We’re back today with everyone’s favourite series, Historian’s Histories! If you’d like to see more posts from this series, you can do so here. This latest entry features the fierce Sarah York-Bertram – feminist, activist, and sex work historian.
A scholar from Treaty Six Territory, Sarah York-Bertram is a PhD Candidate in York University’s Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies programme. She studies histories of sex work, the affective basis of social responses to the sex trade, and the erasure of sex workers’ histories from public memory specializing in the geographic area of the Canadian Prairies. She won a Joseph Armand-Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship for 2015-2018 in support of her dissertation project Stopping Traffic: Historicizing Trafficking of Women and Girls in Canada’s Prairie West, 1880-1940
Also a qualitative and community-based researcher, Sarah has worked on studies of feminist pedagogies in relation to intercultural learning, educational access and justice, harm reduction, parenthood in the context of HIV/AIDS, and digital queer communities and activisms. She has also coordinated the Neil Richards Exploring Cultures Group and various other queer and feminist-focused groups in Saskatoon and Toronto.
What is your background (education, life experience, etc..)?
I grew up in rural Saskatchewan and had a fairly unconventional upbringing. My family moved all over the province for my dad’s work as a grain buyer before moving close to family to farm in North-East Saskatchewan. I was homeschooled some of the time, which allowed me to pursue interests like traveling to Honduras for humanitarian work. My early travels abroad were formational and got me thinking early on about how particular histories ushered some people into positions of privilege often at the expense of Indigenous people, Black people, and people of the global south.
I moved to Saskatoon with friends shortly after I turned eighteen. At that time I was not permitted entry into the University of Saskatchewan (USask) because of being homeschooled (the rules have since changed). I found a way around it by enrolling in correspondence courses through Athabasca University for a year majoring in Psychology. I transferred to USask and after attending Dr. Pam Downe’s incredible Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies (WGST) course, I switched from Psychology and became one of the only Women’s and Gender Studies majors at USask. Best decision I ever made.
I later worked with Dr. Downe as a community based researcher at AIDS Saskatoon for her Canadian Institutes of Health Research funded study on parenthood and care giving in the context of HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C. That was also a formational experience that solidified for me the necessity of harm reduction, the decriminalization of drugs, decolonization, and trauma-informed care.
What drew you to history in the first place?
I have always been interested in history. But my undergraduate experience in WGST cinched it for me. As an interdisciplinary program, it draws from and contributes to a lot of different disciplines but a primary focus of WGST is epistemology. Early on in my academic career I remember wondering:
What gets remembered? What gets forgotten? And who decides?
Why did you decide to become a historian?
In 2010 I joined a study abroad course to New York City with a diverse crew of artists, writers, geographers, art historians, and political studies scholars. The course instructor was Dr. Marie Lovrod, director of USask’s WGST program and the course facilitated all of our interests, from feminist geography to urban history to dance to critical sexuality studies to Indigenous studies, to urban planning. That course was like an incubator and it was in that diverse crew that I finally found where I fit. I began a research project on the histories and subsequent erasures of sex work in Saskatoon and New York City. This project turned out to be the first step of what would become my graduate research in History and, later, in Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies (GFWS).
Why did you decide to focus on your particular area of study?
My work in Honduras, AIDS Saskatoon, and my studies in WGST showed me the complexities of survival sex work and sexual commerce. For many women, girls and trans* people, trading sex for food, shelter, and financial resources is what keeps them and their family’s afloat. Approaches to understanding sex work has changed a lot over time. As I studied histories of sex work in Saskatchewan for my Master’s in History at the University of Saskatchewan, I learned that for many women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, sex work was their best option. I began to understand that the categorization of certain women as “good” and others as “bad” had a history and that the dominant and fairly recent narrative of sex workers as “in need of rescue” did not capture the whole story nor did it serve sex workers or address their needs.
What kind of work do you do as a historian?
During my Master’s I investigated histories of and social responses to Saskatchewan’s sex trades in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. My current doctoral research at York University uses affect and emotionology as a lens to understand judgments and narratives of sexual commerce, sex work, and the concept of trafficking on the Canadian prairies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I’m drawing from feminist affect theory, emotionology, social psychology, neuroscience, socio-legal studies, decolonial and anti-racist theory, Indigenous studies, and Canadian studies to understand and historicize social and legal approaches to sexual commerce.
What is the coolest and/or strangest thing you’ve ever found or learned while doing research?
Sex workers have always been at the forefront of social justice movements and have often been light-years ahead of the rest of the general population when it comes to things like inter-racial relationships and racial justice, queerness and sexualities, disability rights, border imperialism and migrant justice, reproductive justice, labour rights, and human rights in general. Not to mention their impact on technology, fashion, and popular culture. Despite all of their influence and contributions, they’re often erased from “official” historical narratives.
What is your favourite part about being a historian? And what is your least favourite part?
I think my favourite part is contributing to a fuller understanding of humanity.
My least favourite part is reading microfilm.
What is the most surprising thing you’ve ever learned about history?
When I started graduate school and I was coming into the discipline from WGST, I experienced a bit of culture shock. I think what struck me most was the wide array of people who are drawn to the discipline and how those people represent many different experiences, worldviews, and values. When you think about it, the main thing historians have in common is an interest in the past. That leaves a lot of room for difference, which is one of the discipline’s strengths. There are a lot of important, robust, and dynamic dialogues that go on in historical scholarship.
Why do you think we, as a society, should study history?
History tells us where we’ve been and why. It tells us, for better or worse, how we’ve come to be. With that knowledge we can understand better where we’re going, how to get there, and how to bring everyone along and make sure no one gets left behind.
If you could go back in time, whether to live or just visit, which time and place would you pick and why?
I’ve been doing a lot of genealogy and family history research lately and what most interests me now is my ancestry. I don’t think I could pick one time to go back to. If I could, I’d meet my ancestors and talk to them about their lives and homelands. I’d ask them about the circumstances that made them migrate to what is now Canada.
What is your favourite historical book/film/museum/etc, and why?
Red Lights on the Prairies by James Gray has a special place in my heart. It was the first book on my topic that I poured over. I have a ragged copy at home that I know like the back of my hand.
In your opinion, what is the most important event or person in Canadian history that everyone should know about?
I think the most important thing to understand about Canadian history is settler colonialism. Not much makes sense without understanding it and its relevant to everyone, regardless of occupation, social location, or field of expertise. Got a job in healthcare? Learn about settler colonialism. Work at a bank? Learn about settler colonialism. Are you a teacher? Learn about settler colonialism. Are you a grain buyer? Learn about settler colonialism. Are you a politician? Learn about settler colonialism. Do you work for your town, your city, your rural municipality, your reserve, your band? Learn about settler colonialism. No matter where you go or what you do, it’s relevant and impacts your life.
Special thanks to Sarah York-Bertram for this fantastic interview! Don’t forget to follow her on Twitter @AllYorkNoPlay! I hope you enjoyed this week’s blog post. If you did, please consider sharing it on the social media platform of your choice. And don’t forget to check back on Sunday for a brand new Canadian History Roundup. See you then!
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