Hi! I’m Dr. Jay Young and this is my website.
In 2012, I completed a PhD in history at York University. My dissertation evaluates the evolution of the Toronto subway system and the ways in which transit transformed the expanding metropolitan area from the 1940s to the present. I’m currently revising the dissertation for publication.
From 2009-2014, I was a founding co-editor and public outreach coordinator of ActiveHistory.ca, a website that seeks to connect the work of historians with the wider public. I was also a regular contributor to the site.
From 2013-2014, I was a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) postdoctoral fellow in the Department of History at McMaster University.
I’ve co-edited with Ben Bradley and Colin M. Coates a book-length manuscript, Moving Natures: Mobility and the Environment in Canadian History, which has been accepted for publication by the University of Calgary Press. The manuscript explores the common ground between environmental history and mobility studies, and how mobility – the movements of people, things, and ideas, as well as their associated cultural meanings – has been a key factor in shaping Canadians’ perceptions of and interactions with their country.
My book chapter, “Filled with Nature: Exploring the Environmental History of Downtown Toronto,” is featured in Urban Explorations: Environmental Histories of the Toronto Region, edited by L. Anders Sandberg, Stephen Bocking, Colin Coates, and Ken Cruikshank (Hamilton: L.R. Wilson Institute for Canadian History, 2013). It focuses on the relationship between non-human nature and humans in Toronto’s central core and includes a suggested walking tour route.
I’ve also published an article, “Defining a Community in Exile: Vietnam War Resister Communication in AMEX Magazine, 1968-1973,” in Histoire sociale/Social History vol. 44, no. 87 (May 2011): 115-147. It looks at the role of magazine production and readership within Toronto’s Vietnam War resister community.
I can be reached at jaywyoung[at]gmail.com or follow me on Twitter: @jaywyoung
Jay Young 