Canadian Network on Humanitarian History

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“Seeing Refugees”: Using Old Photographs to Gain New Perspectives on Refugees, Past and Present

November 14, 2018 /

Cross-Posted with ActiveHistory.ca

by Sonya de Laat

In the summer of 2018 an unprecedented number of people claiming to be refugees crossed into Canada at unofficial border points. Many Canadians learned of these events through photographs and other visual media circulating through the popular commercial press. Responding to such images, public reaction in Canada has been mixed. While some people support actions aimed at helping these families and individuals, others have sensationalized the situation by labelling it a “crisis” and calling border crossers as “illegals” or “cue jumpers.” Continue reading

CfP: Regarding the Pain of Others

November 7, 2018 /

Regarding the Pain of Others: What Emotions have to do in the History of Humanitarian Images.

A workshop organized by the Institute for Ethics, History, and the Humanities (University of Geneva) and the Geneva Centre for Education and Research in Humanitarian Action (University of Geneva).

Taking the title of Susan Sontag’s seminal work as a starting point, this workshop aims at re-opening an old debate about the potentialities of exhibiting other’s suffering in order to promote a culture of peace, prevent war and/or resolve conflict. Sontag concluded in her book that images of atrocities had led the Global North to a form of
exhaustion, also called compassion fatigue, which has been criticized more recently as a myth. Yet, images remain today the main strategy of humanitarian organizations to raise awareness and funds.

Continue reading

Call for Contributions: Integrating Gender in the History of Humanitarian Aid: Europe (20th – 21st century)

October 31, 2018 /

June 12-13, 2019 – Angers, France

Organizers:

European Commission | Horizon 2020, project GenHumChild

Project ID: 748770

Funded under: H2020 – EU.1.3.2. – Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility

Call for proposals: H2020-MSCA-IF-2016  http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/209587_en.html

TEMOS (Temps, Mondes, Sociétés – CNRS FRE 2015, Universités d’Angers, Bretagne Sud, Le Mans)
EnJeu[x] Enfance et Jeunesse

In 2017, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) published the second edition of its guide Women, Girls, Boys and Men. Different Needs – Equal Opportunities: Gender Handbook in Humanitarian Action (2017), explaining the necessary gender approach in all humanitarian response, showing that the two fields are closer than never and marking the efforts made in this direction for the last two decades. Traditionally, while referring to
gender, the history of humanitarian aid traditionally privileged the image of women as victims. The newest scholarship is breaking with this pattern. In a first time, research recuperates the hidden stories of women in the humanitarian, and the contributions of Linda Mahood and Tarah Brookfield mark an important step in this direction. In a second
time, historians, but also political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, are willing to explore the humanitarian aid through the gender lens. Their effort takes looking into how socially constructed practices dictated the assignment of specific roles, hierarchies, responsibilities and expectations to men and women working in the humanitarian effort,
but also how structural unequal gender roles present on the field, among the beneficiaries, undermined or even completely compromised humanitarian actions. Recent academic encounters (Gender & Humanitarianism. (Dis-)Empowering Women and Men in the Twentieth Century, 2017, Gendering Humanitarian Knowledge, 2018, L’humanitaire: nouveau champ de recherche pour l’histoire de l’Europe, 2018) and papers (Carpenter
2003, Dolan, 2014; Olivius, 2014, Jones 2013) made already important steps in this second direction. The conclusions drawn from these studies underline the confusion surrounding the term gender, but also the lack of appropriate gender related action on the field. The researchers point out the unilateral, top down, sometimes sterile perspective
humanitarians have, one that ignores the diversity of historical, geographical, cultural, political spaces, as well as local particularities that shaped, negotiated, sometimes disrupted traditional roles and gendered identities. Continue reading

CfP: Imperial Legacies of 1919

October 13, 2018 /

Contact: imperial1919unt@gmail.com
Conference Date: April 19-20, 2019

CfP Deadline for Papers and Panels: December 31, 2018.

