New Member Feature: Janis Thiessen
Dr. Janis Thiessen is a Professor in the Department of History at the University of Winnipeg. She/They teach courses in the history of capitalism, food history, Canadian history, and Mennonite history. Publications include Manufacturing Mennonites (University of Toronto Press, 2013), NOT Talking Union (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2016), Snacks (University of Manitoba Press, 2017), Necessary Idealism (Canadian Mennonite University Press, 2018), and mmm...Manitoba (co-authored with Kimberley Moore, University of Manitoba Press, 2024).
Learn more about Janis in the short interview below
CRiCS: What brought you to academia and, more specifically, Cultural Studies?
JT: My first degrees were a B.Sc. and B.Ed. I worked as a high school history and chemistry teacher while studying for an M.A. and Ph.D. in History 1995-2009, after which I took an unpaid leave to do a postdoctoral fellowship at UW. I intended to revise my dissertation for publication as my first book, research my second book, and then return to teaching high school. But this amazing job was advertised so I applied and was fortunate to be hired by the History Department in 2011.
CRiCS: What are your areas of research interest?
JT: My research interests include 20th century Canadian labour and food history, as well as Mennonite history. My methodology of choice is oral history.
CRiCS: Are there areas you would like to study or considered working on in the past, but probably won’t get to? Have you ended up doing research in an area that you didn’t expect to?
JT: I became a food historian by accident: I was trained as a labour historian and have always worked in that field. When I started researching snack food companies and their workers for my book Snacks, I learned that food history was a field with its own growing literature. For me, food history is an interesting way of examining broad and complex historical questions of identity, gender, class, and more.
CRiCS: What research projects are you currently working on or plan to work on in the future?
JT: I am the lead researcher for the Manitoba Food History Project, https://www.manitobafoodhistory.ca. Currently, I am working on the creation of a Food Lab at the University of Winnipeg, where students and I will be able to conduct oral history interviews with members of the public while they cook samples of foods they find meaningful.
CRiCS: Why do you think it’s important to have intellectual community and the opportunities for research collaboration that CRiCS might offer?
JT: I believe that the central role of any university is to be a community of scholars. Unfortunately, the university is subject to capitalist imperatives as much as any other institution. CRiCS is one of the ways in which we can resist that.
CRiCS: What has been one of your most meaningful research encounters?
JT: I came across a small file labelled “Radical Mennonite Union” while doing research for my second book NOT Talking Union. RMU wasn’t actually a labour union, though: it was a group of undergrad students who wanted to unite the ideals of the New Left with those of Anabaptism and, in so doing, reform the Mennonite church. I later wrote about the RMU in a book chapter about underground student newspapers. John Braun, the founder of the RMU, somehow read it and invited me to meet him in Oregon: he recorded two oral history interviews with me and gave me his personal papers for archival deposit. I was delighted to spend time talking with him about social justice and institutional transformation.
CRiCS: Has any particular book/film/work of art/etc. influenced your approach to your academic work and your perspective more generally?
JT: My father was born in 1925, and I grew up hearing his stories of his experiences of the Great Depression, the Second World War, etc. I think that was what first nurtured my interest in oral history as a research methodology. I also have been inspired and influenced by the writings and career of E.P. Thompson, by Marx’s dictum that “philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it”, and by my undergrad professor Mark Gabbert’s advice to “do work you enjoy with people you respect.”
CRiCS: What do you do in your free time (if you have any!)? Do you have any hobbies or pets?
JT: My first dog, Hobsbawm aka Hobs, was featured in UW’s Teacher’s Pet series (https://www.uwinnipeg.ca/teachers-pet/2020-archive.html) shortly before she died. Her successor is named for my favourite Muppet, Rowlf.