John H. Thompson, Professor Emeritus

Please note: John has left the "History" group at Duke University; some info here might not be up to date.

I study nineteenth and twentieth-century North American History. I teach a seminar in Canadian history [HST 183S], a comparative lecture course on the North American Wests [HST 108D], and a lecture course the relationships among Canada, Mexico and the United States [HST 108F]. In Spring 2008, I'll teach a lecture course on 'Baseball in Global Perspective.' My almost-completed research project is a book entitled "Family, Farm and Community: The Rural Northern Plains, 1860-1970," a comprehensive comparative rural history of the region to the post World War II "great disjuncture," examining how institutions, "culture," and historical contingency shaped a geographically homogeneous region into the six very different U.S. states of North and South Dakota, Montana, and the Canadian provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. My next (and my last) project, just underway, is a book about Enos Slaughter [1916-2002], a Hall of Fame ballplayer from Person County, NC. The project is not a biography of Slaughter, but an attempt to use his life in baseball to explore larger questions about gender, race, class, and celebrity in America.

Contact Info:

Office Location:	331 Carr Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Email Address:

Typical Courses Taught:

• HST 183S, Canada Since the French Settlement

  SYNOPSIS OF COURSE CONTENT: First, some “truth in packaging.” The course doesn’t really extend back to “French Settlement.” Instead it considers modern Canada from the Confederation of 1867 to the present day. The unifying theme of the course will be a comparative North American question: How and why did Canada become a nation- state very different than the United States? Specific topics that we will consider through reading and discussion include: the creation of the Canadian federation; western expansion across the continent; Canada’s membership in the British Empire-Commonwealth, including participation in World Wars I & II; the development of the Canadian welfare state, including Canada’s single- payer medical system; ethnic diversity; the contemporary military-diplomatic, economic, and cultural interactions between Canada and the USA. READING ASSIGNMENTS: will total about 150 pages a week. We’ll use the third edition of John Herd Thompson and Stephen J. Randall, Canada and the United States: Ambivalent Allies (University of Georgia Press, 2002) to provide a narrative overview, and I’ll assign parts of books and individual articles to examine specific topics. EXAMINATIONS: Students who wish to may choose to write a three-hour on-line final during the final exam period and return their answer via e-mail. TERM PAPERS: a 7-page paper based on the required reading for one of our discussion topics; and a 15-page research paper. Students will have the opportunity to submit several drafts of each paper to develop their writing skills. GRADE TO BE BASED ON: class participation, the short paper, the research paper, and the optional final, as described above. Each student will decide the percentage value s/he wishes to assign each component. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION/COMMENTS: If you have questions, please call John Thompson at 684- 8102 or e-mail jthompso@duke.edu

• HISTORY 303, FOCUSING ON TCHNG & PEDAGOGY

Specialties:

Global Transnational History

Research Interests: 20th Century, Rural History, U.S. Plains / Canadian Prairies

I study nineteenth and twentieth-century North American History. I teach a seminar in Canadian history [HST 183S], a comparative lecture course on the North American Wests [HST 108D], and a lecture course the relationships among Canada, Mexico and the United States [HST 108F]. In Spring 2008, I'll teach a lecture course on 'Baseball in Global Perspective.' My almost-completed research project is a book entitled "Family, Farm and Community: The Rural Northern Plains, 1860-1970," a comprehensive comparative rural history of the region to the post World War II "great disjuncture," examining how institutions, "culture," and historical contingency shaped a geographically homogeneous region into the six very different U.S. states of North and South Dakota, Montana, and the Canadian provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. My next (and my last) project, just underway, is a book about Enos Slaughter [1916-2002], a Hall of Fame ballplayer from Person County, NC. The project is not a biography of Slaughter, but an attempt to use his life in baseball to explore larger questions about gender, race, class, and celebrity in America.

Curriculum Vitae

Current Ph.D. Students   (Former Students)

• Paula P. Hastings  
• Michael N. Crotty  

Recent Publications   (More Publications)   (search)

1. Thompson, JH, Asa McKercher. Camelot and Canada: Canadian-American Relations in the Kennedy Era., American Historical Review, vol. 122 no. 4 (October, 2017), pp. 1202-1202, Oxford University Press (OUP) [doi]
2. Thompson, JH, Canada and the 'Third British Empire', 1901-1939, in Canada and the British Empire (October, 2011), pp. 87-106, Oxford University Press, ISBN 9780199563746 [doi]  [abs]
3. Thompson, JH, Saskatchewan: A New History (review), The Canadian Historical Review, vol. 90 no. 4 (2009), pp. 764-766, Project Muse [doi]
4. John Herd Thompson and Stephen J. Randall, Canada and the United States: Ambivalent Allies (fourth edition), The United States and the Americas (Spring, 2008), The University of Georgia Press / McGill-Queen's Press  [abs] [author's comments]
5. John Herd Thompson, “Canadian History in North American Context,”, in Canadian Studies in the New Millennium, edited by Patrick James and Mark Kasoff, eds., (2007), pp. 37-64, University of Toronto Press