Dr Mairi Cowan
Dr Mairi Cowan is a Professor in the Department of Historical Studies, University of Toronto. Her main areas of research are medieval and early modern Scotland, colonial North America (especially New France), and the teaching and learning of history.
Mairi’s historical research explores questions of religion, belonging, and society on both sides of the Atlantic. Her most recent book, The Possession of Barbe Hallay: Diabolical Arts and Daily Life in Early Canada is a microhistory of bewitchment and dark arts in seventeenth-century New France. She has also written about how local tales of St Mungo interfered with an imported hagiographer’s understanding of theology in twelfth-century Glasgow; what can be known about experiences of childhood in the court of James IV, King of Scots; connections between social discipline and Catholic Reformation in Scottish towns; the limits of colonial efforts to ‘Frenchify’ Indigenous people in New France; and what Jesuit missionaries believed about demons in North America. She was thrilled to identify a Scottish nun in seventeenth-century Québec, which turned into a research project bridging Scotland and New France, and now she has started to think more about what a ‘Scottish’ identity might have meant in early modern North America.
At the centre of Mairi’s teaching is work with students to discover, study, and engage with the human past in a historically responsible way. Her publications in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning include articles examining how to make feedback more helpful for students’ writing; the benefits and drawbacks of flexible assessment; the importance of teaching academic integrity as good historical practice; and the impact of interdisciplinary co-teaching on both students and instructors. Mairi is the recipient of several teaching awards, including the E.A. Robinson Teaching Excellence Award, which recognizes excellence in undergraduate teaching at the University of Toronto Mississauga; the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations Teaching Award, which is given to Ontario’s most outstanding university teachers; the Canadian Historical Association’s Excellence in Teaching with Primary Sources Award; and the D2L Innovation in Teaching and Learning Award.