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Research
A Passion for Research & Writing
The Mutable Past
Oral History and the Gendered Memories of the Internment of Japanese Canadians. This is an ongoing (and most likely lifelong) project that is close to my heart, and fuelled by a longstanding interest in scholarship that speaks to the lived experience of intersectionality. The Mutable Past is a social historical analysis of the Second World War internment of Japanese Canadians as experienced by Nisei (second-generation) Canadian women and men of Japanese ancestry. In this study, I probe the relationship between personal memories and dominant public memories, time and memory, oral history and the construction of history. To be published in monograph form. Funded by a SSHRC Standard (now Insight) Research Grant.
Gendered Livelihoods
Working-Class Women’s Memories of Making a Living in Canada, 1940 to 2010. This is an oral history study of memory and working-class women’s lived experience. In this study, I compare the memory stories of working-class women in three locations in Canada, each of which is distinct demographically culturally, and economically: Black women in the “Prestons,” Nova Scotia; Japanese Canadian women in Lethbridge, Alberta; and Anglo-Celtic women in Oshawa, Ontario. This project will contribute to our knowledge of working-class women’s history in Canada, and serves to deepen our understanding of the relationship between personal and collective memory, and memory and intersectionality. I employ techniques of deep listening in my interpretation and analysis of the oral history interviews. Funded by a SSHRC Standard Research Grant.
Living and witnessing racism
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Bystanders to the internment of Japanese Canadians. Drawing on some of the oral history interviews gathered while I served as Oral History Cluster Lead on the Landscapes of Injustice Project, I explore the narratives of bystanders to the Second World War internment of Japanese Canadians. With a focus on the friends, neighbours, classmates and teachers, missionaries and employers who were in close contact with dispossessed and uprooted Japanese Canadians during the Second World War and in the years immediately following the War, I offer an analysis of ways in which white bystanders weave the internment and memories of Japanese Canadian friends and neighbours into their own lifelong narratives. This study speaks to larger issues of whiteness and its impact on personal memory and public history. Funded by a SSHRC Partnership Grant.
Research Funding
Acknowledgements
“Tabeta: A social history of Japanese Canadian cuisine.” Royal Bank of Canada Immigrant, Diversity, and Inclusion Project Grant (2015).
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Partnership Grant, “Landscapes of Injustice.” Project Director: Dr. Jordan Stanger-Ross, University of Victoria. Sugiman served on the Executive Committee, Steering Committee, and led the Oral History Research Cluster (2014-20).
National Association of Japanese Canadians, Endowment Fund Grant, “Historical Moments of Change: Japanese Canadian Redress and Beyond.” Academic Symposium on Redress and Social Change. Toronto (2013).
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Standard Research Grant, “Gendered Livelihoods: Working-Class Women’s Memories of Making a Living in Canada, 1940 to 2010 (2010).
SSHRC Institutional Grant, “Gendered Livelihoods: Working-Class Women’s Memories of Making a Living in Canada, 1940 to 2010” (2010).
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