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Kenneth L. Draper, PhD

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  • Ken Draper
Professor of History
Director of Planning and Assessment
Office Location
L2085
Phone number
(403) 410-2916
Email Address

Biography

My writing and research has focused on understanding the place of religion in late 19th- and early 20th-century Canada. This is a period which has been characterized as both a period of religious doubt and decline and a period of religious revival and growth. What seems to be happening is a reorientation of the place of religion from a vector of public identity to that of individual and private self-identity. Thus, in public, religious discourse becomes muted, while lay-led movements and practices develop wide followings that move outside of historic denominational boundaries. This leads to a more individualized, privatized experience of religion. My current interests are in exploring Michel Foucault's thinking on the subject, especially in reference to governmentality and technologies of the self, as an approach to the intersection of evangelical Christianity and the development of Canada as a liberal state in the 20th century.

CURRENT RESEARCH

Christian and Missionary Alliance Oral History Project

Production of lay curriculum for the Alliance World Fellowship

SCHOLARLY & PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITY

Professional Affiliations

Canadian Historical Association

Conference on Faith and History

 
Senior Administrative Appointments

Acting Vice President for Academic Affairs, Winter 2012

Interim Dean of Arts and Science, 2012-2013

Director, Office of Planning and Assessment

RECENT CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

“Becoming Christian in History Class.” Presentation at the Conference on Faith and History, George Fox University, Newberg, OR, October 7, 2010.

“Denominational History in a Post-Denominational Age.” Presentation at the Conference on Faith and History, George Fox University, Newberg, OR, October 7, 2010.

Education

PhD (McMaster University)
MA (McMaster University)
BA (Honours) (Queen's University)

Select Publications

"Finishing Badly: Religion, authority and clergy in late-Victorian London, Ontario," in Michael Gauvreau and Ollivier Hubert, Churches and Social Order in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Canada (Montreal/Kingston: McGill/Queen's University Press, 2006)
"A People's Religion: P.W. Philpott and the Hamilton Christian Workers' Church," Histoire sociale / Social History 36 (no. 71): 99-121, May 2003.
"Redemptive homes - Redeeming Choices: Saving the Social in Late-Victorian London, Ontario," in Nancy Christie, Households of Faith: Family, Gender, and Community in Canada, 1760-1969 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill/Queen's University Press, 2002).