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Pam Sugiman

Dr. Pamela Sugiman

Professor
EducationBA (University of Toronto), MA (University of Toronto), PhD (University of Toronto)
Phone416-979-5000 x552602

Dr. Sugiman is on leave.

Areas of Expertise

oral history; memory; women’s history in Canada; racism & racialization; work & labour; working-class experience

Research

Dr. Pamela Sugiman is a Professor of Sociology and an oral historian. Sugiman's work has been inspired by a passionate interest in the memories and lives of working class people in Canada, with a sensitivity to intersectional identities and experiences. In her early research, she documented the emergence of working-class unionism/trade union feminism in an analysis of women who were employed in auto manufacturing plants from 1917 to the late 1970s. Following this, Sugiman studied the working lives of Black men who were employed in the auto foundries of southern Ontario throughout the 20th century, places in which they performed extremely dangerous and arduous jobs. Most of her subsequent writing has explored personal memory and oral history, with a focus on the Second World War internment and forced resettlement and assimilation of Canadians of Japanese ancestry. Presently, she is co-director of a new collaborative project (funded by a SSHRC Partnership Development Grant) on women’s activism in Canada and the creation and preservation of oral history interviews with grassroots women who have been marginalized from public history (including histories of feminist movements for change).

Graduate Program Membership

Community, Professional & Administrative Experience

For over 8 years, Dr. Sugiman served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Toronto Metropolitan University (July 2016-Aug 2024). Prior to this, she was Chair of the Department of Sociology (2012-2016). Over the course of Sugiman’s career, as a researcher, university administrator, teacher and mentor, she has built a reputation for collegiality, transparency, integrity, creativity and vision. As Dean of Arts, she promoted the recruitment of Indigenous faculty, development of Indigenous education, democratic engagement, migration and immigration and student engagement and student-worker experience. Sugiman remains committed to academic rigour and equity and social justice. 

For excellence in research, Sugiman has been awarded an Outstanding Contribution Award from the Canadian Sociological Association. In recognition of her overall excellence in research, teaching and service, she has received a Marion Dewar Prize in Canadian Women’s History from the National Capital Committee on the Scholarship, Preservation and Dissemination of Women’s History. She has also been named the Lansdowne Lecturer and the Distinguished Women Scholar, both at the University of Victoria. For excellence as a university leader, Sugiman was awarded the Senior Women Academic Administrators of Canada Recognition Award in Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and the Errol Aspevig Award for Outstanding Leadership at TMU. 

Selected Publications

Sugiman, P. 2018. "Memories of internment: Narrating Japanese-Canadian Women’s life stories" in Diaspora, Memory, and Identity: A Search for Home (external link)  (pp. 48-80), edited by V. Agnew. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Stanger-Ross, J. and P. Sugiman (eds.). 2017. Witness to loss: race, culpability, and memory in the dispossession of Japanese Canadians. (external link)  Montreal: McGill Queen's University Press.

Sugiman, P. 2007. ‘A Million Hearts from Here’: Japanese Canadian Mothers and Daughters and the Lessons of War. (external link, opens in new window)   Journal of American Ethnic History, Summer: 50-68. 

Sugiman, P. 2004. Passing Time, Moving Memories: Interpreting Wartime Narratives of Japanese Canadian Women (PDF, 217 KB) (external link, opens in new window) . Histoire Sociale/Social History 36(73): 51-79.

Sugiman, P. 1994. Labour’s Dilemma: The Gender Politics of Auto Workers in Canada, 1937-1979. (external link, opens in new window)  Toronto: University of Toronto Press.