Dr. Samantha Cutrara:        Marie-Hélène, thank you so much for speaking with me today. I’m just really excited for us to connect and talk about these ideas, especially from your perspective of being a francophone educator, scholar, as well as someone interested in the histories of teaching and learning of women. So thank you so much.

Dr. Marie-Hélène Brunet:        Thank you for the invitation. This is a great series, so I’m really happy to be here and —

SC:        Well, great. I’m happy that you’re here. Before we start, can you just do a little — do you wanna do a little introduction for yourself?

MB:        Sure. So I’m an assistant professor at uOttawa. So University of Ottawa in the French side of the Faculty of Education. That’s been since 2018, so it’s quite recent. My research focuses on the understanding of women’s history, gender history, and I’m also looking at other very interesting topics like gender representations, in teacher education. I’m interested in media literacy. I’m interested in how the curriculums make a place or not for the Franco-Ontarian minorities. So yeah, I think I’ve managed to put a little bit of what I do here. I don’t know if that’s enough.

SC:        Yeah, that’s enough. I think we have so many, like, intersections of interest that I’m especially interested to be able to bring some of those up today. So let’s just get started with our first question. So, have you thought of history any different because of the COVID pandemic? Because when this first started, I certainly had.

In particular, I was thinking of all these experiences and all these feelings that are happening in our homes that, like, are they ever going to come out in a textbook as a way that we are going to think and learn about this historical moment. So I know some people haven’t had a chance to do that kind of thinking. Have you thought of history any different because of this moment?

MB:        It’s a good question. I think a lot of the questions this pandemic forces us to look at or already somehow on my radar, right? But let’s say that the present situation gives us collectively the occasion to look at history with a different lens.

Might not come as a surprise to people who know my research, but I think we have here an occasion to analyze, for example, some gendered aspects of the pandemic, which obviously will lead us to look through history to try to understand better the present, right?

Thinking this morning Le Devoir, so the Quebec francophone newspaper published a statistic investigation to show how women were disproportionally on the front line of the pandemic. This was interesting, but as more of a specialist of qualitative data, I was more interested in another article that was also published this morning. It was a collective of women in France who signed an opinion letter in Libération. And I could give you the link for that. It’s quite interesting. So for the people who are able to read French.

So they signed this opinion letter in Libération on May 8. So that’s today. And I read that this morning and it kind of summarized a lot of things that I want to focus on during this little interview that we have. So maybe I can translate just a part of it. Do you feel that’s a good idea?

SC:        Yeah, that would be great. Do you want us to — do you want to share your screen with some of it?

MB:        I can just translate it and then I can send you the link or you’d rather have the —

SC:        Yeah, please.

MB:        So it’s just a short quote of it just like where they summarize different — very important aspects of how this pandemic is gendered in so many ways. So they say this crisis exposes a fracture of gender, precarious jobs generally related to caring and that are occupied mostly by women. We realize those are now indispensable. They always have been, right? But now we can see that they are much more indispensable than more ‘prestigious’ jobs.

There is also the pressure for single-parents family or even other families that is visible right now. There’s also an increase in domestic violence. And even in these times of isolation, there’s an increase in street harassment. And they also in their [iaudible 0:06:39.4], they say that there’s also more difficulty to access with production rights because they’re not considered a priority in the hospitals. So abortion, for example.

So mainly, like all of these were, like, kind of issues that are there in normal times, but the fact that we’re going through this pandemic, it makes it even more visible if we take a look at it, right? So it has to be brought up and showed to people so that they can actually see this.

So this is only some of the things that relate to gender in this crisis. So the quote that I just gave you. Of course, if we were to take an intersectionality, analysis and inequalities are much more complex than the simple man-women [inaudible 0:07:32.8*binary.] But I think there’s still a place to focus on gender there. There’s quite a lot to say right now.

I’m thinking of something else about the language that is used and I will give you some examples. This language is used in Quebec and elsewhere in France, and you can tell me if it has been used in the news in English, which I haven’t been following. But the language is interesting. It brings us to look through the historically constructive gender attribute, gendered attributes for a better understanding.

So a first word that comes to mind that is used so much in Quebec here is the guardian angel. So has this the news in the media in English? Calling the nurses, the essential workers are guardian angels. Has it?

