[email protected]
705-949-2301, ext. 4334

Dr. Warren Johnston

Professor of History

Educational Background

• PhD, University of Cambridge
• MA, University of Saskatchewan
• BA, University of Saskatchewan

Biographical Background

I was born and raised in Saskatchewan, and from an early age remember having a fascination for history.  Growing up, I would spend hours in the local public library scouring the shelves for books that interested me.  At that time, my first area of interest was World War II, especially military aviation; I think it was from this topic that my fascination with British history and culture started.  I later began to read historical fiction and was drawn to the period of political, social, and religious crisis in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. That attraction has remained with me until today.

After completing my undergraduate and initial postgraduate education at the University of Saskatchewan, I enrolled in a PhD programme at the University of Cambridge in England.  I completed my doctorate in early modern British history at Cambridge in 2000, and then returned to the University of Saskatchewan where I taught as a sessional lecturer in the History Department for seven years.  In 2007, I was offered a permanent position in the Department of History and Philosophy at Algoma University. I quickly discovered the warm, friendly, and encouraging academic atmosphere that exists in the classrooms at Algoma, and I enjoy my teaching here very much.

Areas of Teaching and Research Interest

I am very much interested in the relationship between the prominent ideas in a society and the way they interacted with, and influenced, political, cultural, and social developments. My past research looked at beliefs about the end of the world and the impact they had on later seventeenth-century Britain.  My current projects examine the ideas that were being spread from church pulpits in Britain from the mid seventeenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century, analyzing how these views contributed to the development of British culture, politics, and identity during this period.

I teach a wide range of courses on British, European, and world history.  I have recently created and taught courses on the portrayal of historical events and periods on film and television; I have also developed a course on the history of witches and the witch-hunts in early modern Europe.  I regularly teach courses on the advance of scientific ideas in Europe, as well as on the political enlightenment that takes place from the early 1500s to the end of the 1700s. I also love teaching first-year surveys on the history of western civilization, where I am fortunate to be able to interact with and learn from students entering into the early years of their university education.  I find it particularly rewarding to be able to learn from and encourage students’ interests in history and, hopefully, inspire in them a lifelong pursuit of knowledge and historical curiosity.

Teaching Philosophy

The majority of people enrolled in my courses will not become professional historians.  So, while I am committed to teaching history as an important discipline in its own right, I also recognize its value in developing students’ abilities and proficiencies that are trans-disciplinary and can be employed in whatever studies and careers they might choose to undertake.  This is best achieved by exposing students to primary sources (documents, writings, artifacts, images, and oral histories from the past, for example), along with more recent historical analyses, which plunge them into a historian’s work at the same time as honing certain fundamental and transferable skills.

I structure classes around the need to develop the tools of critical reading, effective analysis, and strong communication of ideas both orally and in writing.  Instead of me simply declaring why certain information is important and how it should be understood, it is essential that students be given the opportunity to apply their own interpretations to events and ideas from history.  For me, the study of History is not about the memorization of dates and names: its focus should not just be learning about details of the past, but also understanding why things exist the way they do today. This prompts students to ask “Why?” and “How?”, which are the central questions of all academic inquiry and of human minds.  In short, I believe that everyone – teachers, lawyers, social workers, accountants, and scientists, to name only a few – can benefit from studying History.

Algoma University is a wonderful place to implement these approaches in the classroom.  All classes are of a manageable size so that not only do I get to know my students’ names, but also learn about them as people in more meaningful and important ways: their extra-curricular activities, their career aspirations, and the academic work that they are doing in other classes as well as mine.  This allows me to be a better professor because I am able to concentrate on the individual needs and interests of each student in a way that would not be possible at other universities, where class sizes expand into the hundreds. The quality of student work I see at Algoma is also very good, with many of my students advancing to pursue their careers or further academic studies at a very high level.  It is an honour to be able to get to know my students and to see them accomplish their goals and dreams in this way.

Academic Publications and Presentations

In my experience, the best professors I have known are those who have been active and interested in their particular fields of research, and so I remain committed to my academic research as a way to enliven and benefit student engagement in the classroom.  Below are a few of my publications and conference presentations from recent years.

 

Books

National Thanksgivings and Ideas of Britain, 1689-1816 (Boydell & Brewer, 2020

https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781783273584/national-thanksgivings-and-ideas-of-britain-1689-1816/

 

Revelation Restored:  the Apocalypse in Later Seventeenth-Century England (Boydell & Brewer, 2011)

https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781843836131/revelation-restored-the-apocalypse-in-later-seventeenth-century-england/

 

Selected Articles and Book Chapters

“Sermons – A Case Study of Fast Sermons, 1640-1714,” in Nicholas McDowell and Henry Power (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of English Prose, 1640-1714 (forthcoming, Oxford University Press)

 

“Thanksgiving and the Apocalypse:  two eighteenth-century sermons,” in Lionel Laborie and Ariel Hessayon (eds.), Early Modern Prophecies in Transnational, National and Regional Contexts, Volume 3:  The British Isles (Brill, 2021), 207-268

https://brill.com/display/book/9789004443631/BP000015.xml

 

