Event Details

Book Launch: Challenging Exile w/ Eric Adams

The Centre is excited to announce that we'll be hosting a launch event for Challenging Exile: Japanese Canadians and the Wartime Constitution by Professors Eric Adams (University of Alberta, Faculty of Law) and Jordan Stranger-Ross (University of Victoria, History Department). Join us for food, drinks, and a short talk by co-author Professor Adams, as well as comments on the book by Jessica Eisen (U of A, Law), Dominique Clement (U of A, Sociology), and Aya Fujiwara (U of A, History). It will take place at 5:30pm on October 21st, in the City Room (5th floor) of Peter Lougheed Hall (University of Alberta), and registration for the event will open in September.

Book Abstract:

In September 1945, Canada proposed exiling Japanese Canadians to Japan, a country devastated by war. Thousands who had experienced internment and dispossession were now at risk of banishment.

In Challenging Exile, Eric M. Adams and Jordan Stanger-Ross detail the circumstances and personalities behind the exile. They follow the lives of families facing government orders that uprooted them from their homes, stripped them of their livelihoods and possessions, and proposed to exile them from Canada. And they analyze the court case in which lawyers and judges grappled with the meaning of citizenship, race, and rights in times of war and its aftermath.

Unfolding in a context of global conflict, sharpened borders, and racist suspicion, the story told in Challenging Exile has enduring relevance for our own troubled times.

Speakers

Eric Adams

Professor, University of Alberta Faculty of Law

Eric M. Adams, BA (McGill), LLB (Dalhousie), SJD (Toronto), is a Professor at the University of Alberta, Faculty of Law. He served as Vice Dean at the Faculty from 2019-2022. Professor Adams publishes widely in the fields of constitutional law, legal history, employment law, human rights, and legal education. His multidisciplinary research engages all aspects of Canadian constitutional law, theory, and history, and includes studies of the classic cases, Christie v York, Roncarelli v Duplessis, and R v Drybones. He has won multiple awards for his teaching and research including the Canadian Association of Law Teachers Academic Excellence Award, the John T. Saywell Prize for Canadian Constitutional Legal History, the Provost’s Award for Early Career Teaching Excellence, best article prizes from the Canadian Association of Law Teachers and the Canadian Historical Association, and a Killam Annual Professorship for excellence in research, teaching, and service.

Jessica Eisen

Associate Professor, University of Alberta Faculty of Law

Jessica Eisen is an Associate Professor at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law. Her research interests include animals and the law, constitutional and comparative constitutional law, equality and antidiscrimination law, feminist legal theory, intergenerational justice, and law and social movements. Professor Eisen’s research has been published in the Journal of Law and Equality, Animal Law Review, Canadian Journal of Poverty Law, Transnational Legal Theory, Queen’s Law Journal, ICON: International Journal of Constitutional Law, University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, University of Toronto Law Journal, and elsewhere. She has studied at Barnard College, Columbia University (BA, Political Science and Human Rights Studies, 2004); The University of Toronto Faculty of Law (JD, 2009); Osgoode Hall Law School (LLM, 2014); and Harvard Law School (SJD, 2019); and has worked at WeirFoulds LLP, the Ontario Ministry of Labour, and the Constitutional Law Branch of the Ministry of the Attorney General for Ontario.

Dominique Clement

Professor, Faculty of Arts

Professor Clement's scholarship examines the history and sociology of human rights, as well as social movements and the nonprofit sector in Canada. He is currently working on variety of projects that include topics such as human rights law and activism; public funding for the nonprofit sector; national security policies and counterterrorism; settlement and integration of immigrants; and freedom of information policy. He is also the author of books on the history of feminist activism in Canada, human rights law and activism, and the sociology of human rights.

Aya Fujiwara

Former Director of the Prince Takamado Japan Centre

Aya Fujiwara is author of Ethnic Elites and Canadian Identity: Ukrainians, Japanese, and Scots, 1919-1971 (University of Manitoba Press, 2012), and several articles in the field of immigration and ethnic history of Canada. After obtaining her Ph.D. in history at the University of Alberta, she served as a full-time political advisor/researcher at the Embassy of Japan in Canada, and as L.R. Wilson Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of History, McMaster University. Her area of research is immigration and ethnic history of Canada, transnationalism, Japanese Canadians, and Japan-Canada relations.

Event Date(s):

October 21, 2025, 5:30 pm to 7:00 pm

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Centre for Constitutional Studies
448D Law Centre
University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB T6G 2H5