Teaching
My courses look at the history of Canada, from time immemorial to the present. We work directly with historical materials and learn how to analyze them in new ways. Recently my students have studied the Leader-Post newspaper archives and the University of Regina Archives to conduct original research on the history of Saskatchewan. Our methods change from course to course, but throughout, students learn how to ask their own questions about the past and how to find the answers.
We approach Canada as a political entity situated on Indigenous land, and we ask how that entity came into being. In my entry-level courses, students learn the history of North America from its beginnings, inquiring into the political, legal, social, and economic factors that have shaped our worlds. As students advance, we spend more time on specialized topics, including women and gender, the rise of capitalism, sovereignty and self-determination, and Canada in the world.
Honours, MA, and PhD Supervision
I supervise Honours, MA, and PhD students. Projects can take up any of the questions my courses and publications investigate, but we can also go beyond them. Recently my graduate students have looked at histories of women on the prairies, the emergence of home economics as a discipline, and wartime rationing during the Second World War. Many of my students work with physical archival collections in the prairie provinces, as well as with digital collections across Canada and internationally. Since September 2026 I have also been an external member of the School of Graduate Studies at the University of Lethbridge. If you have an idea for a project that starts with a person, an organization, an event, or an artifact, please be in touch.
Canadian Historical Association Teaching Prize
Dr. Donica Belisle’s innovative approach to teaching Canadian history at the University of Regina features a range of assignments across different year levels. She thoughtfully designed scaffolding of assignments in the research process, which not only supports student success at every step, but also encourages them to produce original historical work. Dr. Belisle’s use of primary sources encourages her students to consider the ethical implications of their work, to think critically about the past and its sources, and understand themselves as part of the historical community.
Selection Committee, Canadian Historical Association Teaching Prize, 2025
Writing About Teaching
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2021Active History and the Canadian Historical Association. 19 January 2021. Open Access
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2021Active History and the Canadian Historical Association. 26 January 2021. Open Access
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2021Active History and the Canadian Historical Association. 2 February 2021. Open Access
Also available in French from the Société historique du Canada.
Graduate Courses (Selected)
Theories of History
A seminar course examining the variety of approaches to the study of history from 1900 to the present, including Marxism, the Annales School, feminist theory, and post-modernism. Students work directly with primary documents, including unpublished diaries and historical catalogues, to grapple with questions of preservation, interpretation, and historical meaning.
Doing Women’s and Gender History
Students learn how to “do” women’s and gender history by studying current historiographical debates and applying advanced historical methods. Focus on feminist theories of history and building intersectional understandings of past identities, struggles, and contributions.
Undergraduate Courses (Selected)
Issues in Canadian History
An introduction to Canadian history through its methods and sources. Students work with petitions, oral history films, and archival documents to develop their own historical questions.
Canada From World War II to the Present
Students trace the history of the welfare state, Indigenous rights, Quebec sovereignty, and Canadian foreign policy from 1939 to the present, working with government records, newspaper archives, and oral histories.
Consumer Culture and Canadian Identity
This course uses the archives behind my research on department stores and sugar marketing. Students read advertisements, catalogues, and corporate records as evidence of how retailers sold a national identity along with their goods.
Women in Canadian History
Students work with petitions, personal letters, and organizational records to study the lives of women who were often excluded from standard historical accounts, and to build their own historical arguments about gender and power.
Food in Canadian History
The history of food production, distribution, and consumption in Canada, from colonization to the present. Students examine how colonization affected Indigenous foodways, what immigrants brought to Canadian tables, and how the global sugar trade shaped what Canadians eat today.