February 6 - "Situating Japanese Canadians in Canadian Health Care History In and Beyond Internment (1942-49)", a talk by Letitia Johnson

Join us on Friday, February 6 at 3 p.m. in Tory 2-58 for "Situating Japanese Canadians in Canadian Health Care History In and Beyond Internment (1942-49)", a talk by Letitia Johnson.

Talk Description: The uprooting and internment of Japanese Canadians in the 1940s was a moment of great change for the health and wellness of the ethnic community in many ways. It was not, however, a vast departure from earlier decades of Japanese Canadian expertise and integration into wider Canadian healthcare networks, as both patients and providers. This talk takes internment as a snapshot of decades of cultural and professional negotiation, and argues that internment years were both a continuity of the community’s navigation of racially restrictive medical spaces and a complex moment of opportunity to expand the role of Japanese Canadians throughout Canadian healthcare spaces.

Speaker Bio: Letitia Johnson is a Grant Notley Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alberta’s Department of History, Classics, and Religion. She previously held a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Victoria (2023-25), and completed her PhD in history in 2023 at the University of Saskatchewan. Her current research explores the intersections of race and health in rural and remote hospitals across western Canada in the twentieth century.