Reflections on CHA 2019

Another year, another CHA Annual Meeting in the books. As I did in 2017 and 2018, I wanted to take some time to reflect on my experiences at this year’s conference.

As always, a big thank you goes to the CHA, the 2019 Program Chair, Michel Ducharme, and the 2019 Program Committee (Barrington Walker, Bradley Miller, Caroline Durand, Damien-Claude Bélanger, David Meren, Denis McKim, Elizabeth Mancke, Eryka Dyck, James Moran, Jo McCutcheon, Jocelyn Thorpe, Lara Campbell, Laura Ishiguro, Paige Raibmon, Pierre-Yves Saunier, and Robert McDonald). In many respects, this was an important Congress for me personally. The first ever CHA Annual Meeting I ever attended was at UBC in 2008. It also happens to be the institution where I am currently teaching a Canadian history course.

Home is Where the People Are

When I sat down to write this reflection, the first thing I thought of was that my favourite part of this Congress, and indeed all Congresses, is the people. I know it sounds cheesy, but I really do feel so lucky to be part of such an amazing community of individuals. I am so grateful for all of the time I got to spend hanging out and learning from friends, and sad that I didn’t get to see everyone! I loved being able to meet so many people for the first time, people who I have spent years talking to online or know only from their bodies of work. Two particular moments stand out for me. First, while I was giving my paper on Jewish women and second wave feminism, my throat abruptly gave out. I asked if anyone had cough drops or candies, and everyone present immediately started looking. I was saved by my fellow awesome Jewish ladies, Lynne Marks and Janice Rosen, with an additional potential assist from Ben Bradley. I can’t think of another professional conference where something like that would happen. Second, by the time the end of day three came around, I was so exhausted. For the first time in a long time, my husband, Lee Blanding, was also on campus for Congress. He came to keep me company while I waited to go into the next panel, and I accidentally fell asleep on his lap. I am normally incapable of falling asleep, no matter how tired, in strange places. So, for me, this was an indication not only that my husband is adorable, but that I felt comfortable and safe amidst my colleagues. And that is a wonderful feeling.

Marginalized Histories Within and Without our Field

While I don’t have the space (or the time!) to talk about every single event that I attended, I do want to talk about a couple of the larger themes. First is the continuing marginalization of certain fields within Canadian history. In her CCWGH keynote address, “Queer Thoughts for Challenging Times: Writing Canadian Histories of Sexuality and Gender from the Margins,” Valerie Korinek discussed her experience doing history from the margins of the historical profession. And she was not just speaking about queer history, but also the history of the Prairies and the history of small towns and rural spaces. She also asked important questions: how does the history of sexuality get embraced by Canadian history? Why can’t queer history move out of the margins, even as it drives innovation? To date, there are currently no Canada Research Chairs in the history of sexuality. Even though she is a full professor and now dean, she’s had to deal with considerable gatekeeping and attempts at silencing. But, as she noted, though the field of Canadian history itself is conservative, the people within it are wonderfully supportive. She ended with a quote from the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls final report, calling on all of us to consider how we can enact their calls for justice, and emphasizing that we need history now more than ever.

Many of these same issues were raised in the panel on “Complicated Conversations: Re-examining Canadian Historical Scholarship through a Critical Race Lens,” with Funké Aladejebi, Patrice Allen, Claudine Bonner, and Natasha Henry. As chair Afua Cooper noted, Black Canadian history continues to be marginalized in our field. The fact that there was only one panel on Black Canadian history itself was telling. But as these scholars demonstrated, the field is thriving in spite of this. All four scholars discussed how Black Canadian history is experienced both by Black Canadians, but also the Canadian public in general. Aladejebi discussed historical memories and relationships that cross borders and time periods. Allen shared how she is recovering the stories of the powerful Black women activists who played such a central role in their associations. Bonner discussed the Atlantic Diasporic Narrative, and how the history of African Nova Scotians has been preserved and ignored in the Maritimes. And Henry discussed how Canadian historical narratives have glossed over our history with enslavement. As I listened to these wonderful scholars, I was struck by the strength and resilience of historians in Black history, women’s and gender history, and queer history, and the important work that they continue to do.

Emotional Ties, Support Networks, and Archival Silences

 Many of the points raised by Korinek were also present in the next panel, “Writing Family History and Objectivity,” with Leslie Choquette, Catherine Gidney, Bonnie Huskins, Brittany Luby (Anishinaabe), and Ben Bryce. All of these scholars talked about challenges of doing family history, navigating layered and complex emotional ties, feeling exposed by writing such personal histories, the collaborative nature of this work, and being critiqued for failing to be “objective,” despite the fact that all historians have to deal with the issue of objectivity. I was particularly struck in this panel by the important support networks that enable this, and other, kinds of research. Both Gidney and Huskins emphasized how their partners not only served as sounding boards, but also provided crucial outsider perspectives. Luby discussed the role that her family and community played in driving her research, and why it is so important to foster relationships between the self and other beings. She also raised the issue of secondary trauma, or the trauma that results from doing research on difficult topics, and the need for communities of care. And Bryce talked about how he had long talks with colleagues about whether to even pursue this kind of research. All of the scholars had experienced different responses to their work, but all leaned into the discomfort in a way that was striking and remarkable.

I noticed many of the same themes in the “Listening to the People: New Conversations with the Archives of State Hearings,” with Mary Chapman, Laura Ishiguro, Maddie Knickerbocker, and Eryk Martin. Like their colleagues on the panel on family history, these scholars showcased how they are recovering stories from state archives in new and innovative ways, stories that otherwise would have gone unknown. Chapman explained how she recovered the story of an enslaved Chinese woman, known to history as Achuen Amoy. Ishiguro shared more research from her current work on Sarah Greer, and again discussed what we can learn by reading into archival silences. Knickerbocker shared how the archives can showcase how Stó:lō chiefs spoke back to the McKenna-McBride commission, setting their own agenda, asserting their sovereignty, and fighting for their people. Finally, Martin shared his work on the Vancouver Five, and how activists used police documents to understand and combat the surveillance state. This panel, as well as all of the others I’ve mentioned, are powerful demonstrations that the stories of marginalized folks are in the historical record, if you are willing to do the work to find them.

The final panel of the conference (for me at least), was “Non-Trivial Pursuits: Historicizing Late-Twentieth Century Canada,” with Jenny Ellison, Matthew Hayday, Nancy Janovicek, and Dimitry Anastakis. I have to admit, while I do study the late twentieth century, political history is not my strong suit. But this panel was just so much fun to attend! That’s something that gets lost, I think, in conferences and our day-to-day work: the sheer joy of history and the genuine pleasure involved in listening to passionate experts in their fields. I mean, who else would think to use Trivial Pursuit as a lens to discuss Canadian culture, but Ellison? Who else could actually make me excited to learn about Red Tories and a Conservative Premier from New Brunswick but Hayday and Anastakis? And who else could bring the heritage of the West Kootneys to life like Janovicek?

And, as always, I do wish I could clone myself, because based on the live-tweeting, there were tons of wonderful papers I would have liked to see! Definitely check them out here. And you can even watch “Disciplines in Dialogue: Historical Knowledge and Social Media in History, Archaeology, and Archival Science,” (me, Joanne Hammond, Steph Halmhofer, and Krista McCracken)  on Facebook Live!. Just ignore the sideways angle for the first half, and the minor “earthquake” that happened when Emma Battell Lowman dropped my iPad. Oops.

Canadian History at the CHA Annual Meeting

Since I really enjoyed making my word cloud last year, I thought I’d give it another go to see what the CHA Annual Meeting programcan tell us about Canadian history as a discipline right now. Once again, I entered only paper titles (as well as the titles of roundtables). Commonly-used words like “the” or “and” were removed. The results were pretty interesting. The top ten words were, in order:

1. Canada: 43
2. Canadian: 34
3. History: 32
4. War: 27
5. World: 19
6. Indigenous: 17
7. Politics: 14
8. Conversations: 13
9. First: 13
10. North: 13

If we remove “History,” “Historical,” “Canadian,” and “Canada,” we end up with a top ten that looks like this:

1. War: 27
2. World: 19
3. Indigenous: 17
4. Politics: 14
5. Conversations: 13
6. First: 13
7. North: 13
8. Early: 11
9. Women: 10
10. New: 10

There were a lot of repeats from last year, including “War,” “Indigenous,” “World,” “First,” “North,” and “Early.” Interestingly, “British” did not appear in either top ten list, nor did “Public” or “Ontario.” And “Women” cracked the top ten for the first time in a while. As I mentioned last year, there are limits to what a word cloud can tell you. But I think this one points to the ongoing dominance of military and political history in our field, as well as the growing emphasis on Indigenous history and world history. The history of race (only 5 mentions), gender (5) and women’s history continue to be underrepresented, though there are some small signs of improvement.

Speaking and Listening

While I of course enjoyed my time at Congress this year, as every year, it was not without some issues of concern. There are a couple of issues that I wanted to address here.

Things Left Unsaid 

I also felt like there were important undercurrents going on that needed to be addressed. In previous years, there was much more engagement around issues like precarity and pedagogy. I was informed that only two people came to the panel on the first year after defense. Public history and digital history seemed underrepresented this year, at least to my eyes. But most importantly, there was absolutely no discussion about the issues raised by Allan Downey in his Twitter thread on the lack of diversity in the CHA and for the CHA Best Scholarly Book Prize in particular. I was pleased to see that the CHA did issue an official response, but it’s hard to find on the website unless you know what you are looking for. Moreover, nobody talked about this issue at the CHA Annual Meeting, despite the fact that there are very clear problems. Ben Bryce mentioned in his paper that the CHA continues to be plagued by “manels,” or all-male panels.And the award winners also showcase how the CHA has failed to diversify. I do want to note that I appreciate how much work jury members do for these prize committees, having been on a couple myself. I also don’t want to take away from the achievements of those who did win awards. But, out of twenty-three awards, fourteen were won by straight, white, cis-men, versus eight women (six white, one Indigenous, one Black — taking into account that two prizes were won by a group of women considered together), and another was won by an organization. What’s more, when we take out the awards for gender, ethnicity, and Indigenous history, only three women, all white, won awards. This demonstrates that many of the issues raised by Elise Chenier, Lori Chambers, and Anne Toews in their 2016 publication, “Still Working in the Shadow of Men? An Analysis of Sex Distribution in Publications and Prizes in Canadian History” remain.

Racism and Solidarity

On June 2^nd, Black graduate student Shelby McPhee was harassed by two white Congress attendees asking to see proof that he was registered to attend conference. They followed him, verbally harassed him, and photographed him. They then contacted the RCMP. The RCMP then illegally detained Shelby McPhee until a representative from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences arrived, and this representative spoke first to the accusers.

This is unacceptable. There is no scenario where this type of behaviour is appropriate. The full extent of the incident was the subject of an open letter issued by the Black Canadian Studies Association on June 4^th. And while the Federation clearly failed here (you can see their statements, as well as the official statement from UBC, here), what bothered me the most was the silence around what happened. I had no idea this incident had occurred until June 5^th. It did not make the national media. It was not addressed by the Federation during Congress. And official statements from individual associations were slow in coming. Lucia Lorenzi posted a Google Spreadsheet documenting these responses, and has found only eight official statements from the eighty-one individual associations that attended Congress this year. Several additional organizations posted responses and letters of support on Twitter. I am proud to say that one of these institutions was the CHA, though the official letter only came on June 7^th. If we cannot stand together as a community of scholars against racism, then we need to rethink what we are doing. But, once again, I feel like this was a missed opportunity to talk about ongoing issues in all fields of study.

My goal in raising these issues isn’t to complain, but rather to point to areas where conversation, the theme of this year’s conference, is desperately needed. Issues of race and representation, gender inequality, heterosexism, ableism, and all forms of discrimination need to be addressed head on. And brief glance at this year’s CHA Annual Meeting program shows that we are well placed tackle such difficult topics. What’s more, I have faith that we, as a community, can do better. The CHA might not be perfect, and there is lots of work to do, but it’s worth it.

We’ll be back on Sunday for a brand new Canadian history roundup, two-week edition.

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