Biography

Catherine Gidney has been Adjunct Research Professor of History at St. Thomas University since 2006. Her research focuses on the intersection of the history of education and other fields such as youth culture, health, religion, physical education and the history of food.

She is the author of three monographs: Captive Audience: How Corporations Invaded Our Schools (Between the Lines, 2019), Tending the Student Body: Youth, Health and the Modern University (University of Toronto Press, 2015), and, A Long Eclipse: The Liberal Protestant Establishment and the Canadian University, 1920-70 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004). The first examines the increasing prevalence of in-school commercialism from the 1920s to the present. The second explores the ways in which universities sought to train and discipline students’ bodies as well as their minds. The third focuses on the secularization of university campuses. 

She is also the co-editor of four books: Feeling Feminism: Activism, Affect, and Canada’s Second Wave (UBC Press, 2022), Symbols of Canada (Between the Lines, 2018), Worth Fighting For: Canada’s Tradition of War Resistance from 1812 to the War on Terror (Between the Lines, 2015), and A Canadian Girl in South Africa: A Teacher’s Experiences in the South African War, 1899-1902 (University of Alberta Press, 2015). 

Dr. Gidney is currently engaged in an SSHRC funded project on the history of the modern mindfulness movement in North America.