Scholarly Work
My historical research focuses on themes in Cold War Canada, specifically the culture of atomic anxiety, police surveillance (Operation Profunc), the history of medicine and psychiatry, 1950s children’s literature, and anti-communism.
“Poster #32: Operation Profunc: Police Surveillance and Democratic Socialism in Cold War Canada,” Remember | Resist | Redraw, Graphic History Collective. (Summer 2021).
Academic CV (Abridged)
Education:
University of Saskatchewan (PhD, History, 2016)
Dissertation: Controlling Contagion: Policing and Prescribing Sexual and Political Normalcy in Cold War Canada (PhD Dissertation, University of Saskatchewan), June 2016.
University of Alberta (MA, History, 2008)
Thesis: The Consumption of Science and Technology: Canadian Atomic Culture in the Cold War (MA Thesis, University of Alberta), April 2008.
University of Alberta (BA, History, 2006)
Selected Publications:
Book Chapters:
“‘The Most Common Deviation’: The Problem of Pathologizing Homosexuality and the Fear of Masculine Weakness at the Toronto Forensic Clinic,” in Cold War Workers: Labour, Family, and Community in a Nuclear State, edited by Isabel Campbell (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, Forthcoming 2025).
“Operation Profunc: The Cold War Plan to Intern Canadian Communists,” in The Bridge in the Parks: The Five Eyes and Cold War Counter-Intelligence, edited by Dennis Molinaro (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021).
Articles:
“Dale and the Bomb: Exploring the Nuclear Future and Cold War Anxiety in 1950s Canadian Children’s Literature,” Journal of Canadian Studies (53, 2 Spring, 2019): 270-295.
“Operation ‘Lifesaver’: Canadian Atomic Culture and Cold War Civil Defence,” Past Imperfect, (14, 2008): 46-85.
Book Reviews:
“Independent Scholars Meet the World: An Invitation to Academia.” Canadian Journal of History. (Summer, 2021)
“Gregory S. Kealey, Spying on Canadians: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police Security Service and the Origins of the Long Cold War.” Labour/Le Travail. (Fall, 2018)
“Donald G. Mahar, Shattered Illusions: KGB Cold War Espionage in Canada.” Canadian Journal of History. (September, 2018)
“American Psychiatry Scholarship: The Pendulum Maintains its Momentum,” with Lucas Richert. Medical History 58, 4, 614-618. (October, 2014)
Public History:
Documentary Interview: Absolutely Canadian: Living without Menace, director Ted Stenson, Rat Ball Films. (Broadcast September 2022, CBC Alberta and British Columbia, CBC Gem).
Poster: “Poster #32: Operation Profunc: Police Surveillance and Democratic Socialism in Cold War Canada,” Remember | Resist | Redraw, Graphic History Collective. (Summer 2021).
Web-based publication: “Rats and Communism: Protecting Alberta from Invasion in the Early Cold War,” The Otter ~ La Loutre (September 2016).
Current Projects:
Research stage: a history of Alberta’s Rat Control Program, post-war to present day.