wendat Voices in the Jesuit Relations.”
May 2010. Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting, Montreal, QC. “From the Other Side of the Line: A French Catholic Priest Ministers to his Metis Flock at Pembina, 1840s-50s.”
October 2009. Environments, Movements, Narratives in the Circumpolar North, BOREAS Conference. Arctic Centre, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland. “The Lone Trickster? Exploring Individualism in Anishinaabe and Omushkego Oral Traditions in Early Canadian Indigenous History.”*
October 2009. Annual Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory. New Orleans, LA. “Becoming Metis in Fur Trade Folklore: The Case of Jean Cadieux.”
September 2009. Out of the Cold: Scientific Ways of Knowing in Histories of the Circumpolar Artic, BOREAS – ESF Workshop. Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada. “Dreaming of Wooden Boats, Booming Thunder, and Castaways: Narratives of Cree and European Encounters on Hudson Bay.”
April 2009. The Early Modern “Relation”: Family Tree and Hermeneutics. Victoria College, University of Toronto, Ontario. “In Search of the Voice of the Other: North American Indigenous People Speaking Through European Relations.”
December 2008. Reorienting Whiteness. Melbourne, Australia. “Can a White Man Kill a Bear? Constructing Race and Masculinity in Adversity Narratives in North American Fur Trade Folklore.”
November 2008. The Canadian Studies Program, International & Area Studies University of California at Berkeley Symposium “Québec and the seventeenth-century Atlantic World: Quatercentennial perspectives.” Berkeley, CA. "Dreaming of Pale Skin, Hairy Faces and Sharp Knives: Anishinaabe Narratives of Discovering the French and English."
November 2008. Annual Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory. Eugene, OR. “Mixing Stories and Making Identities: The Role of Narrative in the Encounters Between French and Anishinaabe in the Great Lakes Region in the 18th Century.”`
May 2008. Thirteenth Rupert’s Land Colloquium. Rocky Mountain House, AB. “Mukwa Meets L’Ours: Exploring Bear Tales in Fur Trade Folklore.”
February 2008. Seventh European Social Science History Association, Lisbon, Portugal. "The Problem of Migration and Metis Ethnogensis: Exploring the Identities of Joseph Constant, Charles Racette, and Peter Erasmus."
May 2007. Fur Trade and Metis Days, jointly sponsored by the Canadian Historical Association and the Canadian Indigenous and Native Studies Association, Saskatoon, SK. “Mobile Communities and Mental Spaces in a River-Based World.”
March 2007. Bridging National Borders in North America Symposium, Part II, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. Presented jointly with Bethel Saler. “‘Storied Landscapes and Glass Curtains’: The Fur Trade, National Borders, and Historians.”
May 2007. Canadian Historical Association 2005 Annual Meeting, Saskatoon, SK. Commentator for Panel “Aboriginal People Captured on Film and the Web.”
September 2006. Bridging National Borders in North America Symposium, Part I, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC. Presented jointly with Bethel Saler. “‘Glass Curtains and Storied Landscapes’: The Fur Trade, National Borders, and Historians.”
May 2006. Ninth North American Fur Trade Conference and Twelfth Rupert's Land Colloquium, St. Louis, MO. Presented jointly with Roger Roulette, “Colliding Spirit Worlds: Belcourt's French-Anishinaabe Dictionary.”
May 2006. French Colonial Historical Society, Thirty-Second Congress, Dakar, Senegal. “The Long Journey of the Turtle Who Wanted to Fly: Oral Motifs and Cultural Exchange in the Fur Trade.”
May 2006. Ninth North American Fur Trade Conference and Twelfth Rupert’s Land Colloquium, St. Louis, MO. Roundtable discussion: The Future of Fur Trade Studies and Conferences.*
2005. Thirty-seventh Algonquian Conference, Ottawa, ON. Presented jointly with Roger Roulette, “Bear Tales: Exploring Ojibwe and French-Canadian Oral Communication in the Fur Trade.”
2005. French Colonial Historical Society, Thirty-first Congress, Wolfville, NS. “Regulating Resistance: A Roman Catholic Priest Incites the Métis and Acadians, 1840s-1860s.”
2005. Canadian History Association Annual Meeting, London, ON. Commentator for Panel “Collaborative Research in Aboriginal History on the Pacific Coast.”
