Overview

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:

This seminar traces the historical experience of people of Japanese ancestry in Canada and the United States. We will explore their emigration to North America, beginning in the Meiji period; compare their experience in Canada and the United States after they arrived, and that of their North American-born children. We will also examine the race-based government actions in regard to people of Japanese ancestry during World War II. During the months following the outbreak of war between Japan and the United States in December 1941, American and Canadian citizens of Japanese ancestry, regardless of age or whether they had continued ties to Japan, were forcibly removed from the coast by the governments of both Canada and the United States. Confined to detention camps located in the B.C. and U.S. interior, they were forbidden to return to the coast until after the war had ended – in Canada’s case, only in April 1949. Many of those who had immigrated to the United States and Canada during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries lost everything they had worked for during their years in the North American West. Student assignments emphasize the development of writing skills that are central to historical writing ,including narrative and the synthesis of multiple primary sources.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING NOTES: