Peopling the Liquidation Policy- University of Alberta
On Monday, February 9, Professor Jordan Stanger-Ross (Victoria, Dept. of History) will be visiting the Faculty of Law art the University of Alberta and giving a seminar at noon in CN Alumni Hall (enter via the seemingly floating staircase on the 2nd floor around the corner from the library).
Jordan is the Project Director of the SSHRC Partnership Grant, Landscapes of Injustice, a seven-year research project investigating the dispossession of Japanese-Canadian property during the Second World War. The U of A is a partner on the project, responsible for the legal history research cluster.
Jordan will give a version of a lecture he recently delivered at UBC.
In February 1942, when Japanese Canadians in coastal British Columbia were uprooted from their homes and interned, the Canadian government assured them that their property would be safeguarded for the duration of the war. A year later, however, officials resolved to sell everything they owned, contributing to material losses that would, in today’s currency, amount to close to one billion dollars. This talk reflects on what we can learn from the lives of the two individuals most directly responsible for the policy: federal politician Ian Mackenzie and bureaucrat Glenn McPherson. Drawing upon the recent scholarship on biography and “actor-centered” analysis, this discussion will explore what historians gain by detailing the subjectivities of people implicated in past wrongdoings.
Eric M. Adams
Associate Professor
University of Alberta, Faculty of Law
t. 780.248.1516
f. 780.492.4924
eric.adams@ualberta.ca