Bonnie McElhinny

Professor

Email: bonnie.mcelhinny@utoronto.ca

Phone: 416-978-5259

Areas of Interest

  • Water & climate
  • Environmental justice, Unsettling settler colonialism
  • Indigenous resurgence
  • Decolonizing water governance
  • The Great Lakes
  • Anti-oppressive approaches to community-engaged learning
  • Anti-colonial approaches to place-based pedagogies
  • Food sovereignty
  • Language and political economy
  • Language and political ecology
  • Linguistic and sociocultural anthropology

Research Region: Turtle Island, Canada, USA, Great Lakes

Biography

Dr.  Bonnie McElhinny (she/her) is Professor of Anthropology and Women and Gender Studies.  She is the former Director of Women and Gender Studies, and former Principal of New College.  She is a settler of Irish, Slavic, German,  French and English descent, who grew up on a farm at the confluence of Connoquenessing and Glade Run Creeks in Western Pennsylvania, on Lenape and Seneca Territory. She currently lives in Toronto, the 9 rivers city, in the watershed of niigaani-gichigami, or chi’nibiish, also known as Lake Ontario. She is a daughter, sister, mother and grandmother.

Dr. McElhinny is the author of 3 books and over 50 articles and chapters, on water; anti-colonial research methods, storytelling, language, politics and economy; migration and diaspora; and unsettling settler colonialism. She is the author of multiple accessible works, public writing which distills the insights of academic work for wider audiences, in newsletters, magazines for professional practitioners, encyclopedias, book reviews and textbooks.  Recent blogs she wrote for the Great Lakes Connection Newsletter reached 12,000 recipients.  She is the recipient of numerous teaching and research grants.

Her books include Words, Worlds and Material Girls; Filipinos in
Canada (edited with Roland Coloma, Ethel Tungohan, J.P.Catungal and Lisa Davidson); and, most recently, Language, Capitalism, Colonialism:  Toward a Critical History (with Monica Heller).

Dr. McElhinny is an award-winning teacher.  She is the recipient of the June Larkin Award for Pedagogy, the Faculty of Arts and Science Experiential Learning Fellowship, and is a senior fellow at the Centre for Community Partnerships.  She is passionate about supporting anti-colonial  land- and water-based learning attentive to treaty and territory, and about ethical forms of community-partnered learning and research.   She regularly teaches courses on unsettling settler colonialism, living on the water in Toronto, and water, climate and social justice.  Her work with community partners on water stories in her first year course, Living on the Water in Toronto, was recognized in 2016 as one of the 14 most innovative teaching initiatives in all faculties, on all 3 campuses, at the University of Toronto, and featured in Re:Think:  Navigation and transformation in today’s learning landscape.

Dr. McElhinny regularly teaches courses on unsettling settler colonialism, living on the water in Toronto, and water and social justice. She directs Water Allies, with the support of a Faculty of Arts and Science Teaching and Learning Grant (see the web-site at waterallies.com.)  This initiative focuses on decolonial, feminist, queer and anti-racist approaches to environmental justice, with a focus on water.  Its projects include designing and re-designing a cluster of courses on the Great Lakes, research and teaching collaborations with community partners, designing experiential learning opportunities for students, and curating public events.

Education

Ph.D. Stanford University

M.A. Stanford University

M.A. Johns Hopkins University

B.A. University of Pittsburgh

Teaching

Undergraduate Courses:

Undergraduate Courses Taught:

Advocating Environmental and Climate Justice (Community-Partnered Learning)

Water and Social Justice

“Diversity”:  Critical Perspectives on Multiculturalism and Settler Coloniaism

Living on the Water in Toronto

Water, Stories & Social Change

uTOpia:  What we all long for and other hopes for Toronto

Field Methods in Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology

Language and Society

Language, Ideology and Political

Experiential Learning/International Course Module (Hawai’i):  Multiculturalism, Indigeneity, Land & Water Restoration (Anthropology)

Experiential Learning/Dean’s International and Indigenous Fund (DIIF):  Indigeneity, Land Rights & Food Sovereignty (Belize/New College)

Experiential Learning/Dean’s International and Indigenous Fund (DIIF):  Canoe Build with Mike Ormsby, Albert Owl and Wahnipitae First Nation (New College)

Graduate Courses:

Graduate Courses Taught:

Unsettling Settler Colonialism:  Water, Love, Sovereignty, Governance

Language, Ideology and Political Economy

Decolonizing Diversity

Multiculturalism in Canada:  Critical Engagements with Diversity and Inequality