2004. Cinquante-septième Congrés annuel, Institut d'histoire de l'Amérique français, Chicoutimi, QC. "Fuites miraculeuses dans la tradition orale canadienne-française des voyageurs : la chanson, l'histoire et la complainte gravée dans le bois de Jean Cadieux."
2004. Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting, Winnipeg, MB. “Voyageurs too enjoy their carnival: French Canadian Servants, Dirty Tricks, and Bodily Pleasures.”
2004. Eleventh Rupert’s Land Colloquium. Kenora, ON. Presented jointly with Graham MacFarlane, “The Long Journey of the Turtle Who Wanted to Fly: Oral Motifs and Cultural Exchange in the Fur Trade.”
2004. Feminism and the Making of Canada: Historical Reflections. Montreal, QC. “Bear Tales: Voyageurs and Masculinity in the Montreal Fur Trade.”
2003. Thirty-fifth Algonquian Conference. London, ON. “Putting Up Poles: Power, Navigation, and Cultural Mixing in the Fur Trade.”
2003. Ninth Annual Conference of the Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture. New Orleans, LA. “Miraculous Escapes in French-Canadian Voyageur Oral Tradition: Jean Cayeux’s Song, Story and Wood-Carved Lament.”
2002. Annual Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory. Quebec City, QC, Canada, 2002. “Linguistic Encounters: A Nineteenth-Century French-Ojibwe Dictionary.”
2002. Thirty-fourth Algonquian Conference. Kingston, ON. “Peopling Georges-Antoine Belcourt’s Unpublished Nineteenth-Century French-Ojibwe Dictionary: Surveying Terms of Ethnic and Group Identity.”
2002. Tenth Rupert’s Land Colloquium. Oxford University, England. Presented jointly with Dr. Bethel Saler, “’Peering Through the Glass Curtain.’ Comparing Recent Trends in Fur Trade Historiography in Canada and the United States.”
2002. Thirty-second Popular Culture Association and Twenty-fourth American Culture Association Annual Conference. Toronto, ON. “Songlines of Adventure and Adversity: French Canadian Voyageurs Traveling in 18th- and 19th-Century Northwestern Borderlands.”
2002. Annual Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory. Quebec City, QC. Commentator for Panel “(Re)Appropriated Indian Voices.”
2001. Annual Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory. Tuscon, AZ. “The Meaning of Cannibal Monsters.”
2001. Indian - French Encounters in New France Colloquium, The Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. Panel Speaker, Commented on the film “Kenata: Legacy of the Children of Aataentsic,” directed by René Sioui-Labelle (1998).
2000. Annual Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory. London, ON. “Lords of the Lakes: Freemen in 18th and 19th-Century Rupert’s Land.”.
2000. Sixth Annual Conference of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History. Toronto, ON. “Werewolves and Windigos: Narratives of Cannibalism and Mental Illness in Voyageur Oral Tradition, 1780-1820.”
1999. Colloque en marge d’un millénaire vers un bilan missionaire. Organized by Western Canadian Publishers and the Société Historique de Saint Boniface. Winnipeg, MB. "Dieu, Diable and the Trickster: Voyageur Religious Syncretism in the Pays d'en haut, 1770-1821."
1998. Eighth Rupert's Land Colloquium. Winnipeg and Norway House, MB. "The Sexfiles: Towards an Understanding of Voyageur Sexuality, Part II: Cultural Hybridity, Trading Sex, Tender Ties and Fluid Monogamy."
1998. Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting. Ottawa, ON. "The Sexfiles: Towards an Understanding of Voyageur Sexuality, Part I: The Bourgeois Gaze and the North American Don Juan."
1997. Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting. St. John's, NF. "Baptizing Novices: Forming a Voyageur Identity in the Montreal Fur Trade."
1996. Twenty-Eighth Algonquian Conference. Toronto, ON. “Shifting Identities and Constructing Communities: Joseph Constant’s Journey to The Pas, 1773 to 1853.”
1996. Seventh Rupert's Land Colloquium. Whitehorse, YK. "Unfair Masters and Rascally Servants? Labour Relations Between Voyageurs and Bourgeois in the Montreal Fur Trade, 1770-1821."
1995. Seventh North American Fur Trade Conference, Halifax, NS. “Festivities, Fortitude and Fraternalism: Fur Trade Masculinity and the Beaver Club, 1785-1827.”
1994. Twenty-Sixth Algonquian Conference. Winnipeg, MB. "Diplomacy, Misunderstanding and Factionalism: Relations Between the Peguis Band and the Church Missionary Society, 1820-1838."