SC:        I don’t think so. I don’t think so too perhaps the same extent. Like that isn’t an evocative image, but I may have missed it. I will be doing some little research about that after this.

MB:        So it’s been used by prime minister of Quebec [inaudible 0:09:01.3] ago a lot and his team, right? So it’s meant as a compliment, of course, but it has implications including gender implication. An angel is benevolent, it refers to something — it refers to a vocation. It does not refer to professionalism, even if nurses, for example, are trained professionals.

So while it is meant as a compliment, it should also remind us that these jobs are related to care and how these have historically been feminine and paid badly. And in these times we’re going through, the term guardian angel is also a way to not question the inequalities in a context where even more than usual is asked from care workers extra hours, working on weekends, and of course, being in the front line putting their own health and security at risk.

So I think a few people have reacted to this language demonstrating all what I’ve been saying. So this is not coming out of my mind, but I think history here can be a great tool to better understand where it comes from. So that’s one of the things in the language. Maybe the war, the war narratives that we’ve been hearing — have you seen this in the Anglophone Media? Like we’re —

SC:        Well, I mean, of course there’s always the, like, fight against. And I think I’ve heard it more in American context than Anglophone Media Canadian context, but I don’t think it’s a stretch by any means. I think people would resonate with that.

MB:        Yeah, I think you said it people resonate with that, but it’s kind of important to kind of question this language again. You know, war soldiers, the fight, [inaudible 0:11:10.9*the vile,] it kind of, you know, it calls for notions of virility — virility, is that how I would say virility?

MB:        Okay. Violence. But it also calls for being a soldier without questioning and wondering is that what we are doing? Is that a language that we need at this moment? And why is that war language so easy to use? I think looking at the way we teach history, we might find some answers, right? Fighting a war and winning it through a vaccine. Vac-sine?

SC:        Vaccine. Yeah.

MB:        Vaccine. I knew I wasn’t pronouncing that well.

SC:        [inaudible 0:11:56.4]

MB:        It would make like a wonderful progress narrative, wouldn’t it? But then it would lack the complexity of what is happening, right? But we love those war narratives.

So the war language also brings me to the question of agency. So, do we have any form of agency in this? And then it brings another question. Are we really all equal in this? Who are the soldiers working towards this war to be ‘won’? Whose war is it? What exactly will the victory look like? Who is gonna benefit from it? Who still holds the power to make changes now and after this?

So when I think of the agency, it brings me back to that letter of opinion from Libération I was telling you about this morning because all the women authors in this, they point out the gender language and they say at the end, “No, we won’t accept going back to normal. You will have to express your respect in more concrete forms than calling us angels or good little soldiers.”

So all about this, we socially have to realize that what is feminine is constantly under valued and the perpetuation of this has permitted our differentials to continue. I think if men are not — if men do not choose care as career options; teaching, nursing, it’s not because women are better at care or that men are not good at care, it’s because care associated to so-called feminine values is not socially valued, and therefore, this feels for a lot of men like losing it would feel, like losing prestige, losing power, and of course, the salary doesn’t help, but that’s all related.

So I think all of this calls for history. Not history as [inaudible 0:14:16.8] from the past do not repeat mistakes. That’s a common cliche. The complexity of societies, the novelty of the present crisis make this thought pointless. But that doesn’t mean history is not important. I think if we are to use it, we do have to rethink the way we teach it and the lessons we take from it. And I’ve seen a lot of great interventions from historians, even some questions I hadn’t brought about. I have to admit though that my time to read through all these has been quite limited, but it’s fabulous the response from the historians. So I might give you one example that I think I might be talking a lot.

SC:        Give me one second. I wanna see if I can pull a book off my bookshelf because I wanted to make comments about what you said. And I wanna see if I have that book through here. No, it’s not in that one. My bookshelf is such a mess.

MB:        These are the best bookshelves.

SC:        I know. Okay, what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna say something then I will be — I’m not gonna stop the video, but when I edit it, I’ll put the book covering just so you know.

