HIST 312 Winter 2020:

History of Canadian Consumption

Professor: Elsbeth Heaman
Office Hours: 490 Ferrier Thursdays 10-12
Course Description

An economic, social, and political history of Canadian consumption. We will review the early modern
consumer revolution and the beginnings of modernity, the expansion of consumption across Canada,
modern-day consumerism, and how citizenship was reconstructed in the image of the consumer.

Course Evaluation

5% Five analyses of 500 words due Fridays at noon (i.e. 25 hours after class).
15% Research proposal (1000 words) due Feb 18 midnight
40% Research essay (2500 words) due March 24 midnight.
10% Attendance and participation
30% Final Exam

Tuesday classes will normally consist of lectures; Thursday’s classes of assessments of class discussions
around the question of how and why particular things became commodified or decommodified in Canada.
There will be a sign-up sheet circulated early on. Suggested topics are listed on the syllabus but you may
also suggest others. You must work with other students on these presentations. You must assign up to five
pages of reading for other students to read (ordinarily primary but secondary if necessary), to be
specified/made available by Tuesday’s class.

Regular analyses: Submit five short analyses of 500 words in response to reading for and discussion of
specific case studies during Thursday classes. What was the most important cause of commodification or
decommodification.

Major research project: proposal and essay. You will apply the same question about commodification or
decommodification in a more ambitious and thorough analysis of one thing/artifact. You must show
thorough familiarity with relevant and major primary and secondary sources. You must submit a
preliminary proposal, specifying your intended thesis, and the evidence you’ll be using to address it, as
well as a preliminary bibliography. Michael Stamm’s book provides an example of how to study a
commodity—a newspaper—as the movement of things in space, from production to delivery; and in
terms of debates about its importance and impact. The model won’t suit all choices equally well but you
should consider whether it might serve yours.

Attendance and participation in Thursday classes is required.

Required Texts

Required text: Michael Stamm, Dead Tree Media (2018) available for sale at The Word Bookstore on
Milton Avenue (cash only). Other required readings are listed on the weekly teaching schedule. They
include two novels: Stephen Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town and L.M. Montgomery’s The
Blue Castle. Both are available on Gutenberg and have not been ordered for the course, though The Word
may also have copies of them.

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 McGill University Policies

Academic integrity: McGILL UNIVERSITY VALUES ACADEMIC INTEGRITY. THEREFORE ALL

STUDENTS MUST UNDERSTAND THE MEANING AND CONSEQUENCES OF CHEATING,
PLAGIARISM AND OTHER ACADEMIC OFFENCES UNDER THE CODE OF STUDENT
CONDUCT AND DISCIPLINARY PROCEDURES (see www.mcgill.ca/integrity for more information).
In the event of extraordinary circumstances beyond the University’s control, the content and/or evaluation
scheme in this course is subject to change

Language policy: Every student has a right to write essays, examinations and theses in English or in
French except in courses where knowledge of a language is one of the objects of the course. Chaque
étudiant a le droit de soumettre en français ou en anglais tout travail écrit (sauf sans le cas des cours dont
l’un des objets est la maîtrise d’une langue).

Weekly Schedule: Lectures and Readings

Jan 7: Introduction: Consumption and History: Converging Paradigms?

Readings: “Boston Review Forum: The Lure of Luxury” (2015)
Ryan Flanagan, “How a toilet paper boom is harming Canada’s boreal forest,” CTV 26 February 2019
Jan 9: Early Modern Consumer Revolution: How can I be happy?

Jan 14: Fish and Fur/Food and Clothing in the Industrious Revolution
Readings: Ann M. Carlos and Frank D. Lewis, "Marketing in the Land of Hudson's Bay: Indian
Consumers and the Hudson's Bay Company, 1670-1770," Enterprise & Society 3 (June 2002):
285-317.
Robert S Duplessis, “Redressing the Indigenous Americas,” Ch 3 of The Material Atlantic: Clothing,
Commerce, and Colonization in the Atlantic World, 1650-1800 (Cambridge UP, 2015): 82-124.
Thursday Jan 16: Consuming People: The Rise and Fall of the Slave Trade in Canada

