Dr. Valerie Korinek's Students

Victoria Lamb Drover
PhD Candidate, Canadian History

B.A. (Honours) Mount Allison University
M.A. (History) University of Saskatchewan

Office Hours: Mondays and Wednesdays from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 a.m. or by appointment at McLean Building, room 105.

Research interests: Post-Confederation Canada, Social History, Media History, History of Health, and Gender History

Dissertation Description: My dissertation explores the dominant social memory of ParticipACTION and how this agency shaped Canadians’ perception of what constitutes a physically fit body, how Canadians react to government involvement in their physical lives, and the role of Cold War sports fanaticism in propelling this 30-year project of ‘biocitizenship’. Using persuasive messaging and a low-commitment sales pitch, ParticipACTION stands as a salient example of the commodification of health and the creation of a ‘healthism’ ideal for Canadians.

Selected Publications:
V. Lamb Drover, “ParticipACTION”, Unforgettable: Extraordinary Items from Saskatchewan’s Archival Collections. University of Regina Press, June 2016.

V. Lamb Drover, “ParticipACTION, Biocitizenship, and the Cold War”, Journal
of the Canadian Historical Association, (Invited Submission and Anticipated), Winter 2015.

V. Lamb Drover, “Presbyterian Professor on the Prairies: President Walter Murray, the co-education debate and the role of personal faith in creating an inclusive university culture, 1907–1921.”, Journal of Religious History. (Accepted and in final revisions).

V. Lamb Drover, invited review of A Handbook for History Teachers, by James A. Duthie, Education Matters, 1:1 (2013) 33-34.

Lucie Bettez, Catherine C. Cole, Victoria Lamb Drover, Raymond Glenn Elliott, Ian McDonald, Katherine Milliken, Murray Peterson, Cathy Roy, Keith B. Smith, Piece by Piece: The GWG Story, Virtual Museum Project, Royal Alberta Museum, 2009.


V. Lamb, “‘More than Just a Building’: The mythology of Mount Allison and its evolving architectural history”, We were here: exploratory essays on women’s history at Mount Allison University, Marie Hammond Callaghan ed., Mount Allison University, 2006.

Select Conference Presentations:
V. Lamb Drover, “ParticipACTION, Biocitizenship, and the Cold War”,
Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting/Congress 2014, Brock University, 26-28 May, 2014

V. Lamb Drover, “ParticipACTION: Rural and urban representation using Historical GIS mapping of Social Marketing in Canada’s New Mass Media (1971-1976).”
Poster Session, Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting/Congress 2013, University of Victoria, 2-5 June, 2013.

V. Lamb Drover, “‘Branding, Educating, and Motivating’: ParticipACTION, Social Marketing, and a Created Crisis of National Health, (1971-2001).”
Canadian Society for the History of Medicine Annual Meeting/Congress 2013, University of Victoria, 1-3 June, 2013.

V. Lamb Drover,  “‘And what is the measurement of a man?’: ParticipACTION and changing the image of health. (1971-2001).”
Keewatin Country Graduate Student History Conference, Jointly held by the Universities of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Winnipeg, 25-26 April, 2013.

V. Lamb Drover, “The Second Foundational Pillar: Presbyterianism, The Denominational Schooling Debate, and the Establishment of the University of Saskatchewan.”
Directions West, The third biennial Western Canadian Studies Conference, University of Calgary, 21-23 June, 2013.

V. Lamb Drover, “ParticipACTION: A media history of cultural impact”,
Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting/Congress 2012, Wilfrid Laurier University/University of Waterloo, 28-30 May, 2012.

Courses Taught:
HIST 152.3 Post-Confederation Canada

Areas of Study: Canada, Saskatchewan.

<Frances Reilly
PhD Candidate, Canadian History
PhD Project: Working Title: “Policing and Prescribing Normalcy: Sexual and Political Contagion in the North American Cold War Culture of Surveillance”

Fields of Expertise: Canada; Gender and Sexuality; Science, Technology, and Medicine; Cold War; Surveillance; Military; Anxiety; Psychology.

This dissertation discusses the ways in which the Cold War threat was defined as disease. Focusing on the fear of an invisible menace that permeated Cold War rhetoric and culture, this project looks at how homosexuality and communism were both profiled as threats to the health of the nation; homosexuality was defined as a mental illness while communism was viewed as a contaminating ideology that needed to be contained.

This project combines the historical methodologies of the history of medicine, surveillance, and sexuality to illuminate the “atomization” of global fears and concerns to the level of the individual.

MA Project, University of Alberta: “The Consumption of Science: Canadian Atomic Culture and the Cold War”

This thesis addresses the history of Canadian civil defence and the existence of atomic culture. It explores the conflicting enthusiasms and fears of science during the 1950s and 1960s, demonstrating the divided cultures of optimism and anxiety that existed in North America during the early Cold War. This is a history of culture and of science and technology in Cold War Canada, an era that is typically studied in terms of politics and military.

Academic Papers:
“Operation ‘Lifesaver’: Canadian Atomic Culture and Cold War Civil Defence,” Past Imperfect, University of Alberta (2009): 46-85

Classes Taught:
Canad Before 1867, HIST 255, Department of History, University of Saskatchewan
Canada Before 1867, HIST 151, Department of History, University of Saskatchewan
Canada Since 1867, HIST 152, Department of History, University of Saskatchewan

Select Conference Presentations:
“Cold War Paradigms and Self-Surveillance at the Toronto Psychiatric Hospital,”
Canadian Historical Association, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Brock University, St. Catherines, May 26, 2014.

“Sexual Psychiatry and Cold War Paradigms,”
Canadian Society for the History of Medicine, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Brock University, St. Catherines, May 25, 2014.
Winner of the H. N. Segall Prize for Best Student Paper

“Operation Profunc and Cold War Surveillance on the Prairies,”
Directions West, University of Calgary, June 23, 2012.

“Homosexuality and the Cold War Metaphor of Disease,” We Demand History/Sex/Activism, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, June 23, 2012.

“Challenging Cold War Divisions: Canadian Physicians and the Nuclear Bomb,”
Canadian Society for the History of Medicine/Canadian Association for the History of Nursing, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences Carleton University, Ottawa, May 28, 2009.

Email: f.reilly@usask.ca