That brings up so many important things. Just like my head is like percolating with connections right now. One thing that I, like, really wanted to draw on is this book about commemoration, and I’m gonna put up the cover right now. This book, like the cover is a statue of an angel with a soldier at its feet because that is such a typical kind of war commemorative moment. And what I love to what you had said was I love that you’re drawing the parallels to these progress narratives. The ways that we are invoking these same narratives over and over and over again and we can say, “Oh, no, there are context specific and it just happens that these metaphors work and –”

MB:        No, they need to be disrupted. They need to be disrupted.

SC:        Yes. And how is something like an angel and how is something like war essentially gendered, right? Like, and when — and there are commemorative practices that bring those together just like this moment is bringing things together.

I also thought of — and I want to direct people to the video I did with Neil Orford, and this is not a critique of him or his project, but he said, “One of the things we can learn about the Spanish Flu is how many women worked as nurses.” And often it was on their porches or in their church basements. And to me — and again, this is not a critique of Neil or the work, but to me, I was like, “No, women have always been doing this work.” Women has always been doing care work. It’s just that now you’re calling them nurses and you were formalizing their work, but that care work was always, always, always there. And that was the thing that’s so frustrating for me as a historian and a feminist to think about, like, these care work narratives are — like, how are we thinking about these care work narratives when every single woman with children right now is doing care work at a different rate probably as a male partner. I mean, those are broad strokes, but you know, because that is especially care work.

I saw this tweet that the CBC like reposted with these laughing emojis that said, “The hardest thing about a Mother’s day from a man –” that said, “The hardest thing about creating a Mother’s Day card during the pandemic is asking the mother where the craft supplies are.” And I was like, “That’s not funny.”

MB:        There’s a concept used by feminist in France mostly. It’s (French language 0:18:39.8). I don’t know if there’s a translation for this, but it’s the mental charge and that’s, you know —

SC:        Yes, yes.

MB:        — thinking about who’s the one thinking about the lunch, thinking about taking the rendezvous for the dentist, for the doctor, thinking about the next birthday, thinking of organizing the space in the house so that the kids can — so this is often put on the shoulders of women, and it’s historically and socially constructed so that a lot of men will react in saying, “Well, you know, I would have done it. Just ask me.” “But I shouldn’t have to ask you,” right?

SC:        Yes. Just ask if you need help.

MB:        Why? I’m not asking myself, right? I just do it. So that’s, I don’t know. The term probably exists in English and I don’t know. So I’m sorry, but I know that [French language 0:19:43.4] and I could share a great comic about this made from Emma. She’s a French feminist, and it’s just great. And it shows kind of someone inviting over, friends, which it’s not related to the present context, but in how she’s trying to manage. Having them over, making their homeworks for the kids, cooking the — and she’s taking care of all this. And then the — I don’t want to say everything. So I’ll leave it up to — look at that comic and that’s just great. And I’m sure the book you wanted to share is also pretty great. So I don’t know if you have it. If you have it in your —

SC:        Well, the book is like commemoration and it’s the cover that is really evocative that brings so many things. And I’m not a mother, but I did care work — I did health care work for a family member who’s similar in my age. It was an elder care, and some people were like, “Well, you’re home with them. Like, I’m sure that’s fine.” It’s like there’s so many things.

And even though I’m not doing it now, and I live by myself, I am thinking about what it would be like to be engaged in that care work now and I — well, I don’t know if we want to talk about that. I’m just like, whoa! But it will be really interesting about how and in what ways that this will shift and change how we approach so many things because you’re drawing on history, but you’re not just talking about history teaching.

But I want to talk about history teaching now. Do you think the ways that we are going to teach history are going to shift after this? Do you think that their — I already feel like the — anyway. Do you think that this greater acknowledgment of care work — I don’t even know [inaudible 0:21:50.5] these questions. Do you think about a greater perhaps recognition of care work is going to shift to be brought into the classroom more? Or do you think, and I won’t be laughing about this so much. Do you think that the ideas about like the angel and about like the mom that does it all will actually start being solidified in our teaching when we get back to the classroom?

MB:        Hm. Will we as a — a good question for which I don’t have an answer. Should we?

SC:        No you didn’t?

MB:        Should we? Should we for sure, you know?

SC:        Yeah.

