{"id":971,"date":"2015-03-19T16:01:52","date_gmt":"2015-03-19T20:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carleton.ca\/socanth\/?post_type=cu_people&p=971"},"modified":"2025-06-10T09:23:35","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T13:23:35","slug":"curtis-bruce","status":"publish","type":"cu_people","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/socanth\/people\/curtis-bruce\/","title":{"rendered":"Bruce Curtis"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \n \n \n <\/h1>\n\n \n <\/header>\n\n\n\n\n\n

About<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much of my work concerns the historical sociology of state formation. My doctoral work criticized Marxist reproduction analyses of the development of public education through comparative historical investigation. Involvement in the debate around domestic labour under capitalism, led me to think about the historical sociology of household formation and the relations between the domestic domain and the political. Historians criticized my early historical sociology as based on secondary sources (their own work!), which led me to the archive, and which gave me an enduring case of what Arlette Farge called \u2018le gout de l\u2019archive.\u2019 My understanding of state paper collections was shaped by engagement with the \u2018Foucault wave,\u2019 with the work of Norbert Elias, and by Corrigan and Sayer\u2019s analysis of state formation as cultural revolution. Together with the sociology of Marx, Simmel and Bourdieu, this mix encouraged attention to the emergence, stabilization, and dominance or disappearance of social forms, figurations, and practices. My most marked post-2000 \u2018reading experiences\u2019 have been with Kant, Gadamer, the proto-sociology of the Enlightenment, French political theory, and the historical sociology of Arpad Szakolczai.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have always been fascinated by the counter-intuitive, by what \u2018doesn\u2019t fit,\u2019 by problematic instances of what Pierre Bourdieu called \u2018category slippage\u2019 (which he saw as the \u2018sociologist\u2019s bread and butter\u2019) and by the development of systems of classification and categorization. This has led to work, influenced by social studies of science and actor-network theory, on the history of weights and measures; the making of the census and of census categories; the politics of demography; and cases of boundary crossing, from so-called blues singers changing their names to record gospel music, to the configuration of modern consumers by new information technologies, and the age-governance of sexuality. The same interest is present in work I have done in the historical sociology of the governmental instrument of \u2018inspection,\u2019 on sanitary medicine, the nineteenth century cholera, and attempts to construct systems of civil registration and vital statistics. I also do work on power and sexuality, historically in terms of the government of sex at school, in the current period in relation to the \u2018fellatio epidemic\u2019 in middle school. I am interested in promoting a \u2018reflexive\u2019 sociology that interrogates the analytic categories it employs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have two ongoing research projects:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One is on the historical sociology of recorded African-American song, roughly from 1890 to 1945, with a special focus on the \u2018race records\u2019 of the period 1920-1943. Race records have become a common source for scholars across disciplines writing about the most diverse subjects, from gendered relations of sex and power, through the political role of the \u2018black church\u2019 to economic and ecological history. My main focus is the politics of ribaldry, parody and satire on record. There is a data set of something like 11,000 recordings and a huge secondary literature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With Mich\u00e8le Martin, I have been tussling with issues at the intersection of the epistemology of testimony, narratology, the sociological uses of story-telling, and matters of historical method. Our empirical corpus is the content of 800-odd \u2018voluntary examinations\u2019 to which suspected participants in the Lower Canadian Rebellions were subjected in 1837-9. These are supplemented by transcriptions of evidence at subsequent courts martial (where those first interrogated often changed their stories), contemporary press accounts and imperial and colonial state papers and correspondence. The various practices of truth-making and truth-telling we encounter set up productive tensions between historical sociologists\u2019 need for veracity in evidence, and the interest-bound figuration of events and statements about events by various actors. There is an economy and politics of truth-making in which the truthfulness of statements determines neither their political consequences nor the fate of truth-tellers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recent Courses Taught:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Graduate:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Political Sociology (State Formation); Contemporary Social Theory (The Body in Social Theory); Classical Social Theory (Marx\u2019s Capital); Recurring Debates in Social Thought (The MA student primer course); The PhD Seminar. Undergraduate: The Social Construction of Time; Information Systems and Social Power; Contemporary Theoretical Sociology; The Development of Sociological and Anthropological Thought; Advanced Qualitative Methods (focus on historical sociology). Georg Simmel and After.