Canadian Studies Announcements

In This Issue:

Program News

• New Hildebrand Fellow Reakash Walters investigates how Canadian courts perpetuate systemic biases

• Former Sproul Fellow Corey Schultz publishes article on how museums shape public memory of Canada’s Indian residential schools

PROGRAM NEWS

New Hildebrand Fellow Reakash Walters Investigates How Canadian Courts Perpetuate Systemic Biases

The Canadian Studies Program is pleased to announce that Reakash Walters has been awarded an Edward E. Hildebrand Research Fellowship for Summer 2026.

Walters is a Canadian lawyer and doctoral candidate at Berkeley School of Law. Her research uses criminal law and evidence law to advance meso-level theories of race, examining the organizational mechanisms through which legal institutions reproduce systemic inequality.

Walters completed her Master of Laws at Columbia University as a Fulbright Scholar with High Honors; she also completed her JD cum laude at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law. Walters served as a law clerk to Justice Sheilah Martin at the Supreme Court of Canada and is called to the bar of Ontario, Canada. Before graduate school, Walters practiced as a criminal defense lawyer at a top criminal law firm in Toronto, Ontario. She has appeared before all levels of court, including before the Supreme Court of Canada.

Walters’ Hildebrand Fellowship will support her travel to Ontario, where she will investigate how Canadian evidence law structures outcomes for racialized accused persons in criminal trials. She will complete a systematic content analysis of trial transcripts and reported decisions to examine how bad character evidence is tendered in criminal trials against racialized accused persons.

In addition to her Hildebrand Fellowship, Walters is currently the Stuart-Delisle Research Fellow at Queen’s University Faculty of Law, and a Research Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Institute to End Mass Incarceration.

Former Sproul Fellow Corey Schultz Publishes Article on How Museums Shape Public Memory of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools

Professor Corey Schultz, a former Canadian Studies Sproul Fellow, recently published an article on how Canadian museums shape conversations about the country’s Indian residential schools, based on research that he conducted as a Canadian Studies visiting fellow.

Titled “Canada’s Indian Residential Schools: Museums, Heritage, and Affect“, the article was published last month in Museum Management and Curatorship.

Professor Schultz is an associate professor in Media & Communications at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. His research focuses on visual culture, memory studies, and heritage and museum studies. He holds a PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London, and an MA from UC Berkeley.

The research for Professor Schultz’s new article was conducted with the support of a John A. Sproul Fellowship that he received from Canadian Studies in 2022. During his residency at Berkeley, he gave a talk on his in-progress research titled “Canada’s Residential Schools and the Futures of Commemoration”.

Professor Schultz’s article expands upon the themes of that talk, revealing the key role that museums play as memory-making spaces that inform public consciousness of the abuses of the Indian residential school system. Per the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the museums present a “corrective” historiography that combats historical amnesia and denialism about the schools. Uniquely, Professor Schultz does not only discuss how institutions frame and tell the narrative of the schools; he also explores how the design of the physical exhibit spaces creates an emotionally affective space for the visitor.

The full article may be accessed for free through the UC Berkeley Library.

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