Jan 21: Enlightened Consumption

Readings: Nancy Christie, Merchant and Plebeian Commercial Knowledge in Montreal and Quebec,
1760-1820,” Early American Studies 13, 4 (Fall 2015): 856-80.
Michael Eamon, “’Directing Public Taste’: British Tradition, Social Control, and the Newspaper,” Ch 3
of Imprinting Britain: newspapers, sociability, and the Shaping of British North America (MQUP
2015): 67-88.
John Weaver, "The Globalization of Property Rights: An Anglo and American Frontier Land Paradigm,
1700-1900," paper pub. by the McMaster institute on Globalization and the Human condition.
Jan 23: Coffee. Chocolate. Sugar. Medicine. Newspapers. Enslaved peoples. Land

Jan 28: Settler Colonial Consumption

Readings: Béatrice Craig, "Consumption and the 'World of Goods,'" Ch 9 of Backwoods Consumers and
Homespun Capitalists: The Rise of a Market Culture in Eastern Canada (UTP, 2009): 199-220.
Michelle Hamilton, “’Bric-a-brackers and pot-hunters’: Professionals and the Public,” in her Collections
and Objections: Aboriginal Material Culture in Southern Ontario (MQUP, 2010): 20-50.
Downey, Allan, “Tewaá:rathon: The Canadian Appropriation of Lacrosse and ‘Indian’ Performances,” Ch
1 of The Creator’s Game: Lacrosse, Identity, and Indigenous Nationhood (UBC, 2018): 33-84.
Jan 30: Antiquities. Indian crafts. Nature. Camping. Art. Lacrosse. Wheaten bread. Groceries.

Feb 4: Popular Consumption

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 Feb 6: Discussion of Stephen Leacock, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town and Lucy Maude
Montgomery, The Blue Castle. What can and can’t people buy? What is the relationship between
consumption and agency?

Feb 11: Conspicuous Consumption and the Urban Spectacle

Readings: Keith Walden, “Carnival,” Ch 7 of Becoming Modern in Toronto: The Industrial Exhibition
and the Shaping of a Late Victorian Culture (Toronto, 1997): 292-332.
Steve Penfold, “The Corporate Fantastic,” Ch 1 of A Mile of Make-Believe: A History of the Eaton’s
Santa Clause Parade (UTP, 2016): 21-63.
Feb 13: Branded products. Fashion. Mansions. Department stores.

Feb 18: Continental Consumption

Readings: Stamm’s Dead Tree Media, Part I.
Feb 20: Stocks and bonds. Railways. Pulp and paper. Politicians. Cars. Telephones. Hollywood movies.

Feb 25: Collective Consumption

Readings: Stamm, Dead Tree Media, part II.
February 27: Sanitation. Streetcars, Medicare. Broadcasting. War.

Reading Week March 3-5: No class. (no regular office hours)

March 10: Affluence

Readings: Cynthia Comacchio, “At Play: Fads, Fashion, and Fun,” Ch 6 of The Dominion of Youth:
Adolescence and the Making of Modern Canada, 1920-1950 (UTP, 2008): 161-88
Bettina Liverant, “Academic Encounters,” Ch 8 of Buying Happiness: The Emergence of Consumer
Consciousness in English Canada (UBC, 2018): 185-214.
March 12: Credit Cards. Barbecues. Washing Machines. Donuts. Zoot suits and bikinis.

March 17: Vice

Readings: Marcel Martel, “No Longer Vices, Call Them Health Issues,” Ch 4 of Canada the Good: A
Short History of Vice since 1500 (WLUP, 2014): 91-150.
March 19: Sex. Porn. Drugs. Alcohol. Cigarettes. Contraception. Violence. Debt.

March 24: Identity/culture

Reading: Stamm, Dead Tree Media, part III
March 26: Data. Bitcoin. Education. Salvation. Nationality. Culture (appropriation). Black beauty.

March 31: Consumption and the Anthropocene

Readings: Clare Campbell, “The Wealth of Wilderness,” in Colin Coates and Graeme Wynn, eds. The
Nature of Canada (UBC/On Point 2019): 167-84
Ruth Sandwell, “An Introduction to Canada’s Energy History,” in R.W. Sandwell, ed. Powering Up
Canada: A History of Power, Fuel, and Energy from 1600 (MQUP, 2016): 3-36
Alan MacEachern, “The International Nature of the Miramichi Fire,” Forestry Chronicle 90, 3 (May/June
2014): 334-7.
April 2: Energy. Plastic. Disaster. Anti-consumerism. Conservation.

April 7: 2 Discussion of films by Jennifer Baichwal: Payback and Anthropocene.

April 9: Review

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