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recent Graduate Supervisions:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ph.D.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phillip Primeau, “The Business of Resilience: Philanthropy, Partnerships, and Politics.\u201d Ph.D. Sociology, 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aaron Klassen, \u201cRob \u2018Fresh I.E.\u2019 Wilson: A Socio-analysis of Musical Self-Transformation.\u201d Ph.D. Sociology, 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daniel Braun, \u2018The Aesthetic Intensity of Superheroes: An autoethnographic interpretation of contemporary superhero popularity,’ Ph.D., Sociology, (co-supervision with M. White), 2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christian Caron, \u2018 Reflexivity at Work: Making Sense of Mannheim’s, Garfinkel’s, Gouldner’s and Bourdieu’s Sociology,’ Ph.D., Sociology, 2013 Senate Medal Nominee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lisa Smith, \u2018Girls on the Pill: Sex, Health and Managing the Self.’ Ph.D., Sociology, 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Susan Salhany, \u2018”Marching Must be Dignified”: The Government of Parades in Northern Ireland.” Ph.D., Sociology, 2013 Senate Medal Nominee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fauzia Gardezi, \u2018From Social Reform to Neoliberalism: Islamization, State Formation and Gender Formation in Pakistan, 1850-1988.’ Ph.D., Sociology, 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Darryl Leroux, \u201cCommemorating Quebec: Race, Nation, Memory.\u201d (co-supervision with Xiaobei Chen), Ph.D., Sociology, 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Serena Petrella, \u201cErotic Civility: Normative Monogamy as a Technology of Governance and Self-governance in North America, 1850 to the present.\u201d (co supervision with Alan Hunt), Ph.D., Sociology, 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Erin Connell, \u201cExpelling Pleasure? School-Based Sex Education and the Sexual Regulation of Youth,\u201d Ph.D., Sociology, 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clara Morgan, \u2018OECD Programme for International Student Assessment: Unraveling a Knowledge Network,\u2019 Ph.D. Public Administration, 2007, (co-supervision with Rianne Mahon).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robyn Smith, \u2018Exploring the \u201cAs Yet Unknown\u201d in Historical Epistemology, Experimental Systems and Contemporary Nutrition,\u2019 Ph.D. Sociology, 2007. Senate Dissertation Medalist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christopher John Powell, \u2018Civilization and Genocide\u2019, Ph.D., Sociology, 2004.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mythili Rajiva, \u2018Racing Through Adolescence: Becoming and Belonging in the Narratives of Second Generation South Asian Girls\u2019, Ph.D., Sociology, 2004.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christine Gervais, \u2018Governing Crime through Prevention in late Twentieth Century Canada,\u2019 Ph.D., Sociology, 2002.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emma Whelan, \u2018\u201dWho\u2019s the doctor here anyway?\u201d Boundary Maintenance, Transgression and the Lay_Expert Divide in Knowledge of Endometriosis,\u2019 Ph.D., Sociology, 2000. Senate Dissertation Medalist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Driscoll, Declan, “Transformations in the Ottawa Taxi Industry: A Sociological Perspective”, M.A. Sociology, 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oliver Crosby, \u201cIn Pursuit of Victory: League of Legends and a Project of the Self\u201d MA Sociology \u2013Specialization in Digital Humanities, 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phillip Primeau, \u2018Crafting the Machinery of Municipal Rule: The Board of Police in Nineteenth Century Brockville, Upper Canada’, M.A., Sociology, 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrea Subissati, \u201cSociology of the Living Dead,\u201d M.A. Sociology, 2008<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Todd Culbert, \u2018Psychotherapeutic Drug Use and Technologies of the Self: A Study of the Intersection of Bio_Power and Nihilism\u2019, M.A., Political Economy, 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chris Peters, \u201cHate Expectations’: A Narrative of the Conceptualization of Criminal Hatred in Canada,\u2019 M.A. Sociology, 2004.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mike Graydon, \u2018\u201dNo Need to Wrap it\u201d: An Exploration of Gift Giver\/Bugchaser Newsgroups, Gift Theory, and the Transmission of HIV\/AIDS,\u2019 M.A., Sociology, 2003.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Danny Braun, \u2018The Construction of Destruction: An Investigation into the Social Construction of Disasters,\u2019 M.A. Sociology, 2003.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adele Mugford, \u2018Restoring Corporate Profitability by Reducing Public Expenditure: The Political Economy of Public Education Reform in Ontario under the Harris Government,\u2019 M.A., Political Economy, 2002.