The Unwritten Rules of History

Tag: Black history

The Historical is Personal – Redux: Positionality

Image of a maple tree canopy. Behind is a blue sky, the sun shining through the shadowed leaves.

The maple tree that used to stand outside my parents’ place. Photo by author.

I recently re-read Pamela Sugiman’s wonderful article, “A Million Hearts from Here,” in preparation for a discussion group on WW2. If you haven’t read this piece yet, I highly recommend it. I often find myself rereading texts, whether they are academic articles or novels, and each time I do, I always find something new to think about. This time, I was particularly struck by Sugiman’s personal connection to her research.  As the daughter and granddaughter of Japanese-Canadian internees, she is closely connected to her own research on this subject. And now, as a mother, she is an active “maker of memory” for her daughter.[1] As Sugiman was working on this project, her daughter also wrote a short story about a little girl who was interned. She selected the title, “A Million Hearts from Here,” explaining

“I called it “A Million Hearts from Here” because it is about a million people, well, a lot of people, that were interned. And they all had a heart somewhere. And “from here”? They were a long way away [from home]. And how would you feel if you were away, for about four years?”

Sugiman goes on to explain how her own research was in turn influenced by her grandmother, an internee, who, though she has passed, lives on in the memory of Sugiman’s daughter.

While Sugiman uses this story to set up her argument about “the ways in which our memories of historical injustices travel across generations and are strongly shaped by our most intimate relationships,”[2] to my mind it also speaks to an unspoken truth about much historical research: its personal connection to our own lives. So, in today’s blog post, I am going to share my own personal connection to my research, talk about subjectivity/objectivity and, and the importance of positionality.

 

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Best New Articles from December 2016

Best New Articles December 2016

Because, let’s face it – who has time to catch up on all the journal articles published in Canadian history?

 

Welcome back to the Best New Articles series, where each month, I post a list of my favourite new articles! Don’t forget to also check out my favourites from previous months, which you can access by clicking here.

This month I read articles from:

Here are my favourites:

 

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A Guide to Online Resources for Teaching and Learning about WW1 in Canada

A war effort poster: “Salvage! Every Little Helps” / Sia R. Chilvers. Library and Archives Canada, e010696424; Acc. No. 1983-28-190 / CC by 2.0

A war effort poster: “Salvage! Every Little Helps” / Sia R. Chilvers. Library and Archives Canada, e010696424; Acc. No. 1983-28-190 / CC by 2.0

(Newly updated as of February 27, 2017!)

I’m actually rather surprised to find that no one’s really done this before. This collection started out as a Word document that I used for creating classroom activities for my survey classes. The one-page document has now grown to seventeen pages. Before anyone yells at me for leaving things out, I do want to warn you that this is not a comprehensive list.  I have tried to limit this list to resources that are available from verified sources, archives, museums, universities, and historical societies. There are a ton of personal websites by genealogists and military history enthusiasts that are great, but because I can’t verify their sources personally and because this list is aimed mostly at educators, I chose to leave them out.

Each link will be listed by title, then institution. I have included a short description of each link, and which sections will be of particular interest or use to educators.

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