Dr. Stephanie Bangarth

Dr. Stephanie Bangarth

Dr. Stephanie Bangarth

Professor

Phone: 4573
Email: sbangar@uwo.ca

Dr. Stephanie Bangarth is a Professor in History at King’s University College, at the University of Western Ontario. As a graduate of King’s, she is delighted to be teaching at an institution that had an important impact on her academic career. She went on to complete her PhD at the University of Waterloo in 2004. She taught at the University of Guelph for two years before coming to King’s in 2006. Dr. Bangarth is also an Adjunct Teaching Professor in the Department of History at Western and a Faculty Research Associate with the Collaborative Graduate Program in Migration and Ethnic Studies (MER) at Western. She also serves on MER’s Executive and Steering Committees.

SOME CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS
  • An investigation into the ‘Ann Nisei Says’ columns published in Pacific Citizen, a popular Japanese-American newspaper published (eventually) out of Salt Lake City, Utah, during the incarceration period of WWII. An examination of the ‘Ann Nisei Says’ columns is of intrinsic value in evaluating the nature of advocacy and of agency and its relationship to gender in an oft-neglected portion of the incarcerated population – the wives and mothers, sisters and daughters resident in the wartime camps.
  • My Brother’s Keeper: F. Andrew Brewin and the Making of Modern Canada: this book-length study will use Brewin’s life as a case-study to examine some of the major social movements that influenced the development of 20th century Canada. As a prominent lawyer and longtime NDP politician, he was involved in a number of issues important to Canadians such as the extension of collective bargaining rights, human rights/egalitarian movements, the campaign for a Bill of Rights, humanitarianism in Canadian foreign policy, affordable housing, immigration policy reform and many others. This study was awarded a SSHRC Standard Research Grant under the Meritorious New Scholars Program for 2010-2013.
ACADEMIC AND COMMUNITY SERVICE

I feel very strongly about practicing what I preach: that we should be active participants in our environs. In terms of the academic community I served as Book Review Editor for H-Canada from 2005-2012. I am currently a Councilor with MANECCS (Middle Atlantic & New England Council for Canadian Studies). Additionally, I have been a leader with Girl Guides of Canada since 1993 in the many communities in which I’ve lived throughout Ontario. I’ve worked with girls and young women in Sparks, Brownies, Pathfinders and Rangers, served on the National Scholarship Team (2009-2012) and I am currently the Chair of the Canadian Guider Editorial Committee. I am also an avid kayaker and gardener.

Education

  • BA, King's University College at Western University Canada
  • PhD, University of Waterloo

Teaching

Undergraduate
  • HIST 2187: Power to the Peoples: Rights in North America
  • HIST 2201E: Canada – A Survey
  • HIST 3205E: Canadian Social History
  • HIST 3218E: Movers and Shakers: Social Movements in Canadian History
  • HIST 4701E: Topics in Canadian and American History
  • HIST 4901E: a variety of directed studies courses
Graduate
  • Canadian Black History
  • Canadian Social History
  • Canada and the Two World Wars
  • Canadian Immigration History

I advise a number of graduate students, and I welcome inquiries from MA and PhD students.

Research

  • human rights advocacy and history in Canada and the United States
  • immigrant experience in North America, with a particular research focus on Asian immigration and a personal/family interest in the post-WWII European refugee and immigrant experience
  • Canadian immigration policy
  • social movements, Canada
  • Canadian political history

Selected Publications

  • Voices Raised in Protest: Defending North American Citizens of Japanese Ancestry, 1942-1949 (University of British Columbia Press, 2008).
  • “Citizen Activism, Refugees, and the State: Two Case-Studies in Canadian Immigration History,” in Catherine Briggs, ed., Canada Since 1945 (Toronto: Oxford University Press) forthcoming in 2013.
  • “Human Rights and Citizen Activism in Canada, 1940s – 1970s,” in Stephen Heathorn and David Goutor, eds., Taking Liberties: Historicizing 20th Century Human Rights in the English Speaking World (London: Oxford University Press) forthcoming in 2013.
  • “The Second World War and Canada’s Early Human Rights Movement: The Asian Canadian Experience,” in Janet Miron, ed., A History of Human Rights in Canada: Essential Issues. (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2009).
  • “Transnational Christian Charity: The Canadian Council of Churches, World Council of Churches, and the Hungarian Refugee Crisis, 1956-1957.” With Andrew Thompson. American Review of Canadian Studies. Vol. 38, no. 3, Autumn 2008.
  • “Nikkei Loyalty and Resistance in Canada and the United States.” Japan Focus. January 31, 2008 (http://www.japanfocus.org/products/details/2649).
  • “The long, wet summer of 1942: the Ontario Farm Service Force, small-town Ontario and the Nisei.” Canadian Ethnic Studies. Vol. 37, no. 1, 2005.
  • “‘We are not asking you to open wide the gates for Chinese immigration’: the Committee for the Repeal of the Chinese Immigration Act and early human rights activism in Canada.” Canadian Historical Review. Vol. 84, 3, September 2003.