Undergraduate Job Opportunity
Landscapes of Injustice
A SSHRC Partnership Project
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH ASSOCIATES
Landscapes of Injustice announces Research Associate positions for undergraduate students at the University of Victoria. These positions cover the second summer of the project (April 27-August 2015). Successful applicants will participate as part of the team, defining the precise research agenda and embarking on the first stage of research. The value of this appointment is a maximum of $9,000.
Landscapes of Injustice is a 7-year multi-sector and interdisciplinary project to uncover and tell the history of the dispossession of Japanese Canadians to audiences across Canada and beyond. The first years of the project include research in a range of areas necessary to telling this history. Our work will result in a traveling museum exhibit, teaching materials for elementary and secondary school classes, educational websites, scholarly and popular publications, and public presentations across the country. Most Canadians know that people of Japanese ancestry, the large majority of them Canadian citizens, were uprooted from the British Columbia coast during the 1940s. Much less known is the policy, unique to Canada, to forcibly sell all of their property. The dispossession of Japanese Canadians caused lasting harm. It left Japanese Canadians without homes to which they could return after restrictions were finally lifted in 1949. It forced the eradication of Canada’s historic Japanese-Canadian neighbourhoods and settlements, thereby transforming individual lives and identities, and the broader landscapes of Canadian ethnic and urban life. It caused material hardship that stretches across multiple generations.
Like other shameful episodes of our national history, these events may seem to belong to a distant past, to a history left behind by multicultural Canada. In reality, however, the past is not so easily escaped. As Canada enters a century in which it will grow ever more diverse, a deep conversation about the enduring legacy of racism is of pressing importance. Landscapes of Injustice is committed to telling this history. Our team includes 15 institutions and over 30 specialists from universities, community organizations, and museums across Canada. The project is funded by a major grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and by participating institutions.
Applications are accepted from April 10. See details below.
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH ASSOCIATES
Position Details
Research Associates will participate with graduate students, faculty, and staff in the second summer of research on this project, beginning April 27, 2015. They will work in one of two “clusters” of research activity that are operating out of UVIC this summer:
- Land Title Research: this cluster works with records of Land Title to learn what precisely happened to the homes and businesses of Japanese Canadians when they were forcibly sold;
- Community Records: this cluster works with community directories, and other local records to reconstruct the communities disrupted by the uprooting and the liquidation of property.
These positions include participation in team meetings, training sessions, and archival research. The Research Associates will include travel to locations outside of Victoria, with travel and accommodation arranged and paid for by the project.
Students will work for a total of 35-40 hrs/week, at a wage rate of $14.65/hr (plus benefits). The Research Associate positions will last approximately 16 weeks, depending on specific arrangements in each case.
A faculty or staff member who is a team leader on the project will supervise each Research Associate. Payment of the full funding amount is contingent on successful participation in the project as directed by this supervisor.
Application Details
Applicants should submit a cover letter, UVIC transcripts, a CV, and contact information for three referees to the Project Director, Jordan Stanger-Ross, Associate Professor of History.
Applications will be accepted by email at jstross@uvic.ca. The applications will be considered on a rolling basis, beginning April 10, 2015.
Jordan Stanger-Ross
Project Director, Landscapes of Injustice
Associate Professor, History
University of Victoria