Research Group on Constitutional Studies

06/24/2026

New from RGCS faculty member Yves Winter in Comparative Studies in Society and History

"Imperial Nostalgia as Patrimony: Shipwrecks and Treasures in the Colonial Museum"

Abstract
This article examines two Spanish museum exhibitions on the frigate Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes to show how these exhibitions convert recovered colonial treasure into national patrimony and thereby stage imperial nostalgia. Using museum, media, and scholarly archives, I analyze how the displays recode coins and artifacts as inalienable heritage while bracketing the colonial relations—Andean extraction, coerced Indigenous labor, and slavery—that produced them. Set against Spain’s court victory over Odyssey Marine Inc. and the post-2008 crisis, the exhibitions cast the state as cultural guardian against corporate plunder. Curatorial regimes aestheticize bullion, dematerialize monetary value, and reattach silver and gold to a redemptive national narrative. Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s critique of cultural treasures, Marcel Mauss and Annette Weiner on inalienable possessions, and scholarship on the afterlives of empire, I theorize a navigational state that replaces conquest with heritage protection to secure continuity between imperial past and post-imperial present. The case clarifies the structural limits of decolonizing gestures within national museum forms.

http://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417526100474

With bonus audio material: a discussion with Professor Winter about the article and the historical context it covers!
https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2026/06/17/track-1-yves-winter/

Yves Winter discusses "Imperial Nostalgia as Patrimony: Shipwrecks and Treasures in the Colonial Museum."

06/23/2026

Cressida Heyes, FRSC, MA McGill Political Science 1993, Ph.D. McGill Philosophy 1997, Henry Marshall Tory Chair at the University of Alberta, has been awarded the 2026–2027 Edinburgh Fellowship from the American Philosophical Association, to be held at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh.

NEWARK, Del. — Jun. 18, 2026 — The American Philosophical Association (APA) is pleased to announce the following seven prizes for the first half of 2026. APA prizes recognize many areas of philosophy research by philosophers at various career stages, as well as the teaching of philosophy and pub...

06/22/2026

This week in Milan, June 23-24
The annual Alternate Routes conference
in critical social research

Theme: “Capitalism, Crisis, and Global Reordering”

RGCS presenters:

Madison Albert, BA ’26
"Wages for Housework and Family Abolition:
An Unhappy Marriage?"

Mathis Lehoux, MA2
“Fanon’s Temporalities:
Remembrance and Resistance in Fanon”

Florence Manlapas, MA2
'"Super Freak:’ 'Normal’ S*x as a False Need”

Solomon Schafer, MA ‘26
"Ideas with Lives of Their Own:
Ideology, Critique, and Conspiracy Theory"

06/17/2026

Major new publication from Taylor Fellow Tim Gulliver BCL/ JD 3

“Something to Declare”: Declaratory Relief as a Bulwark to Populist Uses of section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

57:1 Ottawa Law Review 103

Volume 57, Issue 1

06/17/2026

Student fellowship alumni get-together in Toronto! June 16 2026

L-R

Eric Schildroth MA '17, Jacob Levy, Vasily Shugaev BA '25,
Diane Shnier BA '15, Stefan Macleod BA '17, Julian Miller BA '22, Alex Byrne BA '23, Cáit Power MA '13, Jacob Lokash BA '22

Jacob Levy, Eric Schildroth, Elijah Aedo-Castillo BA '25, Diane Shnier, Stefan Macleod, Julian Miller, Caít Power, Jacob Lokash

06/16/2026

Through the good offices of RGCS faculty member Christopher Manfredi, Professor of Political Science, and in recognition of his decade of service on its board of directors, the Max Bell Foundation has made a one-time $10,000 gift to the endowment for the RGCS Charles Taylor Student Fellowship.

That brings the endowment to $250,000 almost exactly— a significant figure because it means the annual payout could cover the student stipends for the Fellowship in perpetuity.

THe Foundation, established by George Maxwell Bell (McGill BComm '32) shortly before his death, makes grants to Canadian nonprofits, including McGill, whose work informs improvements in public policy that promotes educational, health, and environmental outcomes as well as civic engagement and resilient democratic institutions.

The Taylor Fellowship endowment has been built up since 2020 by hundreds of individual gifts from Fellowship students and alums, other McGill alums, RGCS faculty and other affiliates (current and past PhD students, postdocs, and visiting professors), parents, and other supporters; matching funds from the University for gifts given as part of the annual fundraiser; and an ongoing multiyear gift from the Lemieux Family Foundation. This gift from the Max Bell Foundation is now the second-largest contribution, after the Lemieux Family Foundation's.

The Fellowship, named for Professor Emeritus Charles Taylor BA ‘52, selects by competitive application 20 students per year at the pre-doctoral levels— BA, MA, BCL/ JD— for intensive, non-credit, ungraded reading group discussions of major works in the history of political, social, and moral thought, as well as related works of literature, in RGCS’ Shklar Reading Room.

06/15/2026

The Tunisian Embassy in Canada celebrates the graduation and accomplishments of Aziz Haddad BA '26!

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1EYyhwLXTQ/

06/12/2026

New book: _Disciplinary Divides in the Study of Law and Politics_, University of Toronto Press

coedited by Emmett Macfarlane and RGCS alum Kate Puddister PhD '15

with chapters by RGCS faculty members Christa Scholtz and Chris Manfredi; one coauthored by Kate Puddister; one coauthored by RGCS alum Erin Crandall PhD '13; and one by pre-RGCS alum James Kelly PhD '99.

See full contents here:

Bringing together political scientists and legal scholars to interrogate the "disciplinary divides" in the study of law and politics, this book explores diverse areas of law, hot-button legal issues, and institutional processes implicating courts, legislatures, and government agencies.

06/11/2026

The naming of the Shklar Room will be marked by a special RGCS Lecture in the fall. Shklar's student Nancy L. Rosenblum, Senator Joseph S. Clark Professor of Ethics in Politics and Government emerita at Harvard University, will give a lecture titled "Woman and Citizen," September 24 at 4:30 pm at Thompson House.

“I am a bookworm.” Judith Shklar, “A Life of Learning” The Shklar Room, located in Ferrier 428B at the center of RGCS' academic space, houses a collection of nearly 1000 volumes in political theory and philosophy, the history of political thought, legal theory, and related fields. It has bee...

06/11/2026

_Land and the Liberal Project: Canada's Violent Expansion_, by RGCS alum Éléna Choquette, BA Joint Honours Philosophy & Political Science '11, a member of the very first cohort of RGCS Student Fellows, now Professor of Social Science at l'Université du Québec en Outaouais, has been recognized with the Canada Prize from the The Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, in the category of English-language books by first-time authors.

Congratulations!