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robyn Smith, \u2018Craving Ethics: Considering Possibilities for Critical Ontology within Modern Dietary Aesthetic Practices,\u2019 M. A. (co_supervisor), Sociology, 2002.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna Blaszcysnka, \u2018As Canadian as Possible: \u201cCanada First\u201d and the Shifting Rhetoric of Canadian National Identity,\u2019 M.A., Anthropology (co_supervisor), 2001.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recent Publications<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beryl on the Margins: A Memoir of Teaching “Under Disadvantages”<\/a>, Historical Studies in Education\/Revue d’histoire de l’\u00e9ducation <\/em>35 (2): 69-90.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Eyesight to the blind\u2019: Secular and religious dialogue in the \u2018devil’s music\u2019<\/a>. Journal of Historical Sociology<\/em>, 35( 4), 445\u2013 461. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“‘Daddy Callin’ Mamas’ and ‘Jelly Beans’: Sex work and ribaldry in the blues archive”<\/a> Popular Music (pre-print version)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Selective Tradition and Structure of Feeling in the 2008 Presidential Election: A Genealogy of ‘Yes We Can Can'”<\/a> Music & Politics 14<\/em>(1) (2020), 1-27.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“What\u2019s Left after the Breakup of the CPGB?\u201d in Challenging the Right, Augmenting the Left: Recasting Leftist Imagination Halifax and Winnipeg<\/em>, Fernwood Books, 117-27, with Justin Paulson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Colonization, Education and the Formation of Moral Character: Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s a Letter from Sydney<\/a>” Historical Studies in Education\/Revue d’histoire de l’\u00e9ducation 31<\/em> (2019), 21-47.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2017<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Pastoral power, sovereignty and class: Church, tithe and simony in Quebec<\/a>” Critical Research in Religion 5<\/em> (2017), 151-169.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2016<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The Missing Memory of Canadian Sociology: Reflexive Government and the Social Science,” Canadian Review of Sociology 53<\/em>(2):1-23.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Can Pierre Bourdieu give us the blues?” in P. Albanese and L. Tepperman, eds., Reading Sociology<\/em> (Toronto: Oxford University Press).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Priority, politics and pedagogical science. Part I: the mental steam-engine<\/a>” Paedagogica Historica 52<\/em> (2016), 661-673.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Priority, politics and pedagogical science. Part II: the priority dispute and a standard model of pedagogy<\/a>” Paedagogica Historica 52<\/em> (2016), 674-688.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2015<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“How Much and How not to Explain: Gestural Referencing and Conceptual Misappropriations” Canadian Journal of Sociology\/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie 40<\/em>(2):223-40.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“La commission d’enqu\u00eate comme r\u00e9flexivit\u00e9 gouvernementale” Bulletin d\u2019histoire politique, 23<\/em>(3): 21-38.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Metadata, Data Provenance, and Reflexivity: Reflections on Method” Encounters in Education 15<\/em>, November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Debate on the Teaching of History: Historical Epistemology Meets Nationalist Narrative” Historical Studies in Education\/Revue d’histoire de l’\u00e9ducation, 25<\/em>(2):115-28.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Joseph-Charles Tach\u00e9 et la science de l’inventaire social au Qu\u00e9bec” in Joseph-Charles Tach\u00e9, Polygraphe. Ed. Claude La Charit\u00e9 and Julien Goyette Qu\u00e9bec: PUQ<\/em>: 257-86.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2012<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ruling by Schooling Quebec: Conquest to Liberal Governmentality. An Historical Sociology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2011<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy brothers are all learnt out and my sons soon will be\u201d: Public Debate over Schooling in Quebec, 1814-23? History of Education, 40<\/em>(5): 615-24.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2008<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Most Splendid Pageant Ever Seen\u201d: Grandeur, Condescension, and the Domestic in Lord Durham\u2019s Political Theatre\u2019, Canadian Historical Review 89<\/em>(1): 55-88<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018\u201dI can tell by the way you smell\u201d: Odour, Dietetics, and Social Theory” Senses & Society 3<\/em>(1): 5-22<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“On Distributed Literacy: Textually Mediated Social Relations in a Colonial Context” Paedagogica Historica 8<\/em>.1-2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After \u201cCanada\u201d: Liberalisms, Social Theory and Historical Analysis\u2019 Liberalism and Hegemony: Debating the Canadian Liberal Revolution. Eds. M. Ducharme and J.-F. Constant. Toronto: University of Toronto Press: 176-200.