“Thanksgivings and the signs of the times:  the Apocalypse in the Long Eighteenth Century,” in Justin Champion, John Coffey, Tim Harris, and John Marshall (eds.), Politics, Religion and Ideas in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Britain:  Essays in Honour of Mark Goldie (Boydell Press, 2019), 239-256

https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781783274505/politics-religion-and-ideas-in-seventeenth-and-eighteenth-century-britain/

 

“Eschatology and radicalism after the Restoration:  the English context,” in Andrew Crome (ed.), Prophecy and Eschatology in the Trans-Atlantic World, 1500-1800 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 187-211

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/978-1-137-52055-5_8

 

“Jane Lead and English Apocalyptic Thought in the Late Seventeenth Century,” in Ariel Hessayon (ed.) Jane Lead and her Transnational Legacy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 119-142

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/978-1-137-39614-3_6

 

“Prophecy on the Margins: a Case Study of the Apocalypse in Later Seventeenth-Century England,” in Sarah Harvey and Suzanne Newcombe (eds.), Prophecy in the New Millennium:  When Prophecies Persist (Ashgate, 2013), 43-55

http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409449959

 

“Preaching, National Salvation, Victories, and Thanksgivings: 1689-1800,” in Keith Francis and William Gibson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the British Sermon, 1689-1901 (Oxford University Press, 2012), 261-274

http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199583591.do

 

“Radical Revelation?  Apocalyptic Ideas in Late Seventeenth-Century England,” in Ariel Hessayon and David Finnegan (eds.),Varieties of Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century English Radicalism in Context (Ashgate, 2011), 183-204

http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754669050

 

“Prophecy, Patriarchy, and Violence in the Early Modern Household:  the Revelations of Anne Wentworth,” Journal of Family History, 34, #4 (October 2009), 344-368

http://jfh.sagepub.com/content/34/4/344.abstract

 

“Thomas Beverley and the ‘Late Great Revolution’:  English Apocalyptic Expectation in the Late Seventeenth Century,” in Nicholas Keene and Ariel Hessayon (eds.), Scripture and Scholarship in Early Modern England (Ashgate Publishing, 2006), 158-175

http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754638933

 

“Revelation and the Revolution of 1688-1689,” The Historical Journal, 48 (2005), pp. 351-389

http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X05004437

 

“The Anglican Apocalypse in Restoration England,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 55 (2004), pp. 467-501

http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0022046904009984

 

“The patience of the saints, the Apocalypse, and moderate nonconformity in Restoration England,” Canadian Journal of History, 38 (2003), pp. 505-520

http://utpjournalsreview.com/index.php/CJOH/article/view/11396

 

Selected Conference Presentations

“‘True Patriots’ and the Promotion of ‘Sedition by False News’: The Anatomy of a Conspiracy in the Rye House Plot Sermons of 1683”, Midwest Conference on British Studies, Bowling Green, Ohio, October 2023

 

“How to Survive the Academic Apocalypse and Even Laugh – The View from Canada”, North American Conference on British Studies, virtual (Zoom), 7 November 2020

 

“Thanksgiving and the Rage of Party”, Midwest Conference on British Studies, Chicago, September 2019 

 

“‘Promising Tidings of a happy Project … to become one People’:  Thanksgivings, Britons, and Others in the Long Eighteenth Century”, Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society of Church History, Regina, Saskatchewan, 1 June 2018

 

“Anti-Catholicism, infidelity, and ‘French principles’:  Britons and France in the long eighteenth century,” Midwest Conference on British Studies, St Louis, September 2017

 

“Thanksgivings, the Bible, and British Exceptionalism in the Long Eighteenth Century,” Midwest Conference on British Studies, Detroit, September 2015

 

“‘Are we there yet?’:  mapping apocalyptic time and locating the End in England, c. 1660-1760,” Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association, Toronto, April 2013

 

“Thanksgivings and ideas of Britishness in the long eighteenth century,” Midwest Conference on British Studies, Terre Haute, Indiana, November 2011

 

“Commemoration, Crisis, and the Thanksgiving Sermons of the 1680s:  1689,” The Bangor Conference on the Restoration: Politics, Religion & Culture in the 1680s, Bangor University, Wales, July 2009

 

“Prophecy, Plots, and Exclusion:  The Apocalypse and the Politics of Crisis in Later Seventeenth Century England,” North American Conference on British Studies, Cincinnati, Ohio, October 2008

 

“Patriarchy, the Apocalypse, and the Power of Prophecy in Later Seventeenth-Century England,” History Department Colloquia Series, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario, November 2007

 

“In the Right Place at the Wrong Time:  the Apocalypse in England in the 1690s,” Midwest Conference on British Studies, Dayton, Ohio, September 2007

 

“Thomas Beverley, Apocalypse, and Reformation:  the Case for the Long Seventeenth Century in England,” Faculty Workshop, Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, December 2006

 

“Revelation, radicalism, and the nature of apocalyptic ideas in late seventeenth-century England,” Rediscovering Radicalism in the British Isles and Ireland c.1550-c.1700, Goldsmiths College, University of London, London, England, June 2006