Roundtable Participant Proposal Deadline: January 31, 2019.

Undergraduate Student Poster Competition Proposal Deadline: February 15, 2019.

 

Journalist and author Shrabani Basu will provide a distinguished lecture on Indian soldiers related to her recent work: For King and Another Country (2015). Prior to the conference, she will also host a screening of Victoria and Abdul, a film based on her book of the same name. Historian of the British Empire Dr. Susan Kingsley Kent will provide the keynote address. Her esteemed works include Aftershocks: Politics and Trauma in Britain, 1918-1931 (2009); The Women’s War of 1929: Gender and Violence in Colonial Nigeria (2011) and The Global Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919 (2012). Continue reading

Colombo Plan Fellowships: transforming education and practice

October 9, 2018 /

By Sandrine Murray

Between 1950 and 1968, approximately 300 to 400 “trainees” from South and Southeast Asia — India, Pakistan and Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka)– came to Canadian universities, learning from the country’s health education systems, and brought back their new knowledge to their home countries.

The Colombo Plan Fellowships are worth acknowledging in the grander tale of Canadian humanitarian aid, as Jill Campbell-Miller argued on Sept. 14, 2018. The historian, a member of the CNHH who also runs the network’s social media presence, gave a presentation to interested members of academia at Carleton University.

During her afternoon talk, Campbell-Miller presented the subtle racial and historical dimensions of the Colombo Plan Fellowships and the changing landscape of health education in Canada.The post-doctoral fellow’s talk was the basis for a paper she hopes to publish. Continue reading

Tenure Stream Assistant Professor of International Development Studies – York University

October 7, 2018 /

From York University’s Academic Employment Opportunities page.

 

Position Rank: Full Time Tenure Stream – Assistant Professor
Discipline/Field: International Developments Studies
Home Faculty: Liberal Arts & Professional Studies
Home Department/Area/Division: Social Science
Affiliation/Union: YUFA
Position Start Date: July 1, 2019

The Department of Social Science, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, York University, invites applications for a tenure-stream professorial-stream position in International Development Studies at the rank of Assistant Professor to commence July 1, 2019. More information about the Department can be found at http://sosc.laps.yorku.ca/; information about the International Development Studies Program can be found at http://idst.sosc.laps.yorku.ca/; information about the MA program in Development Studies can be found at http://dvst.gradstudies.yorku.ca. Continue reading

CfP: Regarding the Pain of Others

October 7, 2018 /

Originally posted to BMJ Blogs, by Bryan Mukandi.

Regarding the Pain of Others:

What emotions have to do in the History of Humanitarian Images?

(Geneva 4-5, 2019)

 

Taking the title of Susan Sontag’s seminal work as a starting point, this workshop aims at re-opening an old debate about the potentialities of exhibiting other’s suffering in order to promote a culture of peace, prevent war and/or resolve conflict. Sontag concluded in her book that images of atrocities had led the Global North to a form of exhaustion, also called compassion fatigue, which has been criticised more recently as a myth. Yet, images remain today the main strategy of humanitarian organisations to raise awareness and funds. Continue reading

CfP: Human Rights and Transnational Legal Activism: Limits and Potential

September 22, 2018 /

by Deniz Yonucu

reposted from H-Announce. The byline reflects the original authorship.

 

Human Rights Work and Transnational Legal Activism: Limits and Potential
February 8 and 9, 2019

International human rights laws and bodies have been one of the key sites of the struggle against state crimes and human rights abuses in the post-World War II era. Yet, the discrepancy between the promises of international human rights laws and what they actually do has not gone unquestioned. While in some contexts numerous international treaties, conventions and regulations have served as a means of pressuring governments to improve human rights, in certain other contexts international human rights laws and movements have become a part of the problem. The constituents of international human rights movements have frequently been criticized for being complicit with neoliberal and neocolonial projects and policies. Continue reading

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