MB:        I think we should have already been teaching history differently. Some teachers are doing, you know, — I’m not saying that all teachers are the same. Far from that. A lot of teachers are doing some amazing work at teaching history in meaningful ways. But where I want to go with this, and I think that you’ve explained it quite well. The present situation shows us the complexity of societies, the complexity of the past in a lot of ways. This might mean we have to take a different look on the past. And I’m thinking, again, we talked about this a bit earlier, the progress narrative.

From my research and from my teaching, I know how much the progress narrative is attractive. It’s comfortable. It’s reassuring, and therefore, it’s not a threat, right? For example, it’s so reassuring to think that women have achieved the quality with men following multiple victories and all this has led to a wonderful society where both gender enjoy the same rights.  In reality, we know that this is false on so many levels. But it’s still somehow reassuring so much that when reminded of ongoing inequalities, a lot of students, student teachers, students from, like, different research, they will respond, “Okay, yeah, it’s still unequal, but we’ve gone so far,” right?

So I think we see this right now too. a lot of people are saying, “Focus on the positive. see forward. stop complaining. We’re all in this together,” right? In Quebec, and I keep repeating myself on this, I don’t go out, I think. There‘s a good reason for it, but I don’t go out a lot. But from what I see in the streets around here, there’s rainbows everywhere in the windows. I don’t know if that’s a trend that has been going on —

MB:        — in Ontario. So it’s linked with the word (French language 0:24:57.1). So, all will go well, right? And these images, sure, are reassuring and helpful in some ways, but we should be questioning what it means (French language 0:25:10.7). And that means we shouldn’t stop highlighting historical power differentials. We have to look at this. We have to see how it can explain some aspect of this crisis. And surely, we should never forget to think about our own privilege and how these are salient when considering like the isolation jammed in a small apartment or surrounded by a villa, right? The isolation is not the same. So I’m drifting away. But if we’re going back to history teaching, I think we have an opportunity to disrupt the progress narrative.

So this brings me to underlining again agency. So, how do we teach about a lot of events including events we typically associate with women? The right to vote. So the focus is the government that allowed women to vote instead on focusing on the struggle —

SC:        They allowed.

MB:        — of women — sorry?

SC:        They allowed. Yeah.

MB:        Yeah. So instead of focusing on the struggle of women for decades demanding to have that right, right? We lack what I call in French [French language 0:26:36.2]. So, and I struggle to translate that. Let’s say a concern for duration. So we focus on a date, on a fixed event on the end while we should be focusing on the means and analyzing how the reality is much more complex. So we’re still going back to that progress narrative and how it’s important to disrupt that.

The present events can be the way to expose this to our students. We could be asking them, when historians will be looking back on these events in the future, what will they focus on? Who’s at the center of this crisis? How are women care workers? What are their role in this? Should historians focus only on government decisions or on the scientist who discovered a vaccine? I think I didn’t pronounce that well again.

SC:        No, you did exactly. Yeah, you did.

MB:        Or the historians should be looking at this in a broader way? So just asking those questions to students can start an important discussion, so it can help afterwards leading discussion on forgotten narratives and help our students realize how much, for example, women’s voice, but any marginalized group voice in history have been invisibilized by the curriculum.

And I was watching the video you sent me. So you have looked at these questions in how we can integrate, for example, women in lessons. I think you should share those two videos. Those were great. And one thing you are saying in your March 8 video is super important. I think that might wrap, help us wrap up this question so it can help us conclude. The important thing you’re saying is if you want to have a gender, if you want to look at gender, if you want to have women even, you have to challenge the structure. Gender will only become visible if you challenge the curriculums, if you challenge the structures. So, yeah.

SC:        Yeah. I have no problem when people [inaudible 0:29:04.2]. But like, you know, I have been looking in a lot of curriculum lately and I’ve seen a lot of questions, like, what was the changing status of women during this time? And you know what question I haven’t seen? What was the changing status of men during this time?

SC:        And you had said like, “I wonder how this will get brought up in the future.” Like, historians will frame it. And if it’s framed as like, and then women stepped up in where these guardian angels, women were really able to take center stage because of that. Like, there aren’t —

MB:        [inaudible 0:29:42.6]. It will become the same as every war narrative again because men couldn’t do work, then women came in and replaced them till the war was over when they went back home. And when you look at the gender of history in the work that women historians have been doing, it’s completely false. It’s so much more complex than that, but it’s kind of the easy way out and, “See, I told you about women. We covered this already.”

