Canadian Studies Announcements

In This Issue:

Program News & Events

External Events

PROGRAM NEWS & EVENTS

THIS THURSDAY: 2022 THOMAS GARDEN BARNES LECTURE

“Practically American”: What a Canadian Schoolteacher’s Fight Against California’s Anti-Alien Laws Reveals About the Boundaries of American Identity

Thursday, April 28 | 12:30 pm PT | 223 Moses | RSVP here

Former Hildebrand Fellow Brendan Shanahan explores the case of Katharine Short, a Canadian immigrant to California who challenged early 20th-century anti-immigrant laws. In 1915, Short found her job as a California schoolteacher at risk when the state began enforcing a law barring non-citizens from public employment. She responded with a vigorous legal, public relations, political, and diplomatic campaign to save her job and those of other non-citizen schoolteachers in the state. Shanahan will discuss what the case shows about the disparate impact of the state’s anti-alien hiring laws, comparing the experiences of favorably portrayed immigrants (like white, middle-class Canadians) vs. less favored non-citizens (such as Mexican blue-collar laborers).

Brendan Shanahan is a socio-legal historian focusing on (North) American immigration and citizenship policy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He earned his Ph.D. and M.A. from UC Berkeley, received a Hildebrand Fellowship for work in Canadian Studies, and won the 2019 Outstanding Dissertation Award of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society. He is currently a postdoctoral associate at the MacMillan Center and visiting lecturer in the Department of History at Yale.

NEXT WEEK

2022 Conference: Implementing Migration Policy: Excavating the Administrative and Bureaucratic Processes Behind Migrant Admissions and Deportation

May 2-3 | 1:00-5:00 pm PT | IGS Library, Moses Hall | Learn more and RSVP here

The question of how to effectively manage international migration is one of the most difficult tasks facing governments in today’s globalized world. While much attention is paid to the ways politicians and activist groups influence immigration policy, commentators have often ignored the importance of administrative actors, such as bureaucrats, tasked with implementing these decisions. Often hidden from public view, these individuals operate behind the scenes to transform formal policy into on-the-ground practices which impact migrant populations in a variety of ways.

This conference will bring together acclaimed senior and emerging scholars to evaluate different immigration policies in a global context. Participants will discuss how bureaucratic agencies and civil society organizations influence immigration policy and resettlement in developed countries in North America, Europe, and East Asia. Comparisons will be drawn between countries with relatively liberal immigration policies, such as Canada, with those that maintain more restrictive regimes. The conference will be organized into the following sessions:

May 2:

1-3 pm: “Bureaucrats’ role in shaping immigration policy”

3-5 pm: “Civil society’s engagement in policy implementation”

May 3:

1-3 pm: “The role of subnational jurisdictions in migrant entry and settlement”

3-5 pm: “How states reconcile national law with international legal and global normative pressures”

The panel discussion portions of this event will be livestreamed. For in-person attendees, a public reception will also be held on the evening of May 2. To view the full list of speakers and RSVP, please visit our conference page.

EXTERNAL EVENTS

Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Climate Displacement

Monday, April 25 | 5:00 pm PT | Zellerbach Hall | RSVP here

Canadian Studies faculty affiliate Daniel Aldana Cohen joins other faculty members in Berkeley’s new cluster in climate equity and environmental justice for a special panel of the global impacts of climate change. The World Bank estimates that by 2050, 216 million people from the developing world will be forced to leave their homes due to climate-induced disasters and social unrest caused by scarcity. This conversation, moderated by University of Toronto professor Karen Chapple, will discuss the adaptation challenges facing both the sending and receiving regions from the perspectives of sociology, city planning, geography, engineering, and urban policy.

This event will be livestreamed and recorded for later viewing; learn more here.

Canadian Authors at the Bay Area Book Festival

May 7 | Berkeley | View full schedule here

The Bay Area Book Festival is one of the world’s premier celebrations of writers, readers, and the written word. Now back in person after two years online, the festival line-up includes two exciting literary voices from Canada thanks to the generous support of the Consulate General of Canada San Francisco.

“We Read in Order to Come to Life”: Grief, Joy, and the Magic of Literary Form

2:00 pm | Buy tickets here

In this panel, Pik-Shuen Fung will discuss her acclaimed debut novel Ghost Forest, which explores the narrator’s grief for her “astronaut” father, one of many such fathers who remained in Hong Kong while the rest of the family emigrates to Canada.

What’s New in Native American Literature for Kids

2:45 pm | More information

Cree children’s author David A. Robertson (On the Trapline, The Great Bear), two-time winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award, will participate in a panel on exciting new trends in Native American literature for young people.

Canadian Studies Program

213 Moses Hall #2308

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