James Opp

Contact Zones | Leuven University Press The role of photography in U.S. migrant histories Since the mid-nineteenth century photography has played a central role in cultural encounters within and between migrant communities in the United Sta...

Contact Zones: Photography, Migration and Cultural Encounters in the United States, eds. Justin Carville & Sigrid Lien. (Leuven: Leuven University Press). Available in paperback and Open Access at LUP and @jstor.bsky.social

There is no starting from the position that AI summaries or AI-generated "sources" are viable components of historical understanding without ending up at the position that history as an attempt at human understanding of the past is worthless.

I'm thrilled that @issygapp.bsky.social are co-editing the *fifth* series for @nichecanada.bsky.social on Visual Cultures of the Circumpolar North-this time, on "States of the Field–New Research in Arctic Pasts." We want to hear from up and coming Arctic researchers! niche-canada.org/2025/08/04/c...

I’m just gonna say right now that when I die, if anyone uses AI to write my obituary I will fucking haunt them forever

A few others: Rural Alberta Advantage ( Frank, Tornado ‘87, CANDU ); Kathleen Edwards, Oil Man’s War ; Oh Susanna, my old Vancouver ; Corb Lund - Rat Patrol.

The Ballad of Springhill is one I’ve used in class before

also, and it's a remarkably hard point for some people to digest: there is no interdisciplinary work without disciplinary training

Sign the Petition Stop Mass Redundancies at Lancaster University – Hold Senior Management Accountable

Goodbye to the history department at Lancaster University, where the @socialhistsoc.bsky.social was founded 49 years ago. From tomorrow we are
part of a School of Global Affairs. Next year, who knows what will be - please sign our petition against mass redundancies chng.it/PZfTFDjNcr

2SLGBTQ+ Youth, Parental Rights, and Alberta Standards for School Libraries Nancy Janovicek and Karissa Patton This button is from Nancy’s political button “archive.” She first wore it in the 1990s when groups attempted to ban books from libraries, including Lesléa Newman’…

In today’s post Nancy Janovicek and Karissa Patton explore recent book bans in Alberta and what it means for 2SLGBTQ+ youth.

A Columbia genocide scholar says she may leave over university's new definition of antisemitism Academics around the country are raising alarm about growing efforts to define antisemitism on terms pushed by the Trump administration.

Marianne Hirsch is one of the greatest scholars of memory studies working today, and I have learned so much from her work. Last semester, I assigned her to my students and they learned from her. If she feels she cannot stay at Columbia, that speaks badly of Columbia now. apnews.com/article/colu...

Associate Professor – Public Memory & Public Histories. Deadline: September 8, 2025. #cdnhist cha-shc.ca/careers-and-...

Call for Submissions - Environmental Histories of Indian Residential and Day Schools Although Land and environment are central to residential and day school histories, they remain underexamined in environmental history.

Inspired by conversations that we had in response to our January post about Land and northern histories of residential and day schooling, Crystal Fraser and I are co-editing a @nichecanada.bsky.social series on environmental histories of residential and day school. niche-canada.org/2025/07/22/c...

Alberta Youth Have the Right to Books That Reflect Their Lives | The Tyee Including their sexuality.

"If Alberta Education will not prepare students for the world they live in — where we queer and trans people exist, flourish and are loved — then students should be able to seek out stories that reflect that world." #ableg #abpoli 📚

Image advertising the event, featuring a pair of zoom lenses side-by-side like eyes. Text reads: STEREO VISION, The Art of 3-D Photography. Tuesday, July 22, 2025. Internet Archive, 300 Funston Ave, San Francisco.

THIS EVENING! See 3D photography come to life. The Golden Gate Stereoscopic Society presents STEREO VISION, hosted at the Internet Archive.

🕕 6 PM doors open
📍 300 Funston Ave, SF
🎟️ www.eventbrite.com/e/1448054332...

#Photography #SFevents #FunCheapSF

If it has ever been clearer that teachers and universities are simply an impediment to these companies seeking to make students a captive population and then making trillions off those students it’s here

Announcement: CHA Annual Meeting 2026 | Canadian Historical Association | Société historique du Canada You can’t spell “Charlottetown” without “CHA”! The CHA is thrilled to announce that its next Annual Meeting will be held Monday-Wednesday, June 1-3, 2026, in Charlottetown, PEI. The event will be host...

You can’t spell “Charlottetown” without “CHA”! The CHA is thrilled to announce that its next Annual Meeting will be held June 1-3, 2026, in Charlottetown, PEI. We hope to see you there! Click the link for the full announcement. #cdnhist #CHA2026 #UPEI #Charlottetown

It has never been more important for historians to teach the histories of eugenics as often as possible, to as wide an audience as possible.

In the '50s Karsh did an incredible "be a Brading man" ad campaign for Ottawa's Brading's beer. Full series on my blog: www.ashleynewall.ca/2022/05/otta...

Decades of mechanistic talk about university degrees as if they were bundles of 'skills' and 'prep' are about to be proved completely wrong (obviously). Want to get a real boost? Do History or English.

Indigenous Archival Photo Project: Framing the Creator’s Game 1

revealing narratives absent from official history, Seesequasis invites us to reconsider the role of archives in transmitting Indigenous cultures and in shaping reconciliation dynamics. Produced in partnership with OPTICA. Sep 5–Oct 18, Montreal.

momentabiennale.com/en/exhibit/i...

CFP - World Congress of Business History (Toronto 2026) | Canadian Historical Association | Société historique du Canada The World Congress of Business History is pleased to announce a call for papers. Visit worldcbh.org to learn more. Deadline for CFP: December 1, 2025.

CFP – World Congress of Business History (Toronto 2026). Deadline: 1 December 2025. #cdnhist

A hand with pink nail polish holds a book titled Trading on Art: Cultural Diplomacy and Free Trade in North America by Sarah E.K. Smith. The book cover shows twelve paper plates, on each a state or province from Canada, Mexico and the US is rendered in red, blue or green. In the background you can see the brushstrokes of a grey painting with a building and people.

Delighted to share that my new book 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘯 𝘈𝘳𝘵: 𝘊𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘋𝘪𝘱𝘭𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘤𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘍𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘕𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘩 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢 is out today with @ubcpress.bsky.social!

LLMs aren't subjects, but large socio-technical apparatuses, similar to factories, bureaucracies, or corporations, and our critique should not begin by comparing ourselves to them, but by asking what position they impose on us: How do these apparatuses model and interpellate subjectivity?
2/

Canadian History job

History - Lecturer or Assistant Professor, 1-year term
Mount Allison University

Review of applications will begin on 7 July 2025 and will continue until the position is filled.

csn-rec.ca/job-postings...

I think a lot of people, possibly including most decision-makers in higher ed, have effectively stopped believing in subject-matter expertise. It certainly does make education simpler and a lot cheaper if you stipulate at the outset that there is nothing very difficult or complicated worth learning.

Computer-vision research powers surveillance technology - Nature An analysis of research papers and citing patents indicates the extensive ties between computer-vision research and surveillance.

New paper hot off the press www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We analysed over 40,000 computer vision papers from CVPR (the longest standing CV conf) & associated patents tracing pathways from research to application. We found that 90% of papers & 86% of downstream patents power surveillance

1/

A person who is in a position to know tells me that while they believe the first message was botched, there WILL be additional hoops for researchers to jump through in the near future.

Universities should be the places rapidly raising the alarm about AI, not adopting it