SC:        And I think it’s also worth really questioning for people, like how — if I’m teaching this, how is this familiar to me? Because if it’s familiar to me, there is probably an element of this that could be challenged. And one of the videos I did early in May, I posted videos that I actually filmed in February that said, “What’s your purpose for teaching history?” Because my purpose is transformation. I think that if you aren’t teaching history to make a change, then I don’t know what you’re doing.

And so, if your purpose is to make change, then yes, you need to challenge that narrative about, well, women now got the right to vote. No, if your idea is that history will help us make change, then you need to be able to focus on the resistance, the resilience, the actions, the agency of people that made those actions happened. So I really appreciate you bringing that into this pandemic moment.

MB:        I love the agency because that was the center of many pieces, right?

SC:        There you go.

MB:        But generally, it makes it really easy using agency to disrupt narratives. Because what I did in the thesis and I did again with teacher candidates, and every time it really brings a big reaction is to have different narratives from different textbooks. And there are like — sometimes there are only two or three sentences talking about women in a, like, 50-page range, right? But then you have those and you have them comparing the sentences.

And some of those textbooks actually give some agency to women, some ignore it. And you have students reflect on the different ways, the different formulation and what it means about history. And there’s a great deal of debate going on, and they start talking, and they start realizing. And so, that’s just I love doing that. And it’s a very easy way. Very simple. It doesn’t take a lot of time, and just this brings the question to mind, oh, I thought my textbook was always giving me the right version. And that every textbook approved, it will all give the same version because it’s all the same curriculum and it’s all approved. But no, when we start looking at it, they all showed different agency. And what does that mean is a fun exercise too to have students you’re working on.

SC:        One exercise that I also do when I do the historic space work is to use multiple textbooks to show how similar the narratives are as well, right?

MB:        Yeah, it is.

SC:        And how we can get so, like, ingrained in a certain set of stories. And actually, I think that’s very similar to the progress narrative that you talked about.

SC:        So, like, big pictures can look very similar and there can be some different ways that certain histories are positioned, but why is there so much similarity? And why are the differences important at certain moments too, right?

MB:        Yeah. I think it’s — like, if you’re looking at a metal?

SC:        Yeah.

MB:        — on a bigger scale, then yes, they all have quite the same narrative. And I think it’s very subtle. When you want to look at agency, you have to look through [French language 0:34:04.5]. So subtleties?

SC:        The subliminal?

MB:        Yeah. Well, you know, who’s the actor. Who —

SC:        Subtle. The subtlety, yes.

MB:        Who’s positioned as doing the change? As being an actor or an actress of actual social historical change? And is it the government? Is it women? Is it the event in itself, right? I remember one of the excerpt I was using said, the pill, the concentrative pill have this huge effect on families. And I thought, where’s the human in this? It’s not the pill. It’s actually women deciding and making decisions over their body. So we’re even giving agency to an event and not to humans.

SC:        The pills just like came in to the household and was like, no more children, everyone!

So this might be a good time to switch to the third question. So my work generally is on imagining a new ‘we’. That we have to break down a lot of these silos that we create between just like even teacher and student as well as a variety of different multicultures, but like not necessarily ethnic or racial, but like the variety of different cultures; gendered cultures, culture to sexuality and that we have to really challenge that in order to transform our world to be one that is more equitable.

Do you see — what kind of potential do you see in this moment to imagine a new ‘we’? And maybe that’s in the imagination, maybe that’s in the ‘we’, maybe you don’t see potential in this moment or after. Do you have any thoughts on that?

MB:        Sure. We’ve thought about the rainbow earlier, right?

SC:        Yeah.

MB:        Kind of having a rainbow overdose, right? I’ve criticized those rainbows. I think I’m having kind of an overdose, but I have to admit that at first, I love them. I love how my kids love them. They wanted to draw them. They still want to expose their arts in the windows. And I love how they sent a hope message. And surely, I hope everything will go well like the [French language 0:36:35.2]. But I sure hope that we just don’t go back to the normal we had before.

