Gleason, Mona

Research Interests

Research Supervision Interests

Individual research Interests

Bio

I am an historian of education with a focus on the history of children and youth.  I teach and conduct research in various areas, including age and size as categories of historical analysis, gender and sexuality, health and the body, race and nation, research methods in education, schooling, and the family.  The responses of young people and their families to the interventions of professionals – educational, medical, and psychological – are centrally important in my historical research. I’ve authored two books, co-edited five books, and numerous book chapters on topics foregrounding the history of children and education in multiple contexts. My article publications appear in the History of Education Quarterly, Qualitative Inquiry, the Canadian Historical Review, the Journal of Family History, the Journal of Canadian Studies, Childhood, BC Studies, and Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures. 

With my colleague Dr. Tamara Myers (UBC – History), I co-founded the History of Children and Youth Group , now an officially affiliated group of the Canadian Historical Association. I am past Vice President of the Canadian History of Education Association. Along with Dr. Penney Clark (UBC – EDCP),  I was co-editor of Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’histoire de l’éducation between 2015 and 2020. Between 2015 and 2017,  I served as President of the Society for the History of Children and Youth (http://shcyhome.org/), the major professional association for scholars in the field.

Current Research and Writing

My current project builds on my previous research on distance education in early twentieth century British Columbia and is funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant.  Entitled “Talking Back to Victoria: Parental Advocacy for Rural Education in British Columbia, 1920 to the Present”, this study focuses on parents, and particularly mothers’, role in ensuring that children in rural districts received an education on par with their urban counterparts. This work connects with my “Families without Schools” project, funded by a Spencer Foundation Grant, which  focussed on the schooling experiences of children in rural British Columbia in the early decades of the twentieth century. The research explores a valuable collection of letters written by parents and children to the Elementary Correspondence School (ECS) over these decades.

Research and Scholarly Awards

• 2020, UBC Killam Research Award, Senior Scholar Category, Killam Trust Office
• 2018-2021, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant (Canada)
• 2018, Neil Sutherland Prize for Best Article in the History of Children and Youth in Canada, Canadian Historical Association,  “Avoiding the Agency Trap: Caveats for Historians of Children, Youth, and Education,” History of Education 45, 4 (2016): 446-459.
• 2018, Best Article Prize – History of Sexuality in Canada, Canadian Committee on the History of Sexuality, Canadian History Association, for Mona Gleason,  “‘Knowing Something I Was Not Meant to Know’: Exploring Vulnerability, Sexuality, and Childhood, 1900-1950,” Canadian Historical Review 98, 1 (March 2017): 35-59.
• 2015-2016, Spencer Foundation Grant (USA)
• 2013, Hampton Research Grant, Large Grant (Canada)
• 2010-2012, Best Article, English Language, Canadian History of Education Association for Penney Clark, Mona Gleason and Stephen Petrina, “Preschools for Science? The Child Study Centre at the University of British Columbia, 1960-1997,” History of Education Quarterly 52, 1 (2012) : 29-61.
• 2007, Arts Alumni Research Award, University of Waterloo (Canada)
• 2006-2009, Spencer Foundation Grant  (USA)
• 2007-2010, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Grant
• 2005-2006, Early Career Scholar Award, Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Study (UBC)
• 2005, Hampton Research Grant, Large Grant (UBC)
• 2001 – 2004, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Grant
• 2001, Hampton Research Grant, Small Grant, 2001 (UBC)
• 2001-2002, Outstanding Article Award, Society for the History of Children and Youth. 

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Education

Research Projects

Selected Publications

Books

Single Authored:

Mona Gleason, Small Matters: Canadian Children in Sickness and Health, 1900 to 1940 (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013)

Mona Gleason,  Normalizing the Ideal: Psychology, Schooling, and the Family in Postwar Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999)

 

Edited Collections:

Mona Gleason and Tamara Myers, eds., Bringing Children and Childhood into Canadian History: The Difference Kids Make ( Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2017).

