The Department of History and Classics is pleased to announce this year's L. H. Thomas Distinguished Visiting Speaker: Professor Ian MacLaren
October 8, 2015 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Art Gallery of Alberta, 2 Sir Winston Churchill Sq, Edmonton, AB T5J 2C1, Canada
Dr. MacLaren is a professor in the Department of History & Classics as well as English & Film Studies at the University of Alberta with an extensive research career in Canadian History, Canadian Literature, the Arctic, the National Parks of Canada and Environmental History.
The topic is the early Canadian artist Paul Kane (1810-1881).
"Several Histories through a Single Lens: Putting Paul Kane Back Together Again"
Explorers and travellers often were only one-time authors. Before the advent of the professional travel writer in the mid-nineteenth century, most explorers and travellers did not make journeys in order to write books; indeed, the book often amounted to a great challenge for them to overcome once they returned home. The case of Paul Kane is a most intriguing one in this context. Working with his own field writings gives one the impression of a very different person than the persona found in Wanderings of an Artist among the Indians of North America. Whole sections of the book - Christmas at Fort Edmonton, for example - have no basis in Kane's writings or even in a surviving draft manuscript for the book that is written in two hands, neither of them Kane's. Professor MacLaren will introduce his audience to the precarious nature of Kane's writings and also his art. Depending upon them for historical, ethnohistorical, art historical, and literary historical eyewitness testimony to mid-nineteenth-century western North America and its native peoples is often more hazardous than is generally thought.
There will be a reception following the talk.
All are invited.