Suspect Properties: The Origins of the Decision to Liquidate Japanese Canadian Real Estate, WWII
Jordan Stanger-Ross (University of Victoria)
Thursday October 18
Doors Open at 7:00
Lecture Begins at 7:30
This is a free public event at the Legacy Art Gallery ~ 630 Yates Street
The second lecture of The City Talks, 2012-2013:
Abstract
During the Second World War, the property of Japanese Canadians in coastal British Columbia was seized and forcibly sold. In “Suspect Properties: The Origins of the Decision to Liquidate Japanese Canadian RealEstate,” the University of Victoria’s Dr. Jordan Stanger-Ross will argue these events constitute a critical chapter in the history of the city and of state racism in Canada.
Ideas about race and the city allowed bureaucrats to promote liquidation without explicitly invoking racial antagonism. It was this kind of racialized policy—a policy that drew upon a complicated and synthetic logic; a policy that did not lean overtly upon race hatred; a policy that could dispossess British Columbians even as it acknowledged their Canadian citizenship—that cast its shadow into the postwar period. The liquidation provided a template for a new language of policy that could marginalize Canadian citizens even as it claimed to serve their interests.
Run by the Committee for Urban Studies at the University of Victoria, The City Talks is a free public lecture series featuring distinguished scholars drawn from the University of Victoria, across Canada, and beyond. This fall our three lectures, on the theme of 70 Years Later: Japanese Canadians and the Urban Legacy of War, commemorate and explore the history of the Japanese uprooting from the coast of British Columbia during the Second World War.
The lectures last an hour and a half, including a question and answer session with the author.
Please circulate this announcement.
For more information please visit www.TheCityTalks.ca