Mona Gleason, Tamara Myers, and Adele Perry, eds., Rethinking Canada – The Promise of Women’s History, 6th Edition (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2011)

Mona Gleason, Tamara Myers, Leslie Paris, and Veronica Strong-Boag, eds., Lost Kids: Vulnerable Children and Youth in Twentieth-Century Canada and the United States (Vancouver: University of Vancouver Press, 2009).

Mona Gleason and Adele Perry, eds., Rethinking Canada – The Promise of Women’s History, 5th Edition (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2006).

Jean Barman and Mona Gleason, eds., Children, Teachers, and Schools in the History of British Columbia, 2nd Edition (Calgary: Detselig Press, 2003)

Selected Recent Refereed Journal Articles

Mona Gleason, “ ‘Children obviously don’t make history’: Children’s Modalities of Power and Their Contribution to Historical Change.” Article submitted to Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth (Forthcoming, Fall, 2023).

Yotam Ronen, and Mona Gleason, “ ‘I am desirous that she should have as good an education as possible’:  A Century of Parental Advocacy for Rural Education in BC.” BC Studies 214 (September, 2022): 39-57.

Yang Tao and Mona Gleason, “Study on the History of the Child from an Educational Perspective: An Interview with Mona Gleason,” Global Education 48, 2 (2019): 3-16.

Penney Clark, Katie Gemmell, and Mona Gleason, “Historical Studies in Education – A Journal’s Journey from Past to Present,”Scholarly Research and Communication 9, 1 (2018): 1-11.

Mona Gleason, “Metaphor, materiality, and method: the central role of embodiment in the history of education.” Paedagogica Historica 54, 1-2 (2018: 4-19.

Mona Gleason, “Families Without Schools: Rurality and the Promise of Schooling in Interwar Western Canada,” History of Education Quarterly  57, 3 (August 2017): 305-330.

Mona Gleason, ” ‘Knowing something I was not meant to know’ “: Exploring Vulnerability, Sexuality, and Childhood,” Canadian Historical Review 98, 1 (March 2017): 35-59.

Mona Gleason, “Avoiding the Agency Trap: Caveats for Historians of Children, Youth, and Education,” History of Education 45, 4 (2016): 446-459. (Special Issue on Marginalized Children and Vulnerable Histories).

Claudia Diaz Diaz, and M. Gleason, “The Land is My School: Children, History, and the Environment in the Canadian Province of British Columbia,” Childhood 23, 2 (2016): 272-285.

Penny Clark, Mona Gleason and Stephen Petrina, “Preschools for Science? The Child Study Centre at the University of British Columbia, 1960-1997” History of Education Quarterly 52:1 (February 2012).

Mona Gleason, “In Search of History’s Child,” Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 1, 2 (2009): 125-135.

Book Chapters

Penney Clark, Mona Gleason, and Katie Gemmell, “Scientific Journals of the History of Education – Historical Studies in Education/ Revue d’histoire de l’éducation,” in J. L Hernández Huerta, A. Cagnolati, and A. Payà Rico (Eds). Connecting History of Education: Global Networks of Scientific Communication and Collaboration, Collection Ágora, n. 3, Series Educación (Valencia: Tirant Humanidades Edita, 2022), pp. 223-233.

Penney Clark and Mona Gleason, “Scientific Societies and Associations in the History of Education – Canadian History of Education Association/ Association canadienne d’histoire de l’éducation (CHEA/ ACHÉ),” in J. L Hernández Huerta, A. Cagnolati, and A. Payà Rico (Eds). Connecting History of Education: Global Networks of Scientific Communication and Collaboration, Collection Ágora, n. 3, Series Educación (Valencia: Tirant Humanidades Edita, 2022), pp. 407- 418.

Mona Gleason and Tamara Myers, “Introduction,” in Gleason, M. and Myers, T. (eds). (2017) Bringing Children and Youth into Canadian History: The Difference Kids Make. (Toronto: Oxford University Press). pp. 1-16.

Anika Stafford and Mona Gleason, “Referred for Special Service: Children, Youth, and the Production of Heteronormativity at Alexandra Neighbourhood House in Postwar Vancouver,” in Tracy Penny Light, Wendy Mitchinson and Barbara Brookes, eds., Bodily Subjects: Essays on Gender and Health, 1800-2000 (Kingston-Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014): 227-244.

Mona Gleason and Tamara Myers, “History of Childhood in Canada,” in Heather Montgomery, Ed., Oxford Bibliographies in Childhood Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). Oxford Bibliographies URL:  http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/   (Entry URL: http://bit.ly./1keaowa)

Mona Gleason, “Navigating the Pedagogy of Failure: Medicine, Education and the Disabled Child in English Canada, 1900 to 1945,” in Graham Allan and Nathanel Lauster, eds., The End of Children? Changing Trends in Childbearing and Childhood (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012), pp. 140-160

Mona Gleason and Veronica Strong-Boag, “Community,” in Joseph M. Hawes and N. Ray Hiner, A Cultural History of Childhood and Family, Volume 6, In the Modern Age (Oxford: Berg Publishing, 2010): 39-57.

Mona Gleason, “Lost Voices, Lost Bodies?: Doctors and the Embodiment of Children and Youth in English Canada from 1900 to 1940” in Mona Gleason, Tamara Myers, Leslie Paris, and Veronica Strong-Boag, eds., Lost Kids: Vulnerable Children and Youth in Twentieth-Century Canada and the United States (Vancouver: University of Vancouver Press, 2009).

Mona Gleason, “Size Matters: Medical Experts, Educators, and the Provision of Health Services to Children in Early to Mid-Twentieth Century English Canada” in Cynthia Comacchio, Janet Golden, and George Weisz, eds., Healing the World’s Children: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Child Health in the Twentieth Century, (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008).

Mona Gleason, “Constructing ‘Normal’ : Psychology and the Canadian Family, 1945-1960,” in Deborah Brock, ed., Making Normal – Social Regulation in Canada (Toronto: Thomson Nelson Publishing, 2003): 104–20.

Mona Gleason, “ ‘They Have a Bad Effect’: Crime Comics, Parliament, and the Hegemony of the Middle-Class in Postwar Canada, 1948-1960,” in John Lent, ed., Pulp Demons: International Dimensions of the Postwar Anti-Comics Campaign (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999): 129-154.

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Students Supervised

Examples

PhD Dissertation Supervision

Claudia Diaz Diaz, Places that speak: Diversity and Social Responsibility in Canadian Early Childhood Education (2020)

Joyce Schneider, Indigenist Knowledge Seeking, Making and Activating: Building Community and Academy (co-supervision with J. Hare, 2018)

Anika Stafford, Exploring Everyday Gender Culture in a Vancouver Elementary Classroom (2013)

Andreé Gacoin, Teaching empowerment?: Exploring the social relationships of teaching and learning about gender in the context of sexuality education for HIV prevention in South Africa. (Co-supervision with L. Loutzenheiser, 2015)

 

EdD Dissertation

Iris Berger,  Narration as Action:  The Potential of Pedagogical Narration for Leadership Enactment in Early Childhood Education Contexts (2013)

 

M.A. Thesis

Annie Montague, A Case for Complexity: Contextualizing Places of Learning in Early Childhood Education for Sustainability (2019)

Mariah Franzmann, Critical Readings of BC School Dress Codes (2018)

Anthony Meza-Wilson, Educational Projects for Decolonization: Anti-authoritarian Allyship and Resistance Education in the Americas (2012)

Zahra Rasul, Official Spaces: An examination of the privatization and marginalization of Muslim women’s bodies in Canada post 9/11 (2006)

Jeannie Stubbs, Undressing the Body: A Narrative Inquiry Into Childhood (2006)

Isabeau Iqbal, Mothers’ Experiences of French Mothertongue Maintenance: Towards a Critical Literacy Approach (2003)

Courses taught

EDST 314 Social Issues in Education

EDST 401 Education, School and Social Instititutions

EDST 426 History of Education

EDST 455 History of Childhood and Youth

EDST 502A Growing Up in History: The Meanings of Childhood

EDST 506 Educating the Body: Physicality and Identity in Historical Perspective

EDST 509 Constructing “Citizens:” Canada and the Educational Past

EDST 571 Introduction to Educational Research: Relating Questions, Theories, and Methods (co-taught with Dr. Lesley Andres)

EDST 601 Doctoral Seminar

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