Preliminary Programme

This paper interrogates the erasing effects of academic, heritage, and popular historical production – including that motivated by inclusive social justice agendas – by exploring how oral history can empower individuals not only to reclaim historical space but inscribe it in novel and innovative ways. Its focus is Nikkei (people of Japanese descent) in southern Alberta, Canada, specifically nisei (second generation, children of people who emigrated to Canada in the first half of the twentieth century). Deploying a few narrative portraits from nearly fifty oral history interviews I conducted between 2011 and 2017, it amplifies highly complex and sometimes contradictory understandings of their own ‘assimilation’ and, in the process, it privileges the latter half of the twentieth century. This time period is critical because it shifts the entry point into the pasts which my narrators shared away from the Second World War, and it deflects the often now over-determined and fixated historical gaze on the Canadian government’s systematic seven-year mass incarcerations, dispossession, and displacement between 1942 and 1949 of its own citizens of Japanese descent. This paper will argue that, while not denying the trauma and injustice effected by this of this state-racist tragedy, the implications of considering other historical spaces and voices outside of its shadow have profound, liberating implications. Most important of these are new ways of valuing one’s own history which doesn’t require one to always, automatically, and singularly be representatives for the benefit of the historical gaze of a history of eternalised victimhood. When I started the project, many advised me that it was too late to be interviewing individuals so late in their life, and that the region itself was not of particular note. But, in fact, I've found that although this perspective has come with many challenges, it has also opened opportunities to re-think these histories and its value. (Show less)

At the outset of the 20th century two projects were engaged in a competition with each other: those of the Russian nation and Russian nationalism. Ethnic nationalism and imperial nationalism. The former was more common among the academic and artistic intelligentsia, whereas the latter, aside from these two groups was promoted within the government institutions: bureaucracy, army etc. With the establishment of the first Russian parliament, these two groups brought their ideas forward to the political space. However the Russian Revolution of 1917 interrupted the natural developing and competitive course of the Russian nationalisms and forced them out of Russia. The most of the official and semi-official positions in the Russian emigrants’ organizations were taken by the representatives of the former imperial administration and army. Therefore the struggle against the loss of the national identity among the youth had initially been waged as part of the Imperial nationalism project.
The attempts to adapt Russian imperial nationalism to the conditions of emigration are examined in the presentation. Philosophical attitudes are briefly considered, as well as the ways of the Russian identity construction in emigration through family, school, church, non-scholastic organizations (e.g. scouts and others), and labor unions (student associations). (Show less)

The paper examines how African-American, Native American, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and Indian role characters were portrayed on stage ca 1870–1930 in a country where there, at the time, was a deep fascination with everything ‘exotic’ but no actors of colour and only limited factual knowledge about non-European cultures, languages and living conditions. The professional theatres in Finland became more organized and secured their position in the 1860s and 1870s. When examining the repertoire of e.g. the Swedish Theatre in Helsinki 1870–1930 it can be concluded that the plays the theatre chose to put up many times had role characters and themes related to non-European and ‘exotic’ cultures, colonialism and race.
Outside the theatres, on arenas such as market-places and fairgrounds, groups and individuals of non-European origin, for instance travelling African-American, Singhalese and Aboriginal groups, also performed and portrayed the ‘exotic’ during this time-period, oftentimes intentionally exaggerating elements of exoticness. This, I believe, partly created stereotypes and partly strengthened pre-existing perceptions of ‘the other’ among the spectators.
At the same time, the last few decades of the nineteenth and the early decades of the twentieth century were a crucial era of nation-building and formation of a national identity, or national identities, for the Finnish people, a people consisting mainly of two language groups, Finnish-speakers and Swedish-speakers. An essential part in the process of creating a ‘we’ was the existence of and interaction with ‘the other’ or ‘others’. Soon after its establishment the Swedish Theatre in Helsinki became an important institution for the Swedish-speakers and an upholder of the Finnish-Swedish identity and language in Finland, and it still has this role today.
The archive of the Swedish Theatre is well-preserved and extensive (170 running metres) and consists of play manuscripts, sketches of costumes and décor, posters, reviews and more than 15 000 photographs of stage décor, performances and actors in make-up and costumes. To my knowledge the material in this archive has never before been used for this type of research. The travelling non-European groups, which performed at the other arenas, can be studied through photographs, posters, ads and digitalized newspaper material, as the newspapers reported extensively on their performances. Hypothetically, it can be assumed that representations of race, ethnicity and the ‘exotic’ initially were caricatured and stereotyped, even grossly so – both by theatrical actors on stage and travelling groups of non-Europeans – but that the portrayals gradually changed towards the end of the period as the level of knowledge surrounding non-European, ‘exotic’ cultures increased, the general fascination with the ‘exotic’ decreased and the negative implications and consequences of racial stereotypes and racism became all too obvious in the late 1930s. The change was slow and some remaining traces of racial stereotypes and ill-judged caricatures could still be seen on stage several decades later. (Show less)

The paper aims to present new insight into the transatlantic migration processes in the period 1845 to 1855 when parts of Europe were in severe socio-economic and political turmoil, the impact of the steam ship for transoceanic travel was still miniscule and New York City had not yet been the towering predominant port of debarkation for European immigrants. The purpose of the paper is twofold: On the one hand, I will make visible the existing shipping routes that connected more than 100 European and 200 extra-European ports alone with about two dozen U.S. port cities. These patterns reflect the ocean passage in the time of sail when passenger transport closely mirrored trade routes and the business of transatlantic migration was a fragmented one in which many merchants and shipping companies had their share. On the other hand, I will analyze in depth a 10% sample of all passenger arrivals to any U.S. port on the Atlantic seaboard for that time period, allowing me to compare in detail the composition of the migrants of different European backgrounds in terms of family composition, age, occupation, routes taken, modes of travel, and remigration. My data sample consists of 2,418 ships carrying 459,000 passengers from Europe to the U.S. between January 1845 and December 1855. (Show less)