1992. Forty-First Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association of Geographers. Vancouver, BC. “Exploring Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Rupert’s Land: Samuel Hearne, John Franklin and George Back in the Barrens.”
1991. Fourth Annual Manitoba History Conference. Winnipeg, MB. "'Farming the Frontier': Agriculture in the Fur Trade, A Case Study of the Provisional Farm at Lower Fort Garry, 1857-70."
Carolyn Podruchny, “The Lone Trickster? Exploring Individualism in Anishinaabe and Omushkego Oral Traditions in Early Canadian Indigenous History” in Histories from the North: Environments, Movements, and Narratives, edited by John P. Ziker and Florian Stammler (Boise State University, Department of Anthropology / University of Lapland, Arctic Centre, 2012).
Carolyn Podruchny. "Dieu, Diable and the Trickster: Voyageur Religious Syncretism in the Pays d'en haut, 1770-1821." Western Oblate Studies 5 Études Oblates de l'Ouest 5 Actes du cinquième colloque sur l'histoire des Oblats dans l'Ouest et le Nord canadiens/ Proceedings of the fifth symposium on the history of the Oblates in Western and Northern Canada, edited by Raymond Huel and Gilles Lesage, 75-92. Winnipeg: Western Canadian Publishers, La Société historique de Saint Boniface, Presses universitaires de Saint Boniface and Centre d'études franco canadiennes de l'Ouest, 2000. 17 pp.
Carolyn Podruchny. “Festivities, Fortitude and Fraternalism: Fur Trade Masculinity and the Beaver Club, 1785-1827." In New Faces in the Fur Trade: Selected Papers of the Seventh North American Fur Trade Conference, edited by William C. Wicken, Jo-Anne Fiske and Susan Sleeper-Smith, 31-52. East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press, 1998. 21 pp. Reprinted in Rethinking the Fur Trade: Cultures of Exchange in an Atlantic World, edited by Susan Sleeper-Smith, 593-620 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009); and Race and Gender in the Northern Colonies, edited by Jan Noel (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2000).
Carolyn Podruchny. "'I have embraced the White man's religion': Relations between the Peguis Band and the Church Missionary Society in the Red River Valley, 1820-1838." In Papers of the 26th Algonquian Conference, edited by David H. Pentland, 350-78. Winnipeg: Algonquian Conference, 1996. 28 pp.
2011. Canadian Studies Program, York University, “Canada Like You Have Never Heard it Before.” “Tough Bodies, Fast Dogs, Well-Dressed Wives: Measures of Manhood Among French-Canadian Voyageurs in the North American Fur Trade.”
2011. Living and Learning in Retirement, Glendon College, “Some Extraordinary Canadians.” “Louis Riel: Father of Confederation or False Traitor?”
2010. Shannon Lecture Series in Canadian Social History, History Department, Carleton University, Ottawa. “Miraculous Escapes: Telling Stories in the North American Fur Trade.”
2009. North American Studies Klubi Lectures, Renvall Institute, University of Helsinki, Finland. “Carried Away by a Bear: Exploring Masculinity and Bear Tales in North American Fur Trade Folklore.”
2009. York Graduate History Students’ Association’s speaker series, The Historian’s Craft, “Miraculous Escapes in French-Canadian Voyageur Oral Tradition: Jean Cadieux’s Song, Story and Wood-Carved Lament.”
2009. Black Creek Pioneer Village Speaker Series on Manly Men, “Tough Bodies, Fast Dogs, Well-Dressed Wives: Measures of Manhood Among French-Canadian Voyageurs in the North American Fur Trade.”
2008. History Thursdays: Research and Reflections by Faculty Doing Historical Research at York. Speaker on panel (with Alan Durston and Keith Weiser), “History and Language.”
Speaker, “Workshop on Non-Tri-Council Humanities Funding Opportunities,” Faculty of Arts and Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies, York University
2007. York Alumni Christmas By Lamplight Event, Black Creek Pioneer Village, “Victorian Christmas and Women in British North America.”
2007. Black Creek Pioneer Village, Metis Arts Festival, John A. McGinnis Heritage Lecture, “French Canadian Voyageurs in the Montreal –Based Fur Trade.”
2007. Montreal History Group: Jeudis d’histoire, Montreal, QC. "Politics, Dictionaries and Sex Scandals: How to Write the Biography of a Missionary."
