Johanna Lewis
PhD Candidate,
Department of History,
York University
Dissertation: “The Stories We Tell”: Imperial lives, colonial legacies, and a family at home in empire
Supervisors: Boyd Cothran & Deborah Neill
Fields: Empire and Colonialisms, Modern Cultural History, Indigenous History
Areas of Research
My academic work focuses on cultural histories of settler colonialism and the British empire, with a focus on family and intimacy, identity and power, and questions of inheritance, commemoration, and historical production.
My dissertation looks at the lives and afterlives of several clusters of British settler colonists (in Northern Rhodesia, India, & Canada) to chart the relationships between personal lives and larger structures, between colonial histories and the colonial present, and between the stories that these historical actors told themselves about empire and the ones that we tell now. These colonists were also my ancestors: I am grappling with the colonial complicities and inheritances, and the transnational legacies of the British Empire, that I – alongside many settlers in so called Canada – carry with me.
I argue that examining empire as it was lived and practised on-the-ground by “ordinary” settler colonists can deepen our understanding of how colonialism and white supremacy have functioned, and of the ways that family has been a key animator of empire beyond the confines of the nation-state. While public sites of imperial commemoration and glorification are being urgently contested, I draw attention to more intimate spheres of historical production, familial stories and cultures as facets of settler subjectivity-formation, and the urgent stakes of historical revisionism, erasure, and contestation in the current political moment.
Selected Writings and Presentations
Review of White Benevolence: Racism and Colonial Violence in the Helping Professions, edited by Amanda Gebhard, Sheelah McLean and Verna St. Denis, Canadian Journal of Native Studies, 41.1, 2022.
Review of The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, by Heather McGhee, Journal of Critical Race Inquiry, 9.2, 2022.
"Socially Distant: Writing History in ‘Unprecedented Times’.” with Daniel Murchison, Active History, Nov 2021.
“‘Ask the Colonial Ghosts’: Intimate Histories, Harmful Complicities, and the Search for an Accountable Relationship with the Past.” Master’s Thesis in Interdisciplinary Studies, York University, 2016.
“Pioneer Tales: Settler Sociality, Colonial Mythmaking, and the Narrativization of the Canadian Prairies.” University of Regina: “Settler Colonialism in Canada: Reliving the Past, Opening New Paths Graduate Student Symposium.” Oct 14, 2022.
“Historical Questions, Contemporary Struggles: A roundtable of historian-activists.” Organizer & Chair. Canadian Historical Association: “Reconsidering History.” May 16-18, 2022.
“Ordinary Colonists, Then and Now: Choices, Constraints, and the Unsettling Power of Historical Example.” Panel: “Decolonizing History.” Canadian Historical Association: “Reconsidering History.” May 16-18, 2022.
“Theorizing Colonial Culture in Canada: Consumption, Indigenization, and Settler Moves to Innocence on a National Scale.” Panel: “Interrogating Colonial Canada.: Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies Graduate Student Conference. Toronto, ON: April 7-8, 2022.
“Of Friendship and Fire: The Plymouth Brethren, the Mwata Kazembe, and the ‘Taming of North-Eastern Rhodesia’,” Panel: “Soldiers, Merchants, and Missionaries: Bridging Divides, Reinforcing Colonial Power in the 19th Cenury, organized by Deb Neill. Canadian Association of African Studies (CAAS): “Achieving Ubuntu.” London, ON: June 6-10, 2021.
“Dis/Remembering Settler Origins: Colonialism, racism, and the legacies of Prairie homesteads.” Robarts Centre Graduate Conference: “Transgressing the Nation State: Constructs of Canadian Identity.” Toronto, ON: April 20-21, 2017.
“Representation, Settler Colonialism, and the Illustration of the North West Resistance.” Intersections|Cross-sections, Communication and Culture at Ryerson and York Universities: “Imagining Identity.” Toronto, ON: March 10-11, 2017.
“’Ask the colonial ghosts’: Unsettling Toronto’s history through autoethnographic place-making.” Graduate Program in History, York University: New Frontiers. Toronto, ON: Feb 23-25, 2017.
“Inherited Nostalgia: Colonial revisionism and intergenerational meaning-making.” Humber Liberal Arts @ IFOA: “Truth, Lies, and Manufacturing Memory.” Toronto, ON: Oct 28-29, 2016.
“Unsettling Family History: Memorialization, Erasure, and the Settler Colonial Nationalist Imaginary.” Humber Liberal Arts @ IFOA: “Mapping Nations/Locating Citizens.” Toronto, ON: Oct 30-31, 2015.
“Unpacking ‘Fanagalo’: Linguistic Traces, Intimate Histories, and Colonial Legacies.” Critical Ethnic Studies Association: “Sovereignties and Colonialisms: Resisting Racism, Extraction, and Dispossession.” Toronto, ON: Apr 30-May 3, 2014.
“Canadian Imperialism, Queer Diasporas, and Pinkwatching Jason Kenney.” Johanna Lewis. Women's and Gender Studies et Recherches Féministes Annual Conference. Victoria, BC: June 2, 2013.
Selected Awards
2022: Feminist Historical Research Scholarship
2022; 2021: St. George's Society of Toronto Endowment Graduate Student Award
2022; 2019: Albert Tucker Award in British History
2021: Provost Dissertation Scholarship (declined due to COVID-19)
2020: Victor Hughes Graduate Scholarship
2020: Ontario Graduate Scholarship (Doctoral)
2019: Richard J. Storr Graduate History Award
2016-2019: Joseph Armand Bombardier Doctoral SSHRC Scholarship
2016: York Graduate Scholarship
2015-2016: Ontario Graduate Scholarship (Master’s)
2014-2015: Joseph Armand Bombardier Master’s SSHRC Scholarship
2014: York Graduate Scholarship
2013: First Prize, Undergraduate Essay Competition, Women's and Gender Studies et Recherches Féministes