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James Opp

Professor – Cultural history of modern Canada; photography and visual culture; history of the body and gender; history of archives; Prairie Canada

• B.A. (Augustana/Alberta), M.A. (Calgary), Ph.D. (�Ӱ�ԭ��)
• Email James Opp

Research Interests

• Material histories of photography
• Corporate advertising, commercial photography, and visual culture
• History of the archive
• Place, Memory, Storytelling
• Cultural Histories of the 1980s
• Prairie Canada
• Religion, gender and the body in 19-20th C Canada

Awards

2016 �Ӱ�ԭ�� University Building Bridges Award
2015 �Ӱ�ԭ�� University Graduate Student Mentor Award
2013 Public History Prize, Canadian Historical Association (for the Rideau Timescapes App)
2012 �Ӱ�ԭ�� University Research Award
2010 Distinguished Alumnus Award, Augustana Faculty of the University of Alberta
2009 �Ӱ�ԭ�� Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Research Award
2008 Hugh A. Taylor Prize, Association of Canadian Archivists
2007 �Ӱ�ԭ�� University Teaching Achievement Award
2006 Jason A. Hannah Medal, Royal Society of Canada

Select Publications

“Still Photographs, Publicity, and the Making of Cecil B. DeMille’s Ten Commandments (1956),”&�Բ�����;Film History: An International Journal 34.4 (2022): 1-29.

“Placing the Photograph: Digital Composite Images and the Performance of Place,” in David Dean, ed. Companion to Public History (Wiley, 2018), 333-347.

“Branding the Bay/la Baie: Corporate Identity, the Hudson’s Bay Company, and the Burden of History in the 1960s,” Canadian Historical Review 96, 2 (June 2015): 223-256.

“Public history and the fragments of place: archaeology, history and heritage site development in southern Alberta,” Rethinking History 15, 2 (June 2011): 241-266.

“Picturing Communism: Yousuf Karsh, Canadair, and Cold War Advertising,” The Cultural Work of Photography in Canada, ed. Carol Payne and Andrea Kunard (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011).

(co-edited with John C. Walsh) Placing Memory and Remembering Place in Canada. UBCPress, 2010.

(co-edited with John C. Walsh) Home, Work, and Play: Situating Canadian Social History. 2nd ed. Oxford, 2006, 2010.

(co-authored with Matt Dyce), “Visualizing Space, Race, and History in the North: Photographic Narratives of the Athabasca-Mackenzie River Basin,” in The West and Beyond, ed. Alvin Finkel, Sarah Carter, and Peter Fortna. Athabasca University Press, 2010.

“The Colonial Legacies of the Digital Archive: the Arnold Lupson Photographic Collection,” Archivaria (Special issue on photographs and archives) 65 (2008), 3-19.

The Lord for the Body: Religion, Medicine and Protestant Faith Healing in Canada, 1880-1930. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005.

Recent Graduate Supervisions

Doctoral

Nicholas Hrynyk, “’Pin the Macho on the Man,’: Mediations of Gay Male Masculinity in The Body Politic, 1971-1987.” Ph.D., 2018. (co-supervised)

Sara Spike, “Modern Eyes: A Cultural History of Vision in Rural Nova Scotia, 1880–1910,” Ph.D., 2016. Awarded �Ӱ�ԭ�� University Senate Medal.

Susan L. Joudrey, “Hidden Authority, Public Display: Representations of the First Nations Peoples at the Calgary Stampede, 1912-1970,” Ph.D., 2013.

Masters

Holly Benison, “The Backwoods Kitchen: An Exploration of 19^th Century Canadian Culinary History on YouTube,” Masters Research Essay in Public History, April 2023. (co-supervised)

Gureena Saran, “Motherland – Mother Hand: Exploring Identity, Community and the Collaborative Artistry of South Asian Women in Abbotsford, British Columbia,” Masters Research Essay in Public History, August 2023. (co-supervised)

Kirstan Schamuhn, “Active Participants or Passive Recipients: The Role of Collections Policies in Decolonizing Canadian Museums,” Masters Research Essay in Public History, April 2023. (co-supervised)

Isabella Redgate, “Does my DNA know something that I don’t? A Reflective Study of the Direct to Consumer DNA Testing Kit Process,” Masters Research Essay in Public History, August 2021.

Arden Hody, “Resurrecting Object Potentialities: Recontextualizing the Display of Mortuary Objects at the Royal Ontario Museum,” MA Research Essay in Public History, June 2021.