Simon Fraser University
Engaging the World

Course Outlines

Spring 2024 - HIST 447W D100

The Nikkei Experience in North America (4)

Class Number: 4733

Delivery Method: In Person

Overview

  • Course Times + Location:

    Jan 8 – Apr 12, 2024: Tue, 2:30–5:20 p.m.
    Burnaby

  • Prerequisites:

    45 units including nine units of lower division history.

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Traces the historical experience of people of Japanese ancestry in the United States and Canada. Provides a comparative, transnational treatment of the historical conditions that created the impetus for immigration; exclusionary laws; the nature of prewar immigrant communities; and internment. Students with credit for HIST 485 or 486 under this topic may not take this course for further credit. Writing.

COURSE DETAILS:

The histories of North American Nikkei, people of Japanese ancestry, are often singularly focused on their incarceration in detention camps following the outbreak of war between Japan and the Allied Powers in 1941. 

However, this course hopes to present the experiences of Nikkei in Canada and the United States in connection with the histories of other peoples while examining topics before, during and after the wartime detention camps. 

Since the late 19th century Japan was rapidly evolving into an empire, and propaganda that referred to the Japanese as superior colonizers worked to the disadvantage of emigrants and their descendants in North America, where their loyalties could be questioned by the enfranchised settler colonial population.  In both Canada and the United States, Nikkei became what could be called second-class settler colonists, who were deprived of political rights, excluded from most professions, and often limited to occupations that set them up to compete against and thus further dispossess Indigenous peoples.   

Grading

  • Perusall particiaption 15%
  • Presentation: Introducing the readings/leading discussion for one of the weeks 15%
  • Peer assessment of presentations 5%
  • Weekly one-paragraph-summaries of readings/in-class discussion 25%
  • Primary source analysis 20%
  • Group project (involves use of digitalized materials and databases) 20%

NOTES:

The Department of History respectfully acknowledges the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), q̓íc̓əy̓ (Katzie), kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem), qiqéyt (Qayqayt), qʼʷa:n̓ƛʼən̓ (Kwantlen), Səmyámə (Semiahmoo), and sc̓əwaθən (Tsawwassen) Peoples, on whose ancestral, traditional, and unceded territories Simon Fraser University’s three campuses stand. We are committed to reconciliation through decolonization and Indigenization.

Recommended: While it is not a prerequisite for this course, students who have taken a course on Japan prior to this one will be at an advantage.

Materials

REQUIRED READING:

Louis Fiset, ed., Imprisoned Apart: The World War II Correspondence of an Issei Couple.  Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997.

Takeo Ujo Nakano, Within the Barbed Wire Fence, 2nd ed. Toronto: Lorimer, 2012.

Seminar readings (available through CANVAS/Perusall)


REQUIRED READING NOTES:

Your personalized Course Material list, including digital and physical textbooks, are available through the SFU Bookstore website by simply entering your Computing ID at: shop.sfu.ca/course-materials/my-personalized-course-materials.

Registrar Notes:

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: YOUR WORK, YOUR SUCCESS

SFU’s Academic Integrity website http://www.sfu.ca/students/academicintegrity.html is filled with information on what is meant by academic dishonesty, where you can find resources to help with your studies and the consequences of cheating. Check out the site for more information and videos that help explain the issues in plain English.

Each student is responsible for his or her conduct as it affects the university community. Academic dishonesty, in whatever form, is ultimately destructive of the values of the university. Furthermore, it is unfair and discouraging to the majority of students who pursue their studies honestly. Scholarly integrity is required of all members of the university. http://www.sfu.ca/policies/gazette/student/s10-01.html