Race and Identity, Interests, and Interactions in Canada's International History (2013)

May 1-3, 2013

About the Conference

Over the last twenty years, the field of diplomatic history has undergone an intellectual overhaul and a methodological transformation. Diplomatic history is no longer defined by studies of the pursuit of power by great men in hegemonic states in the 20th century. Transnational, global, and international approaches have reconfigured the shape, constituencies and flow of international relations. Focusing on culture, gender, the environment and religion has broadened our understanding of the elements of international contact. The questions that drive historical inquiry are changing; the answers bring new understanding. This workshop will focus on one critical element of the new diplomatic history—the role of race—and examine how it has affected the ways in which Canada and Canadians have interacted with other countries and peoples. The purpose of the workshop is to define and explore ideas of race in Canada and to contextualize and explain their impact on Canada’s international policies, practices, norms, and relations in the 20th century. This workshop will open up Canada’s international history, generating new questions and articulating narratives that challenge and complement the prevailing interest of historians in Canada’s influence and independence in international affairs.

May 1

East Dining Room, Harvard Faculty Club, zo Quincy Street

5:00 pm–5:30pm / Reception

5:30 pm–5:45pm / Welcome Address by Francine McKenzie

5:45 pm–6:45pm / Erez Manela

6:45 pm / Dinner

May 2

Room 2, Harvard Faculty Club

9:00 am–10:30 am / Panel 1 - Race, Regulation, and International Organization in the Early 2oth Century

Chair: Kevin Spooner
Speaker: Julie Gilmour - The Evils of Opium: Race, Vice and Religion at the International Opium Commission in Shanghai 1909
Speaker: Francine McKenzie - "The Race Issue" and the "Global Color Line": Canada, Racial Equality, and the Paris Peace Conference 1919
Discussant: Steffen Rimner, Department of History, Harvard University

1030-1045 Coffee Break

10:45 am-11:15 am / Panel 2 - Race in National and Transnational Identities and Communities

Chair: Laura Madokoro
Speaker: Kristine Alexander - "Equally Applicable to Every Race Under the Sun": Global Youth Movements and Racial Thinking in Twentieth-Century Canada
Speaker: Henry Yu - Anti-Asian Exclusion and the Making and Un-Making of White Settler Nations
Discussant: Michael Szonyi, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University

11:15 am-1:15 pm / Lunch - Faculty Club Buffet, Room 10

1:15 pm–2:45pm / Panel 3 - Refugees and Citizens: Who Can Become Canadian?

Chair: Julie Gilmour
Speaker: Laura Madokoro - Canada, Race and the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees
Speaker: Ben Herzog - Communicating Citizenship: Foreign Correspondences 1945-1977
Speaker: Discussant: Mira Siegelberg, Department of History, Harvard University

2:24 pm–3:00 pm / Coffee Break

3:00:pm–5:00 pm / Panel 4 - Canada and Decolonization: Change and Challenge at Home and Abroad

Chair: Francine McKenzie
Speaker: Dan Gorman - The influence of ideas of race on Canadian and British Relations over Decolonization at the United Nations, 1945-1960
Speaker: Kevin Spooner - African Nationalism(s) and the Canadian Response
Speaker: David Webster - From Deskaheh to the Dani: Canadian Mental Maps of Decolonization at Home and Overseas, 1920s-1970s
Discussant: Heidi Tworek, Department of History, Harvard University

7:00 pm / Group Dinner - Sandrine's Bistro, Holyoke Street

May 3