2005. Friends of Grand Portage Annual Dinner, St. Paul, MN. “Telling Tales Along the Ottawa River: The Sad Story of French-Canadian Voyageur Jean Cadieux.”
2005. Toronto Area Early Canada and Colonial North America Seminar Series, Toronto, ON. “Putting Up Poles: Power, Navigation, and Cultural Mixing in the Fur Trade.”
2004. Champlain – St. Lawrence Seminar in Early American Studies, State University of New York – Plattsburg, NY. “Miraculous Escapes in French-Canadian Voyageur Oral Tradition: Jean Cayeux’s Song, Story and Wood-Carved Lament.”
2004. Smithsonian Institute Study Tours, "Discover Quebec." Lectured on selected topics on the history of New France, Lower Canada, and the province of Quebec for educational tour groups in Quebec.
2004. Historica Teachers’ Institute, Université de Montréal. “Cultural Encounters in the Montreal Fur Trade: The Case of French Canadian Voyageurs.”
2003. American Studies Speakers’ Series, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI. “Werewolves and Windigos: Oral Tradition in the Fur Trade.”
2003. History Department Research Colloquia, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, MB. “Miraculous Escapes in French-Canadian Voyageur Oral Tradition: Jean Cadieux’s Song, Story and Wood-Carved Lament.”
2001. Fulbright Summer Institute, Rolling on the River: Waterways to Diversity in America, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI. “Rivers and the Fur Trade.”
2001. The Newberry Library Colloquium, Chicago, IL. “Baptizing Novices: Ritual Moments and Social Geography Among French-Canadian Voyageurs Working in the Fur Trade, 1740s-1830s.”
2001. Brown Bag Colloquium, D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian History, The Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. “Windigos and Werewolves: Narratives of Cannibal Monsters Among Algonquians and French Canadians, 1720s – 1860s.”
2001. The D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian History Visiting Committee (of donors), The Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. “Algonquian Linguistics and Georges-Antoine Belcourt’s Nineteenth-Century French – Ojibwe Dictionary: A Workshop on Publishing Language Materials.”*
2000. Winnipeg Fort Whyte Nature Centre Bison Discussion Series, Winnipeg, MB. “Real Men Eat Pemmican: Voyageurs, Bison and Masculinity.”
2000. Early Canada Research Group, Toronto, ON. “Classing Freemen: The Emergence of an Occupational Category in Eighteenth-Century Rupert’s Land.”
2000. Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature Training Program for Volunteers, Winnipeg, MB. Conducted workshop “The Culture of French Canadian Voyageurs in the Montreal Fur Trade.”
2000. Primo Seminario Annuale di Storia Atlantica, course in Facoltà di Scienze Politiche, co-sponsored by the Centro di Ricerca in Studi Canadesi e Colombiani and the Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, Università di Genova, Italia. “The Fur Trade in North-Western North America from Amerindian Perspectives, 1660-1820.”
2000. Women and History Association of Manitoba Workshop, Winnipeg, MB. “Doing It in a Canoe: Algonquian Women, Euro-American Men and Sexuality in the Montreal Fur Trade, 1770-1821.”
1999. Women and History Association of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB. “Pork Men, North Men, Ladies’ Men and Free Men: Masculinities and Voyageurs in 18th-Century Rupert’s Land.”
1999. Sources and Methodologies in Comparative Perspective Discussion Series, History Department, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON. “Four Ways to See Through the Bourgeois Gaze in Fur Trade Documents.” Presented as Part of a Panel “Native-European Relations.”
1998. University of Toronto Early Modern European Study Group, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON. "'Othering' the New World: Strategies for Understanding Early Modern History." Presented as part of a Panel "Concepts of ‘the Other’ in Early Modern Studies: Useful or Not?"
1997. Early Canada Research Group, Toronto, ON. “Ritual, Play and Sociability Among Voyageurs in the Montreal Fur Trade.”
1995. Early Canada Research Group, Toronto, ON. "Festivities, Fortitude and Fraternalism: Fur Trade Masculinity and the Beaver Club, 1785-1827."
Current Courses
| Term | Course Number | Section | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fall/Winter 2024 | AP/HIST2900 6.0 | A | Global Indigenous Histories | ONLN |
Upcoming Courses
| Term | Course Number | Section | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fall/Winter 2024 | AP/HIST2900 6.0 | A | Global Indigenous Histories | ONLN |