So what I’m hoping is that we end up building something better or like you say, I’m kind of hoping we can imagine a new ‘we’. There’s still this cynical part of me that fears that we might go back to old habits that we know, that we know they work. And while I’m saying this, I realize how much my own privileges might have me going back easily to the way it was. But I don’t want to. I think it means putting effort thinking and how much some of us, some of this, some of what we’re going through makes us realize things in a very concrete way. Being at home with the kids reminds me of the essential and that this essential is quite the opposite of productivity as the neo-liberal university defines it.

But for a while at the beginning, I thought, well, how unuseful do I feel? The kids surely didn’t feel that way. They were happy. They found this time — with their time, they still find this time with their parents joyful being with us. That felt so important to them. And I’m saying all this and I know my situation is ideal considering what we’re going through that family is not a safe place for a lot of kids right now. Isolation makes this even worse.

For example, I know some LGBTQ+ students for whom closing the university residence meant going back to a family that doesn’t accept them. So, maybe I’m drifting away again, but all of this brings me back to vulnerabilities. And you had a great talk with Dr. Geoffrey Reaume on this?

SC:        Yeah, Reaume feasibility studies.

MB:        Yeah. So I didn’t watch all of the talks, but this one, I saw. So vulnerabilities, that brings us back to how were differentials that have been exposed by this crisis. And so after this, we can go in a lot of ways. There’s a threat though to make this even worse instead of making it better, so we have to be careful.

I will reach to — well, we’ll talk about maybe another thing that’s of interest of me as an example and I will talk about another power differential. So the French language right now, especially for minorities outside Quebec getting access to services, and French has been made even harder with the pandemic. So the present crisis has made it easy to say, for reasons of crisis, the service is only available in English.

Prime Minister Trudeau has had to give explanations of it few weeks ago on how some equipment, some essential equipment might come with no French on it. Like explanation, information. And of course, some of this can be explained because of the emergency. But I’m sure that, like, in other times in history, francophones in Canada will have to fight to make sure that we don’t lose the rights. That this is only temporary. And even this, it means that in particularly vulnerable time, some people can’t access information, fundamental information in their own language in a bilingual country.

So this is another example of how we’re differentials. There are so many. We need to keep having protection for minorities, but even that, that’s not enough. We need, as a society, to reflect on our contradictions, on our privileges, on how our choices perpetuate power dynamics that are not good, and then we have to make changes.

I’m thinking of something else. I’m thinking of class. Not like class tune, but socioeconomic classes. In my university after the ‘in-between period’ following the first few days of the crisis, staff. And I’m not talking about professors here. Staff with kids or with conditions making it harder for them to do their job, for example, care for an elderly were told that they have to continue full-time distance working even with the particular conditions or take a leave and lose their salary. No in-between. And I thought, “Wow. How absurd it is that the people who right now need the most of these salaries are the one who have to make those tough choices. And it’s a reflection that we need to have as a society, as a new we, this crisis has showed us more than ever that care is fundamental. It’s the basis. And now we have to fight because teachers, nurses, essential workers, they deserve better.

And this is for me and I will conclude with this, I think we need — it means that we have to reflect on gender. On how much it’s a historical concern. And also, we need to reveal those power dynamics in our society. And so maybe those are avenues to tackle the challenges ahead of us.

SC:        Well, and I’m going to draw back to what you said earlier as a way to conclude too. I think that if we are going to have a better world, a more equitable world after this, that we have to use our agency. We have to remember we have agency.

SC:        And I think of Mary Chaktsiris’ video, one of the first ones in this series who said that I’m trying to remind my students that they are historical actors as well. And that things they — it’s not acted upon. They can act in this moment too. And I’m really hoping that we can shift the narratives, and I think that this conversation has brought up so many important points for teachers and other educators to be able to think about. So thank you so much for taking time to have this wonderful conversation.

MB:        Thank you.

SC:        That was so great.

MB:        Take care, everyone. Take care of your loved ones. And yourself.

SC:        But also, take care of yourself.

MB:        And take care of society and have agency, and let’s have a better week.

SC:        Yeah. Thank you so much and have a great rest of the day.

MB:        Thank you.

SC:        Okay, bye.