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018On the local construction of statistical knowledge: Making up the 1861 census of the Canadas\u2019, in Twenty Years of the Journal of Historical Sociology: Volume 2: Challenging the Field. Eds. Yoke-Sum Wong and Derek Sayer. Oxford: Blackwell:253-72.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2007<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018The Fellatio \u201cEpidemic\u201d: Age Relations and Access to the Erotic Arts.\u2019 Sexualities 10 (1): 1-19, with Alan Hunt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Introduction. Beyond Signature Literacy: New Research Directions\/Au-del de la signature: Nouvelles recherches en alphab\u00e9tisme.\u2019 Historical Studies in Education\/Revue d\u2019histoire de l\u2019\u00e9ducation 19(2):1-11.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Foucault: A Review Essay\u2019 \u2014Eric Paris, Foucault 2.0 and Pierre Bourdieu, Esquisse pour une auto-analyse. Canadian Journal of Sociology 32.3: 399-406.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRealism and Hermeneutics. Critical Reflections on the Minimalist Realism of Gadamer\u2019s Truth and Method\u201d. with Howie Chodos, Alan Hunt and John Manwaring. Critical Realism and the Social Sciences. ed. John Frauley and Frank Pearce (Toronto: University of Toronto Press): 296-315.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Comment \u00e9tudier l\u2019\u00c9tat?\u2019 Bulletin d\u2019histoire politique 15(3): 103-7.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMonitorial Schooling, \u2018Common Christianity\u2019 and Politics: a Trans-Atlantic Controversy\u201d Transatlantic Subjects: Ideas, Institutions, and Social Experience in Post-Revolutionary British North America Ed. Nancy Christie (Toronto: Oxford University Press):252-81 .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2006<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Tocqueville and Lower Canadian Educational Networks.\u2019 Encounters in Education 7 (fall):113-29.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018A Genealogy of the Genital Kiss: Oral Sex in the Twentieth Century.\u2019 Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality 15 (2): 69-84, with Alan Hunt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018The Politics of Demography,\u2019 in R.E. Goodwin and Charles Tilly, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 1066-1090.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Y-a-t-il une histoire de la statistique de l\u2019\u00e9ducation au bas-Canada?\u2019 in Brigitte Caulier et Th\u00e9r se Hamel, eds., L\u2019\u00e9cole en chiffres? R\u00e9flexions sur les statistiques scolaires au Qu\u00e9bec, XIXe-XXe si cles. (Qu\u00e9bec: Presses de l\u2019Universit\u00e9 Laval): 5-11; 43-51.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Textual Economies and the Presentation of Statistical Material: Charts, Tables and Texts in 19th Century Public Education.\u2019 Scientia Canadensis 30 (1):3-29.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Special Issues:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Editor, \u2018Beyond Signature Literacy: New Directions in Research\u2019, Historical Studies in Education (2007)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Editor, \u2018Surveying the Social: Techniques, Practices, Power\u2019, Histoire sociale\/Social History (2002)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":973,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"cu_people_first_name":"Bruce","cu_people_last_name":"Curtis","cu_people_initials":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_people_type":[41],"cu_people_expertise":[],"class_list":["post-971","cu_people","type-cu_people","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_people_type-professors-emereti"],"acf":{"cu_people_job_title":"Professor Emeritus","cu_people_degree":"PhD (Toronto), FRHistS, FRSC","cu_building":false,"cu_people_office_num":"","cu_people_pronoun":"none","cu_people_designation":"","cu_people_email":"bruce.curtis@carleton.ca","cu_people_phone":"","cu_people_phone_ext":"","cu_people_linkedin":"","cu_people_bluesky":"","cu_people_twitter":"","cu_people_instagram":"","cu_people_facebook":"","cu_people_website":"","cu_people_orcid":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/socanth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people\/971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/socanth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/socanth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_people"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/socanth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/socanth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people\/971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29199,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/socanth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people\/971\/revisions\/29199"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/socanth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/socanth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_people_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/socanth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people_type?post=971"},{"taxonomy":"cu_people_expertise","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/socanth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people_expertise?post=971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}