New research explores father/son relationship - Sophie Sickert (Part 2)
Mon. Jan. 27, 2025
Sophie Sickert presenting a conference poster of her thesis research at the University of Manitoba Faculty of Graduate Studies 75th Anniversary celebration in November 2023.
Photo supplied
Sophie Sickert explains her initial connection to the German Studies Program was personal. As she wrote in a blog post Father-and-Son Project Welcomes Sophie Sickert as Senior Research Assistant (May 29, 2024), her grandfather, Günther Sickert, was a German immigrant to Canada. During Mr. Sickert’s life he compiled an extensive collection of historical records in which he had documented the lives and work of German immigrants in Canada from 1890 to 2012. After her grandfather’s passing in 2015, Sophie’s family donated this collection to the German-Canadian Studies Program. (When Mr. Sickert’s archived collection went live online, Angela Carlson wrote a lovely piece about it, News from the Archive: Günther Sickert Collection Goes Live (July 27, 2023) on the blog.)
Sophie Sickert is an alumna of the UM/UW Joint MA in History Program (2024) where she studied the oral histories of Salvadorian refugees. Though Sickert was working with Spanish, her thesis advisor, Alexander Freund, Chair of the GCS Program, was aware that Sickert is also fluent in German. (It was something, Sophie says, her grandfather insisted on!) When Sickert had completed her MA, Dr. Freund mentioned there was position available as senior researcher on the Father-and-Son project. To Sickert this seemed like a natural progression and she appreciated that there was also the personal connection to the project through her family.
Sickert describes oral history as “the advantage we have as contemporary historians.” When studying earlier period in time, such as Medieval history, for example, historians rely on a “top-down approach” where they’re examining court documents and other formal records. With oral history, Sickert explains, you have access to the personal accounts of those you’re studying. Sickert adds, “It does, of course, open up the whole avenue of using memory as a resource, which comes with its own theoretical issues. But she states that “Any source that you use needs to be treated critically.”
The goal of the project is to publish a monograph on fatherhood in Canada, which as Angela Carlson had said, is something that doesn’t exist at present. Sickert has been working on the literature review for the project and she recently posted on the blog a review of three important works she’s been reading on fatherhood in Canada, Key Works on Canadian Fatherhood (October 21, 2024). Sickert explains that their work will focus on “the specific connection of what it is to be a son in a family and in the German Canadian context, where you have a German immigrant father who’s coming in from a different cultural background particularly at that time, i.e., after World War I and II, and raising a Canadian son. There’s lot of dynamics going on.” Sickert concludes, “It’s an interesting relationship to delve deeper into.”