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I was trained as an historian (BA McGill 1979) and geographer (PhD Clark University 1986). I would divide my career into four parts. Part 1, 1975-1990, I focused my research on the history of cartography. The French expedition to Egypt and the cartographic work carried out there was my primary interest, resulting in a dissertation, numerous articles and a monograph. Along the way, I also contributed research and editorial work for the History of Cartography Project (Harley and Woodward). Part 2, 1990-2009, I focused my research on the history of the geographic sciences, producing two books, Geography Unbound, about the nature of geography in 18th and 19th century France, Geography and Empire, about the deep links between geography, the state and imperialism, especially in the 19th century, and numerous academic articles. Part 3, 2009-2021, I focused my research on Indigenous-settler relations in Canada. Together with some outstanding graduate students I sought to identify the elements in K-16 education across Canada that contributed to Canadians’ abiding inability to recognize Indigenous presence and rights in Canada. We carried out surveys of student knowledge across 4 provinces and multiple institutions and produced numerous reports and academic articles. It is also likely that we influenced institutions and ministries to look more critically at the education they were offering their students. Part 4; is the work I am doing as a retired professor. In retirement I have opened a small bean-to-bar chocolate company. I make excellent chocolate but I also research the political and economic geography of chocolate. I am working on a book provisionally entitled Chocolate’s Global Conquest.

Credentials:

B.A. (McGill)
M.A., Ph.D (Clark, 1985)

Research Interests:

My current research looks at the spatial exclusion and inclusion of Indigenous peoples, issues and concerns in curriculum, school texts and instructional practice in secondary school education in contemporary Ontario and Quebec. Spaces of exclusion and exception take many forms in our society. As Agamben, Foucault and others have shown, strategies of social exclusion can be revealed by a focus on their spatial manifestation, whether that expression is found on the ground, on the body, or in texts (Agamben 2005, Foucault 1977, Butler 1990, Mitchell 1991, Mountz 2003, 2004). If what takes place in the prison, the army, the hospital, and in law is symptomatic of a form of pervasive social organization, what occurs in schools is formative of that social organization in a way that few other institutions can be in a liberal democracy (Willinsky 1998). My research argues that decolonization requires a transformation of public consciousness through an open examination of what we are and how we have come to be that (Said 1979, Gramsci 1991, Gregory 2004).

Jackie Moore (ATEP Program, Faculty of Education) and I have recently submitted an article on the Ontario secondary school social science curriculum and the Ontario 7-course Native Studies Program (1999-present) (Godlewska, Moore, and Bednasek accepted). The article explores coverage of Indigenous existence within the curriculum and the delivery of the Native Studies program and links the particular form of exclusion in Ontario to the embrace of a substantially unexamined yet contestable multicultural ideology (Kymlicka 2001, Bissondath 2002, Taylor 1992, Tulley 2006, Aikman and May 2003). There are signs in government pronouncements and the curriculum itself of a concern to overcome exclusion of Indigenous peoples and issues, yet effective exclusion persists in Ontario. This research explores the particular flavour of exclusion and inclusion in Ontario together with the mechanisms of that exclusion, with an eye to expanding the study to the rest of Canada. In our article and this research we focus special attention on how geography is taught as there is significant potential for a link between geography and Indigenous education, given the importance of land, sustainability, culture and the environment in Indigenous thought (Deloria jr. 2005, Deloria jr. and Wildcat 2001).

My focus in the history of science is on Geography and the ways in which sometimes formal and sometimes informal disciplinary and proto-disciplinary structures shape the way people think, right down to what they can possibly imagine. Although much of the history of science is written heroically around success and with an implied linearity and continuity, I like to focus on discontinuities, missed opportunities and, for want of a better word, failure. I am also interested in the role that imperialism, colonialism, war and violence have played in shaping science and the role that conceptions of science have had on perceptions of people and cultures.

I continue to be interested in the history of mapping. My most recent article in that field, published in Imago Mundi, compared cartographic and artistic renderings of selected Napoleonic battles in northern Italy with the actual sites. The article reveals that narrative has a very different relationship to maps and images. Certainly Bagetti’s paintings were powerful constructions that were more successful in reflecting a narrative of glorious conquest than was possible through cartography.

Affiliate Website:

Assessing Student Awareness of Indigenous Peoples Project

Curriculum Vitae (PDF 479 kB)