Research Spotlight Series: Tadek Wojtych & Jeremy Tsai

Truth Commissions, Reconciliation, and History Teaching: Canadian and European Perspectives

Dr. Tadek Wojtych, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of History

Truth commissions pay considerable attention to history. However, does their work really affect history teaching in schools? This talk examines how the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the German-Polish Textbook Commission influenced the content and form of history textbooks in Canada and Central Europe, respectively.

Post-Fukushima Triple Disaster Justice? Examining Injustice Claims in English Language Japanese News Articles, 2011 and 2021

Jeremy Tsai, Master’s student, Department of Sociology

While the literature has focused on economic, sociocultural, and political forms of injustice in relation to the Fukushima disaster, claims of injustice against spiritual ways of relating to nonhuman actors in the Shinto-animistic indigenous belief system remain understudied. This talk examines how claims of injustice are framed in English language Japanese newspaper articles, highlighting this discrepancy and its implications in the larger context of the Fukushima disaster.