University of Manitoba - Faculty of Arts - Women's Studies - Jocelyn Thorpe
Jocelyn Thorpe

Associate Professor, Women's and Gender Studies, History

Education
Ph.D., Environmental Studies, York University, 2008
M.A., Sociology and Equity Studies, OISE, University of Toronto, 2003
B.A. (Hons.), English Literature and Equity Studies, University of Toronto, 2001

Research
My research draws from critical race, feminist, and environmental studies scholarship to examine the history and legacies of, as well as challenges to, colonialism in the Canadian context.  I seek to understand how past discourses and relationships of power lead to and naturalize present-day social and environmental inequities,  and to open up possibilities for more just relationships among humans and between humans and the non-human world in which we live.

My most recent project explores the history of relationships among Indigenous and non-Indigenous Newfoundlanders and the territory they have come to share. I hope that this work contributes to decolonization, in part through centering Mi'kmaw actions in and perspectives on the past. In a similar vein, with Kaila Johnston, acting manager of Education, Outreach and Public Programming at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, and Jaimie Isaac, Curator of Indigenous/Contemporary Art at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, I organize the Decolonizing Lens film and discussion series, which features the work and words of Indigenous filmmakers from Winnipeg and beyond.

With my colleagues Stephanie Rutherford at Trent University and L. Anders Sandberg at York University, I have edited a collection of essays called Methodological Challenges in Nature-Culture and Environmental History Research. The collection grapples with challenges of how to study human-environment relationships over time, and provides insight from scholars working in diverse geographical and theoretical contexts.  I am the author of Temagami's Tangled Wild:  Race, Gender, and the Making of Canadian Nature, which examines the history of how Teme-Augama Anishnabai territory in Ontario came to be understood by non-Indigenous people as a site of wild Canadian nature, and the efforts of the Teme-Augama Anishnabai over time to enact their own relationships to their homeland.

Courses for 2020/2021
WOMN 1500 (Fall 2020): Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies in the Social Sciences
WOMN 3000 (Fall 2020): Interdisciplinary Research in Women's and Gender Studies
WOMN 2000 (Winter 2021): Feminist Thought

Selected Publications
Thorpe, Jocelyn. "Routes of Colonial Racism: Travelling Narratives of European Progress and Aboriginal Extinction in Pre-Confederation Newfoundland." In Tracing Ochre: Changing Perspectives on the Beothuk, edited by Fiona Polack, 269-296. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018.

Thorpe, Jocelyn. "Basketball Diary." In Global Currents in Gender and Feminisms: Canadian and International Perspectives, edited by Glenda Tibe Bonifacio, 279-289. Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing, 2018.

Thorpe, Jocelyn, Stephanie Rutherford and L. Anders Sandberg, eds. 2017. Methodological Challenges in Nature-Culture and Environmental History Research. London and New York: Routledge, 2017.

Thorpe, Jocelyn, Sonja Boon et. al.  "The Intro Course:  A Pedagogical Toolkit."  Atlantis:  Critical Studies in Gender, Culture and Social Justice 37, no. 2 (2016): 54-67.

Thorpe, Jocelyn Temagami's Tangled Wild:  Race, Gender, and the Making of Canadian Nature.  Vancouver:  UBC Press, 2012.

Thorpe, Jocelyn. "Temagami's Tangled Wild:  The Making of Race, Nature, and Nation in Early-Twentieth-Century Ontario."  In Rethinking the Great White North:  Race, Nature, and the Historical Geographies of Whiteness in Canada, edited by Andrew Baldwin, Laura Cameron and Audrey Kobayashi, 193-210.  Vancouver:  UBC Press, 2011.

Thorpe, Jocelyn and Sheila O'Neill.  "Grassroots Empowerment and the Rise of the Newfoundland Aboriginal Women's Network (NAWN):  A Report on NAWN's First Eight Years."  Newfoundland Aboriginal Women's Network, Stephenville, Newfoundland and Labrador, 2014.

 

Different Histories from UManitoba Arts on Vimeo.

 

Dr. Jocelyn Thorpe