Kiera
Mitchell
Bio
I am a PhD Candidate in the University of Saskatchewan's Department of History with a strong background in histories of gender, sexuality, Canada, law, and labour. My work, broadly speaking, explores how the everyday aspects of 20th century Canadian women’s lives like labour, intimate relationships, and social organizations, reflect and impact fundamental legal structures which regulate all Canadians. My PhD research focuses on Canadian women’s legal, cultural and social histories, focused on three high profile Supreme Court of Canada divorce cases and their aftermath. While I focus on case studies and key individuals in my research, I situate my work within four broad bodies of scholarship: legal history; histories of media studies; social histories of labour and histories of gender & sexuality. Raised in the prairies and from a long line of shrewd women, my work seeks to place the remarkable experiences of women in Canada's fly-over-provinces into the transnational context in which they belong.
Dissertation
My SSHRC-funded doctoral work, entitled ““Work Done by Any Ranch Wife”: Farm Women, Labour, and Divorce in Canada, 1968-1985,” investigates a key moment in legal and social change in Canadian history in which legal divorce became more federally accessible after the passing of The Divorce Act in 1968. As a result, a rapid increase in divorce cases during the 1970s and early 1980s challenged federal and provincial family law. A key area included matrimonial property, as couples required courts to adjudicate the splitting of “family” assets after decades of accumulating assets, establishing a household, and combining finances. I argue that, while cases like Murdoch remain integral to training new lawyers in family and property law, the legal profession and legal histories to-date have erased the context of women’s agricultural labour, domestic violence, and sexist bias in Canadian courts.
Teaching
My love of conducting research and writing translates well both into my work as a sessional lecturer and into my one-on-one tutoring work with undergraduate and graduate students at the Murray Library Writing Centre. Throughout my doctoral work I developed my own feminist pedagogy focused on student comprehension and application of historical critical thinking principles through a variety of my teaching and student support roles. I enjoy teaching the fundamentals of historical knowledge and analytical research and writing skills in a manner tailored to different learning styles and respectful of what each student brings to their academic experience.