Ian McKay is a Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 historian

Historian

A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

 at Queen's University

Queen's University

Queen's University, , is a public research university located in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Founded on 16 October 1841, the university pre-dates the founding of Canada by 26 years. Queen's holds more more than of land throughout Ontario as well as Herstmonceux Castle in East Sussex, England...

, Kingston, Ontario

Kingston, Ontario

Kingston, Ontario is a Canadian city located in Eastern Ontario where the St. Lawrence River flows out of Lake Ontario. Originally a First Nations settlement called "Katarowki," , growing European exploration in the 17th Century made it an important trading post...

, where he has taught since 1988. His primary interests are Canadian cultural

Cultural history

The term cultural history refers both to an academic discipline and to its subject matter.Cultural history, as a discipline, at least in its common definition since the 1970s, often combines the approaches of anthropology and history to look at popular cultural traditions and cultural...

 and political

Political history

Political history is the narrative and analysis of political events, ideas, movements, and leaders. It is distinct from, but related to, other fields of history such as Diplomatic history, social history, economic history, and military history, as well as constitutional history and public...

 history; the economic and social history of Atlantic Canada

Atlantic Canada

Atlantic Canada is the region of Canada comprising the four provinces located on the Atlantic coast, excluding Quebec: the three Maritime provinces – New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia – and Newfoundland and Labrador...

, especially Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...

, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and theory and historiography

Historiography

Historiography refers either to the study of the history and methodology of history as a discipline, or to a body of historical work on a specialized topic...

, particularly Canada as liberal order. McKay earned his BA and PhD from Dalhousie University

Dalhousie University

Dalhousie University is a public research university located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The university comprises eleven faculties including Schulich School of Law and Dalhousie University Faculty of Medicine. It also includes the faculties of architecture, planning and engineering located at...

 under the supervision of Michael Cross. He also holds a Masters degree from the University of Warwick

University of Warwick

The University of Warwick is a public research university located in Coventry, United Kingdom...

. Born in 1953, he is the younger brother of poet Don McKay

Don McKay

Don McKay, CM is an award-winning Canadian poet, editor, and educator.Born in Owen Sound, Ontario and raised in Cornwall, McKay was educated at the University of Western Ontario and the University of Wales, where he earned his PhD in 1971...

. In 2009, McKay's Reasoning Otherwise: Leftists and the People's Enlightenment in Canada, 1890-1920 won the prestigious Sir John A. McDonald Prize, awarded by the Canadian Historical Association

Canadian Historical Association

The Canadian Historical Association is a Canadian organization founded in 1922 for the purposes of promoting historical research and scholarship. Marius Barbeau, the anthropologist, was its founding Secretary...

 for the best book written in Canadian history the previous year.

Liberal Order Framework

In the December 2000 issue of the Canadian Historical Review, McKay introduced a new framework for interpreting Canadian history. In "The liberal order framework: A prospectus for a reconnaissance of Canadian history" McKay argues that "the category 'Canada' should henceforth denote a historically specific project of rule, rather than either an essence we must defend or an empty homogeneous space we must possess. Canada-as-project can be analyzed as the implantation and expansion over a heterogeneous terrain of a certain politico-economic logic -- to wit, liberalism." However, far from simply charting victories along the road to liberal order, McKay's approach demands meticulous attention to points of resistance and struggle that shaped the particular contours of Canadian liberalism. Called "reconnaisance" in reference to its Gramscian inspiration, the strategy is at once anti-presentist in seeking to reconstruct the past in its own terms, and present-minded in linking historical findings to contemporary political concerns and ongoing struggles. McKay has expanded the approach in the books Rebels, Reds, Radicals: Rethinking Canada's Left History and Reasoning Otherwise: Leftists And The People's Enlightenment In Canada, 1890-1920. According to Carleton University

Carleton University

Carleton University is a comprehensive university located in the capital of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. The enabling legislation is The Carleton University Act, 1952, S.O. 1952. Founded as a small college in 1942, Carleton now offers over 65 programs in a diverse range of disciplines. Carleton has...

 historian A.B. McKillop, McKay's framework has incited "Canadian historians to a degree not witnessed since [J.M.S.] Careless’s “limited identities” article inspired a generation of fledgling social historians in the seventies.". The liberal order framework has already spawned a number critical essays first presented at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada and subsequently published in 2008 as Liberalism and Hegemony: Debating the Canadian Liberal Revolution. The 2009 annual meeting of the Canadian Historical Association also saw a panel discussion devoted to the framework.

Selected works

• The Craft Transformed: An Essay on the Carpenters of Halifax, 1885-1985 (1985)
• The Challenge of Modernity: A Reader on Post-Confederation Canada (ed., 1990)
• The Quest of the Folk: Antimodernism and Cultural Selection in Twentieth-Century Nova Scotia (1993)
• For A Working Class Culture in Canada: A Selection of Colin McKay's Writings on Sociology and Political Economy (ed., 1995)
• Rebels, Reds, Radicals: Rethinking Canada's Left History (2005)
• Reasoning Otherwise: Leftists and the People's Enlightenment in Canada, 1890-1920 (2008)
• In the Province of History: The Making of the Public Past in Twentieth-Century Nova Scotia (co-author Robin Bates, 2010)