Canadian Studies Announcements

In This Issue:

In the News

Grant opportunity

External Events

IN THE NEWS

Royal BC Museum Slated for Almost $1 Billion Overhaul

The Royal BC Museum in Victoria will receive a major overhaul under a new proposal by the government of British Columbia. On May 13, premier John Horgan announced a $789 million grant to completely rebuild the complex at its current site by 2030. The project – the most expensive museum in Canadian history – has drawn fierce criticism, yet proponents argue that the redevelopment isn’t just a practical necessity – it’s a moral one.

The provincial government contends that the project is long overdue. The museum is one of British Columbia’s most popular attractions, drawing almost a million visitors a year before the pandemic. However, the current buildings, which date to 1968, have been deemed seismically unsafe and inadequate by modern conservation standards. The government has already made plans to move the BC Provincial Archives, previously housed in the museum, to a new, $224 million building outside Victoria due to the risk of flooding at the current site.

Practical concerns aside, project leaders also see an opportunity to build a more inclusive museum in the spirit of Indigenous reconciliation. Tourism minister Melanie Mark said the new museum will take the “diverse stories of British Columbians and Indigenous peoples out of the shadows and into the light”. Indigenous activists have long insisted that museums recognize the colonialist intent of their collections, and make museum spaces more welcoming to Indigenous visitors and other minority groups.

The Royal BC Museum is considered a leader in this space, and has already undergone several major changes in recent years. In 2021, the museum released a “Report to British Columbians” apologizing for the institution’s colonial history and announcing a new curatorial policy that elevates Indigenous voices and prioritizes object repatriations.

Last semester, Canadian Studies hosted a discussion with two of the Indigenous cultural experts at the forefront of efforts to “decolonize” the collection. Lou-Ann Neel helped develop the museum’s Indigenous Repatriation Handbook, and overseas efforts to return cultural goods to their tribes of origin. Meanwhile, Michelle Washington has spearheaded plans for a “living museum” that includes present-day Indigenous societies. Thanks to efforts like theirs, the new museum will include Indigenous ceremonial and cultural spaces, where sacred and ritual objects can be used for their intended purpose.

The museum has already begun dismantling exhibits deemed to promote colonialism, beginning with its historical collections and widely-criticized exhibits on Indigenous societies in the province. In January, it also permanently closed the “Becoming B.C.” exhibit, which centered on interactive, walk-through sets showing life in a 19th-century BC town. The exhibit’s narrative was argued to privilege the history of European settlers over other groups. The exhibit will eventually be replaced by one that covers the diversity of BC’s many Native and immigrant inhabitants.

The museum is slated to close in September, and will remain shut for most of the next decade, with a projected completion date of 2030 at the earliest. However, the museum will continue to stage travelling exhibitions from its permanent collection.

GRANT OPPORTUNITY

Fulbright Research Chairs in Canada

Deadline: September 15, 2022

Fulbright Canada is accepting applications for more than 50 Fulbright Research Chairs at top Canadian institutions. These grants are available to US scholars, and support research with Canadian colleagues for a four to nine month period. Awards are available with start dates of September 2023 and January 2024.

Applicants can apply for awards in several categories.

Please note these awards are only open to US citizens. Click here to see full application requirements and procedures.

Interested applicants are encouraged to sign up for the webinar “Preparing a Successful Application for a Fulbright in Canada“, scheduled for 12 pm PT on June 8.

EXTERNAL EVENTS

Memorial Day Service

Sunday, May 29 | 11:00 am PT | Colma | RSVP here

Join Branch 25 of the Royal Canadian Legion, representing the San Francisco Bay Area, for their annual Memorial Day Service, supported by the U.S. Naval Sea Cadet Corps (USNSCC) Arkansas Division. The service will take place at the Royal Canadian Legion plot in Greenlawn Cemetery at 1100 El Camino Real in Colma.

This event will be webcast live; if you are unable to attend in person and wish to view the online stream, please register above.

Canadian Studies Program

213 Moses Hall #2308

WEBSITE | EMAIL | DONATE

Canadian Studies Announcements

In This Issue:

Program News & Events

In the News

External Events

PROGRAM NEWS & EVENTS

TODAY & TOMORROW

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.

IN THE NEWS

Opinion: The War, the Reckoning, and its Aftermath

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has forced the West to radically reassess its view of the contemporary global order. A new opinion piece published in Canada’s Policy magazine argues that the invasion marks a historic turning point in the post-Cold War political landscape, one where Canada can play an important role. Written by Jeremy Kinsman, a former diplomat who has spoken at Canadian Studies events multiple times, the piece argues that Canada’s distinctive internationalist and consensus-driven outlook makes it an ideal ambassador for a rules-based global order.

While Canada has a responsibility to support Ukraine and its NATO allies, it should also reach out to non-aligned countries hesitant to take sides in the current conflict. Many are skeptical of the current UN diplomatic framework, often hobbled by conflicts between the US, Russia, and China. Canada should encourage the formation of a strong global network with medium powers and small countries based on multilateral dialogue and cooperation. By convincing these nations that a rules-based order is in their interest, Canada can play a critical role in fostering a “constructive global mindset” that promotes human rights globally without the burdens of great-power rivalries.

Google honors birthday of Black Canadian-American inventor Elijah McCoy

Visitors to Google’s homepage today will be greeted with a Google Doodle horing an innovate Canadian-American engineer with a famous name – even if many people don’t know it belongs to him. Recognized as one of the foremost Black inventors of his time, Elijah McCoy invented 57 patents, including crucial advancements that helped trains operate for longer periods without maintenance. And his legacy of superior products lives on today in our everyday language – read on to find out how!

