Jane Griffith
Her thesis, entitled News from School: Language, Time and Place in the Newspapers of 1890s Indian Boarding Schools in Canada, was completed in the Faculty of Education and supervised by Karen Stanworth.
The prize committee described the thesis as “original, analytically rich and beautifully written….What sets this work apart from among the excellent dissertations we reviewed is the way it explores an important and timely topic in novel and sophisticated ways.”
As prize committee member Kari Dehli noted, “The English language newspapers produced by Indigenous students comprised a site of domination but also opened a space for students’ strategic adaptation, negotiation and resistance. The work superbly represents the best new scholarship in the history of education in Canada.”
The award is in honour of the late Cathy James, a widely admired educational historian.
Griffith now holds a SSHRC post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto.