I’m really excited to announce that NOTCHES: (re)marks on the history of sexuality has just published a new blog post written by yours truly! The post is based on my own research, so if you’ve been curious about what kind of work I do when I’m not writing here, check it out! Here’s a short preview:
In 1965, a Jewish couple living in Venezuela contacted the Jewish Child Welfare Bureau (JCWB) of Montreal and asked about the possibility of adopting a Jewish child. The JCWB declined their request and told them that due to the small number of Jewish children eligible for adoption, they only placed children with permanent residents of the city. They tried to entice the Venezuelan couple to adopt children that were harder to place: mixed-race children born to white Jewish mothers and Black Canadian fathers.
Montreal’s Jewish Child Welfare Bureau reflected the widely held view in Jewish communities that reproductive intra-faith sex was vital to shoring up racial-religious boundaries and to reproducing Jewish religion and ethnicity. Indeed, Jewish institutions such as the JCWB regulated reproduction and reproductive outcomes, including adoption, in order to construct and preserve Jewish identity in interracial and interethnic contexts.
[The guest post that was planned for today has been postponed. Instead, here is a meditation on a history that is very personal to me. Special thanks to Pete Anderson for his help in researching this post, and for providing the photograph below.]
Spring is a very special time of year for me. For the most part, this has to do with lilacs, my favourite flowers. When I was a little girl, my elderly neighbour, Mr. Sullivan, had the most amazing lilac bush. He had planted several seedlings together when he first bought the house in the 1950s, so that by the 1980s, they had grown together into this massive tree. Every May, since this was Montreal, the tree would explode into bloom. This was my favourite time of the year, and one I looked forward to for months. The tree was next to my second-story bedroom window, so whenever my window was open, the scent of lilacs permeated my room. Mr. Sullivan would also bring over armfuls of lilac flowers for my family, and I always begged to be allowed to put a bouquet of them in my room. Over the years, lilacs have come to represent spring, joy, and wonder for me.
So, when I spotted a blooming lilac bush during a run the other day, I got to wondering about the history of lilacs, particularly in Canada. My husband was dubious; after all, who really cares about the history of a particular flower, even if it is really pretty? But, as I’ve discovered with my research, there is more to this flower than meets the eye.
When it comes to North American symbols of feminism, few outrank Rosie the Riveter in ubiquity and popularity. Although Rosie imagery dates from the Second World War, it’s still extremely potent and recognizable. Today, when you mention Rosie, most people think of artist J. Howard Miller’s “We Can Do It!” poster, designed to hang briefly in Westinghouse factories, and featuring a beautiful woman in a uniform, sleeves rolled up, arm raised, fist clenched. There’s ample evidence that this particular Rosie image is both familiar and constantly being reinvented. For example, on any given day, check out #wecandoit on Instagram, and you’re guaranteed to see many examples of people posing as Rosie, dressed up as Rosie, taking her iconic stance or wearing something that evokes Rosie, like her signature red and white polka dot bandana. There are also many consumer products featuring the image, like this lip balm I recently received as a gift.
Note from Andrea: As promised, here is the first of two special guest posts while I’m recovering from surgery (which went great!). First up is a post by the fabulous Dr. Adam Barker, who is not only one of my favourite humans, but also such an awesome academic that if I didn’t like him so much, I’d have to kill him (jk). 🙂 Born and raised in Hamilton, Dr. Barker is an expert in the history of colonialism in North America. In his academic work, he studies historical and contemporary relationships between Indigenous peoples and Canadian Settlers, while also working to provide the tools and frameworks that are needed to forge new and better ones. He, and his super-smart wife, Dr. Emma Battell Lowman were the ones who introduced me to the idea of settler colonialism back when we were all in graduate school (in the dark ages). He spends much of his spare time with Xena, pictured to the left, and just generally kicking butt on Twitter. If you like this post, I would highly recommend picking up the latest book from Drs. Barker and Battell Lowman, Settler: Identity and Colonialism in 21st Century Canada.
(In honour of Thanksgiving, our regular Tuesday blog post is out on Monday!)
Growing up in a Jewish household in Montreal, Thanksgiving was never really on my radar. I mean, I knew it existed, but it had very little meaning for me personally. Mostly it was just a day off. At least, that’s how it was until I went over to my non-Jewish boyfriend’s house and experienced a “traditional” Canadian Thanksgiving for the first time. Oh my god, the mashed potatoes and gravy…. Anyways, after seeing a number of articles online that sounded wrong, I started wondering about the history of Canadian Thanksgiving. What I found both did, and didn’t, surprise me. So in this blog post, I’m going to talk about why we celebrate Thanksgiving in Canada, what distinguishes Canadian and American Thanksgiving, and what the holiday has to do with how we remember and forget our collective histories.
When most people think about Jewish holidays, the first one that often comes to mind is Chanukah. Which is kind of funny since it’s actually a really minor holiday that has been blown out of proportion to keep up with Christmas (there are few things as depressing as being Jewish during Christmas). However, the most important Jewish religious holiday is actually Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Since Rosh Hashanah starts on October 2nd, and my research concentrates on the history of Jews in Montreal, I though this was a great opportunity to do another edition of “What’s in My…” featuring the most ubiquitous Jewish-Canadian cookbook of all time, A Treasure for my Daughter. Strap yourselves in – it’s going to be a wild ride.
Welcome back to another edition of “What’s in My ____?,” the series that uses material culture to take a snapshot of a moment in time. Find out about the inspiration behind the series and read the first blog post by going here.
Today’s blog post was inspired by the picture you see at the top of the page, which is an image of a child’s book bag from the early 1940s. The photo comes from the Virtual Museum exhibit on rural schools created by the Assiniboia and District Museum, located in southern Saskatchewan. As soon as I saw this picture, I knew that I had to write a blog post about it!
If you’ve spent any time on Youtube lately, then you’re probably aware of the massive community of online beauty gurus. One of the more popular types of videos that these gurus regularly post are “What’s in My Bag” videos.
Often sold as “girly” guilty pleasures, these videos are shockingly formulaic. They all start with a demonstration of the designer purse and the accompanying wallet. Next, they take apart the cosmetics bag, describing each item in detail. While doing so, the guru will crack jokes about how she is so girly and probably doesn’t need to be carrying around all of this makeup. There will often be a furtive and almost guilty joke about tampons or pads, sometimes including allusions to deodorizers. And the videos will conclude with a display of the guru’s smart phone, completed with adorable cover, earbuds, designer sunglasses, and her keys.
As a historian, I find myself fascinated by the performances of white feminine gender norms that are inherent to these videos. What do I mean by performance? Performance theory argues that ideas like gender and race are abstract concepts that serve as “scripts,” each particular to a time and place. In order to be recognized as belonging to a particular gender, race, class, etc, individuals try to follow these scripts as closely as possible. For example, think about how some girls are really smart but pretend not to be in order to be more socially acceptable or attractive to boys.
Expert Tip:Judith Butler is most famously associated with performance theory in history.
While watching these videos, I kept finding myself thinking about historical handbags, and what they would say about the lives of people who carried them. When most people think about historical sources, their minds go immediately to written documents. Material objects are another kind of source that historians can use. In many ways, these objects are the ultimate embodiment of Unwritten Histories, since not only do historians not often consider them but they also tell important stories about people who might not have left written documents. What’s more is that many of these material objects were personal items, things that were used on a daily basis, and so much a part of the landscape that they were seldom described in historical sources.
So in this new series on material history, “What’s in My ____?,” I will select a bag, container, or room, and use the material objects that would have appeared in these receptacles to provide an intimate look into the hidden lives of people in the past.
Victoria Day – it sounds like a pretty straightforward holiday. And you’d think that it would have a relatively straightforward history. At least that what I thought when I decided to write a blog post about Victoria Day. And boy, was I wrong. This entire week has been an exercise in frustration. But that’s actually normal. A good historian can never assume that a particular subject is going to be a no-brainer, since sometimes the simplest questions have the most complex answers. And sometimes, when you’re a historian, even if you ask all the right questions, all you get is a week of abject chaos. Because that’s how history works – its messy, complicated, and sometimes, the answers just aren’t there. So in today’s blog post, while I will talk about the history of Victoria Day, I’m also going to talk about realities of doing history.
It’s Census time! I know I was super excited to get my card in the mail, and then bitterly disappointed that I got the short-form questionnaire. Some of you (ok most of you) might be wondering what the heck is wrong with us census-lovers. In news reports on the subject, you’ve likely come across references to the first census in Canada, conducted in New France (Quebec) in the 1660s, some discussion of the abolishment of the long-form questionnaire and its subsequent return, and some about how Canadians broke the census website in their enthusiasm. But what these news stories don’t tell you is why the census is important.So this week, I’m going to talk about the history of the census in Canada, what purpose it serves, and why Canadian historians are in love with it. And I promise to not talk about numbers. 😉