McCoy was born in Colchester, Ontario, on May 2, 1844, to parents who had fled enslavement in Kentucky. He attend his early years of school in Canada. At age 15, he was sent to Scotland, where he graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Edinburgh. McCoy then returned to his family, who by this point had relocated to Michigan.

Failing to find employement as an engineer, McCoy took a job with the Michigan Central Railroad. McCoy noticed how inefficient it was that train would have to be stopped regularly in order to lubricate the engines. Inspired, McCoy began tinkering with methods to solve this problem. In 1872, he created his first patent, an automated device that would allow engines to be lubricated while in motion. Over the next few years, McCoy continued to refine and develop lubricating systems. In 1909, he was praised by Booker T. Washington for having developed more patents than any Black man up to that time, and by the 1920s he was running his own company manufacturing lubricators.

McCoy was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2001. However, his most famous contribution to the world may be in loaning his name to the phrase “the real McCoy”, first published in an Ontario newspaper in 1884. It is thought to originate from railway engineers asking whether engines were outfitted with a “real McCoy system”, as opposed to one of his numerous inferior copycats.

EXTERNAL EVENTS

Horace Albright Lecture in Conservation: Climate Justice and the Question of Reparations

Thursday, May 5 | 12:00 pm | Berkeley | RSVP here

As the world burns, it’s time to get serious about climate justice. But the climate emergency isn’t just an environmental crisis – it’s also a crisis of racial capitalism and colonialism. The people and countries that have benefitted the least from deforestation and fossil fuel combustion are the most vulnerable to climate change and its impacts. How can we address these harms, and prevent even worse?

Moderated by Canadian Studies faculty affiliate Daniel Aldana Cohen, the panel will feature Canadian journalist and activist Naomi Klein alongside Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Sabrina Fernandez, and Jackie Fielder. This event is sponsored by UC Berkeley Climate Equity and Environmental Justice Roundtable, Rausser College, and the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative.

Canadian Authors at the Bay Area Book Festival

Saturday, 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

WEBSITE | EMAIL | DONATE

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

WEBSITE | EMAIL | DONATE

Canadian Studies Announcements

In This Issue:

Program News & Events

External Events

PROGRAM NEWS & EVENTS

Canadian Studies is Coming to Cal Day!

Saturday, April 23 | 9:00 am – 4:00 pm | Dwinelle Hall

Canadian Studies is pleased to announce that we’ll be manning a booth this Saturday at Cal Day, UC Berkeley’s annual open house! While this year’s event is only open to new students and their families, we’ll be happy to welcome both Canadians and friends of Canada at our booth in Dwinelle Hall with some tasty Canadian candy. Stop by and say hi! We also welcome Berkeley student volunteers: write to us at canada@berkeley.edu for information.

Photo: Sather Gate on Cal Day. (Peg Skorpinski)

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.

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”

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

Celebrating Earth Week Across North America

April 18-25

This Friday, people around the world will come together to celebrate Earth Day, the global holiday promoting the environment, conservation, and sustainability. First celebrated in the United States in 1970, the holiday spread to Canada in 1980.

Visit EarthDay.ca to find a wide variety of fun and educational events (many online) that celebrate Canada’s rich natural heritage. CBC will also be debuting a slate of original shows on nature and climate chance across multiple platforms. And if you’re in Berkeley, don’t miss these great events:

Image: Moraine Lake, Banff National Park, Alberta. (Gorgo, Wikimedia Commons)

Run Woman Run Virtual Screening

Wednesday, April 20 | 1:30 pm PT | Online | RSVP here

In honor of National Canadian Film Day 2022 (April 20), join the Embassy of Canada in Washington, D.C. for a virtual screening of Run Woman Run. Directed by Heiltsuk/Mohawk filmmaker Zoe Leigh Hopkins, this drama-comedy follows a single mom who learns to reclaim her dreams with the help of an unlikely running coach. The screening will begin at 4:30 pm ET and will be followed by a Q&A. Attendees will receive a link to view the film that will be live on April 20 and will be available for viewing for 48 hours.

Permanent Revolution: A Reading and Conversation with Gail Scott

Thursday, April 21 | 4:00 pm | 4229 Dwinelle Hall

The Montreal writer Gail Scott writes in the interstices of anglophone and francophone traditions, of the novel and theory, of prose and poetry. Scott’s audacious books refuse to divorce aesthetics from politics, and they demonstrate the inseparability of the erotic and the theoretical. Her innovative sentences dramatize the fractured relationship to language of minority subjects (including women, lesbians, and Indigenous people) and the sutured subjectivity that results.

In the 1970s and 80s, living in a French-speaking metropolis gave Scott a kind of privileged access to “French theory,” reading Barthes, Cixous or Derrida in the original. It also was during this period that she participated in Quebec’s feminist and formalist écriture au féminin moment alongside the poet Nicole Brossard. Her continental consciousness later led to her involvement with San Francisco’s New Narrative group in the 1990s and New York’s conceptual poetry scene in the past two decades.

Scott reflects on this trajectory in her essay collection, Permanent Revolution (Book*hug, 2021): “an evolutionary snapshot of [her] ongoing prose experiment that hinges the matter of writing to ongoing social upheaval.” She will read from her new book and then be joined by Canadian Studies faculty affiliate William Burton to discuss the politics and/of form, lesbian sexuality, colonisation, and more.

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

WEBSITE | EMAIL | DONATE