Investigating the Land and Property History of Settler Universities

This ls a free lecture, but registration is required. 

Mariana Valverde and Brian Gettler (University of Toronto Mississauga) will present some of the research that has been done on the University of Toronto as part of a Canada-wide project on the land endowments of many of Canada’s universities. Mariana Valverde will present information on U of T’s original endowment lands, from the point of view of settler colonialism and unjust enrichment, while Brian Gettler will speak about the settler colonial land-grab history of Peel County and UTM.

About the Presenters

Mariana Valverde is a Professor at the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies. Her fields of study are the legal regulation of sexuality, sociolegal theory, historical sociology, and urban governance and law. Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2006, she has coedited four anthologies and published over 45 articles, mostly sole-authored, in journals ranging from Law and Society Review to Victorian Studies. She has been a distinguished visitor in a wide range of institutions including the University of Sydney law school, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, and the Australian National University. In 2016 she received the Kalven prize of the Law and Society Association, for her longstanding contribution to empirical socio-legal scholarship. Mariana has also served the international socio-legal community in various capacities including two terms as trustee of the Law and Society Association, one term as president of the Canadian Law and Society Association and six years as chief editor of the association’s journal.

In addition to scholarly publishing, Mariana also writes for magazines, newspapers, and online forums, mostly on public-private infrastructure partnerships but occasionally on other topics; she has recently published in The Conversation (Canadian version) and in Spacing magazine.

Brian Gettler is an Associate Professor of Historical Studies at the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM). His research focuses on the political, economic, and social history of colonialism in Quebec and Canada. He has published articles in several edited collections and academic journals, including the Canadian Historical Review, Histoire sociale / Social History, and the Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française. Gettler’s book, Colonialism’s Currency: Money, State, and First Nations in Canada, 1820-1950, analyzes the distinct experiences of three First Nations alongside the monetary dimensions of British and Canadian Indian policy and corporate policy in the fur trade. Rather than focusing on the perhaps obvious ways in which wealth shaped politics, it concentrates on money as both a symbol around which discourses of appropriate behaviour were articulated and as a concrete tool in the governance of peoples and lands. His current research explores public finance and Crown-First Nations fiscal relations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

A light lunch will be served at 12:00pm in the Centre Lounge, 2nd floor of the Canadiana Gallery. 

Please note that the location does not have a working elevator. If you are a person with a disability and require accommodation, please contact us at crimsl.communications@utoronto.ca and we will do our best to make appropriate arrangements.