Call for Applications: Past Wrongs, Future Choices Residency Program, Spring 2023
Past Wrongs, Future Choices (PWFC) is a new project based at the University of Victoria with Project Co-Directors Audrey Kobayashi and Jordan Stanger-Ross and Project Manager Michael Abe. It is an international collective comprised of museums, galleries, community organizations, and scholars. Together, we’re embarking on a partnership to examine, from a global perspective, the WWII internment and dispossession of people of Japanese descent in allied countries across the world. What do these histories, taken together, teach us today?
Working with partners in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, and the United States, Past Wrongs, Future Choices focuses on past abrogation of civil and human rights, in order to foster political and social accountability today and for the future. We aim to provoke publics across the word to grapple with the question of what we owe to one another, especially in times of crisis.
We are excited to be able to offer a 3 week residency program in May 2023.
The Past Wrongs, Future Choices Spring 2023 Residency Program is a project-based opportunity that will offer three academics and three artists a setting for focused, goal-oriented work, and an opportunity to establish connections with residents from varied backgrounds, disciplines, and places.
The program will run for three weeks in May 2023, with all expenses, including travel, food, and accommodation covered. Artists and scholars in residence can also receive funding for research and material costs related to their projects, including for costs undertaken outside the timeframe of the three-week retreat.
We aim for the program to create a stimulating environment for the advancement of specific projects related to the core aims of PWFC.
On campus accommodation will including office space, library access, and administrative support. Recipients are expected to be in residence at UVic for the duration of the retreat.
Academic recipients will advance the scholarly aims of PWFC by acting as the lead (or solo) author of a working paper that examines, from a comparative or transnational perspective, the infringements of the civil and human rights of Nikkei people in allied countries in the 1940s, or closely related topics, as conveyed in the PWFC project summary and description. At the conclusion of the residency, scholars will present their work to date to an interdisciplinary audience. We also anticipate that they will publish their paper in the project’s working paper series and that successful working papers will be included the first PWFC book, to be submitted to McGill-Queens University Press by 2025.
Artists will advance work within their chosen discipline that engages the same topic area, with an aim of contributing to the exhibitions of Past Wrongs, Future Choices in Canada or abroad.
Applicants are encouraged to review the PWFC project summary and description before specifying their topic of research. Collaborative projects, with other members of the collective (or other scholars with relevant expertise) are encouraged. Project Co-Director Jordan Stanger-Ross (jstross@uvic.ca) is available to support prospective applicants and to facilitate networking across the research team. Learn more about the PWFC project at this link, https://www.landscapesofinjustice.com/project_background/
Applications are due December 15, 2022. Notification of receipt of the award will be provided before February 1, 2023.
Academic Applicants [Artists see below]
Eligibility: Applicants can be scholars at any level of seniority, ranging from early career and emerging scholars to established leaders in the field. Collaborators or co-applicants on the PWFC are encouraged to apply, as are scholars interested in joining the project.
Applications by academics should be submitted electronically to Michael Abe
(mkabe@uvic.ca) and should include:
• A one-page (max) description of the proposed working paper
• Names and affiliations of all proposed collaborators, as well as brief indication of their area of expertise/contribution
• A one-page CV
• Budget
Artist Applicants
Eligibility: Open to artists (all forms) whose work can address the themes of our partnership. Applications from Canadian artists and from artists outside of Canada are welcome. Submit electronically to Michael Abe (mkabe@uvic.ca) and should include:
• Description of the proposed artistic project (1 page)
• A project budget (1 page)
• Link to portfolio of work
• A one-page CV
Adjudication committee will consist of representatives from museums in each of the partner countries.
Starvation, Sickness, and Shaved Heads: Transnational Citizenship and the “Alienation” of Japanese American Bodies in Wartime Incarceration
Join us for an on-line talk by Masumi Izumi, Doshisha University on Tuesday, November 29, 2022 from 3:30-5:00 pm (PST).
Zoom link https://events.uvic.ca/capi/event/70017-starvation-sickness-and-shaved-heads-transnational
This talk will examine the notion of “citizenship” in its generative power to construct “aliens,” using the Tule Lake Stockade Diary, written by a Japanese American incarcerated in a US concentration camp during World War II. The US government precariously constructed Japanese Americans as enemy citizens and aliens, and Japanese Americans were forced to reconstruct their sense of belonging and allegiance in reaction to this state violence. The talk will unpack the complex ways in which Tatsuo Ryusei Inouye, the author of the Tule Lake Stockade Diary, expressed his citizenship through his incarcerated body. Inouye was a Kibei (born in the US who grew up in Japan) Nisei Judo practitioner and a dual citizen—a transnational figure even in peacetime. He left detailed descriptions of the physical conditions within the stockade as well as the prisoners’ interactions with the camp wardens, the FBI and the military. By juxtaposing the photographs of the so-called “pro-Japan trouble makers” with the contemporary account of prison life that reveals Inouye’s thoughts and the transformation of his incarcerated body, this talk will elucidate a Japanese American’s desperate attempt to reconstruct some principles upon which he could build his own sense of citizenship apart from the ones imposed on him from his two warring home countries.
Dr. Masumi Izumi, Ph.D (American Studies) is a professor in the department of global and regional studies at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, where she teaches North American studies. Masumi researches Japanese American and Japanese Canadian wartime experiences as well as their post-internment communities and trans-Pacific migration.
She is a current visiting scholar with the Past Wrongs, Future Choices project.
