Teaching
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 Students work directly with primary documents, including unpublished diaries and historical catalogues, to grapple with questions of preservation, interpretation, and historical meaning.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 draws on the same archival material that informs my research on department stores and sugar marketing, asking students to read advertisements, catalogues, and corporate records as historical evidence of how retail and consumption intersected with questions of national belonging.
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.