McGill in History

Brian Lewis, Don Nerbas, Melissa N. Shaw

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9780228025948
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: History of Education
• Index: History

In 2021, McGill University celebrated its bicentennial anniversary, reflecting on contributions to research, education, and other successes. The university's founding within the context of nineteenth-century Atlantic capitalism requires that a deeper account engage with the more complex and difficult elements of its history.

McGill in History brings together diverse historiographies and perspectives to critically examine how McGill has been implicated in power structures and is the product of conflicting ideologies. James McGill, the university's namesake, owned and profited from the sale of enslaved Black and Indigenous people, a legacy highlighted by the removal of his statue and ongoing debates over the racially charged Redman name used by the men's sports teams. Imperialism, settler colonialism, slavery, sexism, and homophobia are elements of McGill's story that must be fully integrated into a broader understanding of the university's institutional history. Challenging siloed narratives with new research, the contributors in this volume highlight the important task of scholars to scrutinize and confront history that is unflattering and to rethink their institution's own story – a reckoning happening across many institutions of higher education around the world.

McGill in History broadens the historical frame of critical university studies, showing how the university can serve as a model for understanding power in modern society.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Half-Title Page
• Introduction
• 1 McGill’s Glasgow: City, University, Atlantic Slavery, and Abolition, 1744–66
• 2 A North Atlantic “Provincial”: James McGill, Empire, “Property,” and “Improvement”
• 3 James McGill and Constructing the History of a University
• 4 “To Relieve It from Present Embarrassments”: Fiduciary Colonialism in Service to McGill College
• 5 Willie McDonald’s McGill: A Student’s Experience in the Late Nineteenth Century
• 6 “What Is Money?”: Stephen Leacock and Jacob Viner at McGill
• 7 “Risky Business”: Social Sciences, McGill, and the Interwar Years
• 8 “A Distinct Blow to Our Esteem of That Outstanding Institution”: McGill University’s Racial Exclusion of Japanese Canadians, 1943–45
• 9 Beyond the Headlines: Heinz Lehmann and the History of McGill Psychiatry
• 10 “A Perfect Storm”: Operation McGill Français, 28 March 1969
• 11 The Queering of McGill
• Epilogue
• Contributors
• Index