Shannon Lectures, Fall 2023
Convenor: Professor Laura Madokoro, Department of History, Carleton University.
Rewriting Refuge
There are in Canada, as in other countries, many stories about refuge. Some of this history has been used to create powerful nation-building myths, which in turn have facilitated the inclusion of some and the exclusion of others. This edition of the Shannon Lecture Series, “Rewriting Refuge” seeks to explore the history of sanctuary and protection in a new light; by considering the movements of Indigenous peoples, the activism of migrants themselves, the creation of borders, and transnational connections. Featuring scholars working in a range of geographic contexts and temporal periods, the Shannon Lecture Series, “Rewriting Refuge” promises to offer important critical insights into both the past and the present-day.
Refuge histories in Canada and elsewhere are included in nation-building myths – stories that are used to assert who does and does not belong. The 2023 Shannon Lecture Series, “Rewriting Refuge,” explores these histories of sanctuary via Indigenous migrations, migrant activism, creating borders, and transnational connections. Ranging across geography and time, the featured lectures will offer critical insights into the past and present.
The opening event on October 16 at 1:00pm will be held virtually. All other lectures will take place at Woodside Hall in the Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Centre. The lectures are expected to run from 7:00-8:30pm, and will be streamed as well.
Past Lectures in this Series
Opening Virtual Event:
October 16, 2023: Refugees and the Right to Research Panel
1 PM, online. Event took place on zoom.
Gerawork Teferra, Marcia Schenck, Kate Reed and Christina Clark-Kazak
There are in Canada, as in other countries, many stories about refuge. Some of this history has been used to create powerful nation-building myths, which in turn have facilitated the inclusion of some and the exclusion of others. This edition of the Shannon Lecture Series, “Rewriting Refuge” seeks to explore the history of sanctuary and protection from new or neglected directions.
The series will launch on 16 October 2023 with an afternoon virtual panel, 1300-1430 EST. Join a conversation that includes Kate Reed, Marcia Schenck and Gerawok Teferra, whose work in The Right to Research brings refugee and host-community historians to the fore; and Dr. Christina Clark-Kazak, author of Research Across Borders on cross-border and cross-cultural methods.
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October 30, 2023: Taking Refuge in the Canada-US Borderlands?
Benjamin Hoy
Biography:
Benjamin Hoy is an Associate Professor of History and the Director of the HGIS Lab at the University of Saskatchewan. Hoy’s first book, A Line of Blood and Dirt: Creating the Canada-United States Border across Indigenous Lands (Oxford University Press, 2021) examines the creation of the Canada-US border and its uneven effects on the communities who lived in its shadow from 1775 to 1930. Hoy’s broader research focuses on digital mapping (HGIS), game-based learning, and the history of everyday power along border regions.
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November 7, 2023: Promised Lands? Indigenous Refuge in Early Canada and Beyond
Jean-François Lozier
Biography:
Jean-François Lozier is Curator of French North America at the Canadian Museum of History. His research focuses on intercultural relations and circulations in Early Canada. He is the author of the book Flesh Reborn: The Saint Lawrence Valley Mission Settlements through the Seventeenth Century and is working on another on the Franco-Haudenosaunee “Great Peace” of 1667.
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November 14, 2023: Sanctuary’s Unruly Subjects: Dissidents, Fugitives, and Exiles in Post-Civil Rights America
Aimee Villarreal
Biography:
Aimee M. Villarreal is an assistant professor of anthropology at Texas State University. As a Chicana with roots in New Mexico and Texas, she descends from farmworkers, faith healers, educators, and community workers whose collective spirit she brings to her teaching, scholarship, and creative projects. Her interdisciplinary work focuses on sanctuary practices, movements, and other radical acts of rebeldía for social justice, equity, and sustainable futures in the US-Mexico borderlands. Villarreal was part of the creative team that made the award-winning documentary animation, Frontera! Revolt and Rebellion on the Río Grande (2014). Her forthcoming book Sanctuaryscapes in the New Mexico Borderlands: Movements and Revivals Across the Secular-Religious Divide (2024), tells time-traveling stories about how people form bonds of solidarity, protection, and care in moments of social and political crisis.
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November 27, 2023: ‘Follow the North Star to Canada’: Draft Resisters and the Underground Railroad
Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey
Biography:
Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey (Nii Laryea Osabu I, Atrékor Oblahii kè Oblayéé Mantsè) is William Dawson Chair and Assistant Professor of post-Reconstruction U.S. and African Diaspora history at McGill University. Author of Cross-Border Cosmopolitans: The Making of a Pan-African North America (UNC Press, 2023), Dr. Adjetey is the recipient of McGill’s H. Noel Fieldhouse Award for Distinguished Teaching, and the Principal’s Prize for Excellence in Teaching.