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Canadian Studies Announcements
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In This Issue:
Program News
- URAP deadline extended to noon tomorrow
Upcoming Events
- Negotiating the “Double-Minded Vocabulaire”: Montreal’s Jewish Communities and Contemporary Quebec
- Slavery and Self-Emancipation in Colonial Canada
External Events
- Eco Ensemble: The Music of Cindy Cox
- Homelessness in Canada: A Complex Policy and Governance Landscape
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| URAP Application Deadline Extended
Extended Deadline: Tuesday, January 30, 12 pm
The deadline for Canadian Studies’ student assistant position has been extended to noon tomorrow. We’ll begin interviewing this week, so this is your last chance to help teach other Berkeley undergrads about Canada!
This position is organized through the Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program (URAP), and will give an undergraduate student the chance to work with our program director, Dr. Richard A. Rhodes, and program staff on preparing teaching materials in preparation for a future DeCal course on Canada. Students will be able to develop research and synthesis skills while learning how to construct a course of their own.
This position will work closely with faculty, graduate students, and program staff on a variety of tasks, including writing, researching, and assisting with Program events. The student’s interests will shape specific project outcomes. A living stipend may be offered depending on time commitment and specific work required.
Students will be expected to be available about 3-5 hours per week, and should have strong writing and research skills as well as a basic knowledge of Canada. Interested students should click here to learn more about anticipated tasks and qualifications. |
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Negotiating the “Double-Minded Vocabulaire”: Montreal’s Jewish Communities and Contemporary Quebec
Tues., January 30 | 12:30 pm | 223 Philosophy Hall | RSVP
Montreal’s 90,000-strong Jewish community presents unique features that differentiate it from the Jewish populations of other North American cities. Even those aspects that it shares – a large Ashkenazic immigration in the early 20th century, broad and successful upward mobility, and the development of strong educational, cultural, and service institutions – have been achieved in a city once divided by language, religion, and geography (the English-speaking, largely Protestant business west versus the French-speaking, overwhelmingly Catholic proletarian and lower middle-class east), now a secular, multicultural metropolis whose official language is French but with the highest rate of citizens who speak at least three languages of any North American city. The departure of many Ashkenazic Jews in the 1970s and 80s in the face of the Quebec independence movement has been partially offset by the arrival, since the 1950s, of Sephardic Jews, at first from North Africa, and more recently from Israel and France. At the same time, Montreal received one of the world’s largest populations of Holocaust survivors and has become a world center for Hasidic Judaism.
Today, Montreal Jewish institutions speak increasingly of the city’s Jewish communities, in recognition of this remarkable internal diversity. How do these developments challenge the vision and missions of Montreal’s historical Jewish institutions? How is the question of Jewish identity in Montreal shaped by the concern in Quebec for the flourishing of the French language and the codification into law of a concept of laïcité, or secularism, more in line with European views than with the prevailing notions of multiculturalism in North America? How do Montreal’s Jewish communities articulate their identities and sentiments of belonging in response to the range of ways, variously inclusive and exclusive, that Quebec identity is asserted in the linguistic, cultural, and political spheres?
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Dr. Robert Schwartzwald is a professor in the Département de littératures et de langues du monde at the Université de Montréal, where he directed the graduate certificate program in Jewish studies from 2016-2022. He received his M.A. in comparative literature from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. in Québécois literature from Université Laval. His publications explore interfaces between literary and national articulations of modernity with special attention to issues of sexual representation and intercultural relations. He is a former editor of the International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes and a recipient of the Governor-General’s International Award for Canadian Studies.
This event is cosponsored by the Center for Jewish Studies and Department of French. |
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Slavery and Self-Emancipation in Colonial Canada
Tues., Feb. 13 | 12:30 pm | 223 Philosophy Hall | RSVP
The US-Canada border played a central role in the history of slavery in North America. Yet, while Canada is remembered chiefly as a haven for those fleeing slavery in the United States via the Underground Railroad during the mid-nineteenth century, it is less well known that many people enslaved in colonial Canada during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries gained their freedom by crossing the border into the United States. Early Canadian and American anti-slavery laws did remarkably little to free people enslaved within their respective jurisdictions. But their enactment – and the proximity of a permeable border between rival regimes – afforded an unprecedented opportunity to enslaved men, women, and children. Laws on both sides of the Great Lakes inadvertently established free spaces, where fugitives from the opposite side could find sanctuary. By passing from one jurisdiction to another, enslaved individuals could exploit competing slavery laws and emancipate themselves simply by crossing the border, a development that destabilized and ultimately destroyed chattel slavery in the borderlands.
In this talk, Dr. Gregory Wigmore will provide a broad overview of slavery in early Canada, especially in the Great Lakes region. His talk will explain how both slaveholders and the enslaved, along with British and American authorities, responded to the emergence of the new Canadian-American border after the American Revolution. While slaveholders in Upper Canada (now Ontario) begged the colonial government to help them protect their valuable human property, their enslaved laborers were among the first people in North America to understand the political significance of the new international boundary, using it as a portal to freedom.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Dr. Gregory Wigmore is a lecturer in the Department of History at Santa Clara University. He received his B.A. in journalism and history from Carleton University, and his Ph.D. in history from UC Davis. His research and teaching focus on the intersection of social and political history and foreign relations, especially the role of frontiers and borders. His article, “Before the Railroad: From Slavery to Freedom in the Canadian-American Borderland”, received the Bernath Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations and the Ontario Historical Society’s Riddell Award. He is currently working on a book manuscript based on his dissertation, “The Limits of Empire: Allegiance, Opportunity, and Imperial Rivalry in the Canadian-American Borderland.” |
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Eco Ensemble: The Music of Cindy Cox
Saturday, February 3 | 8:00 pm | Hertz Hall | Buy tickets
UC Berkeley’s acclaimed ensemble in residence pays tribute Music Department faculty member and eminent composer Cindy Cox, whose compositions are inspired by the invisible laws of nature. The program presents a kaleidoscopic portrait of Cox’s chamber music over several decades, including 2014’s Hishuk ish ts’ awalk (All Things are One), a piece for clarinet, strings, and piano, inspired by the rainforest and native inhabitants of Canada’s Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. “Her music…is always buoyant, puckish, rhythmically alive and crisply engaging” (San Francisco Chronicle). Tickets are available through Cal Performances. |
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Homelessness in Canada: A Complex Policy and Governance Landscape
Thursday, February 8 | 12:00 pm | Online | RSVP
Western Washington University’s Center for Canadian-American Studies invites you to the inaugural talk of their new series, “Populations Rendered ‘Surplus’ in Canada”. Anna Kopec, an assistant professor at the School of Public Policy and Administration at Carleton University, will discuss the challenges in addressing the homelessness crisis in Canada. Homelessness includes a complex policy landscape that requires integrated and cooperative policy approaches. Unfortunately, Canada’s current approach often includes fragmented and siloed responses that lead to a patchwork of services and policies. Using comparative findings from Melbourne, Australia, and Toronto, this interactive seminar will present the effects of Canada’s current policies and assert the need for integrated, collaborative responses.
This talk is sponsored by the WWU Center for Canadian-American Studies, The Ray Wolpow Institute, and the Foundation for WWU & Alumni. |
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Royal Canadian Legion, US Branch #25 