CALL FOR PAPERS
In May 1942, Isamu Noguchi voluntarily entered the Poston
Internment Center, one of ten euphemistically-named
‘Relocation Centers’ established by Executive Order 9066.
In response to his incarceration experiences in the Arizona
desert, the sculptor made “My Arizona,” one of a series of
abstract lunar landscapes, after his release. In the work, a hot
pink Plexiglas plane hovers over a white desert landscape.
The fluorescent cast from the plexiglass glows hotly over the
abstracted forms of conical mounds and valleys below. The
sculpture is squared at the edges, forming a boundary that
confines within it the landscape and all that lives there.
As is evident in “My Arizona”, the connections between
objects and their creators’ experiences––including the
physical places and broader cultural landscapes in which
they were produced––underpin their social power. How did
the objects designed by Japanese American survivors after
incarceration give expression to central conflicts of identity,
and help their makers to navigate between hopelessness
and action? What new meanings did these objects and
their makers take on as they found their places in postwar
American life? Can a house, a gas station, a garden, a
church, or a teacup help us think in new ways about the
impact of incarceration on Japanese Americans and their
communities even years later? Or about the capacity of
material objects and practices to shape social identities?
To carry or transform collective memory?
This conference will bring together scholars from a
range of humanities and art/design fields to explore the
hidden legacies of internment––“hidden,” that is, in plain
sight, in the rich landscapes of mid-century American design
and culture. Scheduled to coincide with the 80th anniversary
of the internment period, the conference will advance the
work of compiling an edited volume of artifact-focused
essays on this subject. We seek contributors who will join us
in pursuit of new ways of thinking about Japanese American
incareration experiences and the impact on postwar creative
work by considering a single artifact in its contexts of
creation, use, and broader social meanings. Survivors of
internment created some of the architectural, artistic and
design hallmarks of mid-century cultural life, embraced as
“American,” “democratic,” and definitively “modern” in all
senses. Yet their authors’ experiences as citizen-detainees
were rarely acknowledged in that post-war world, even by
the survivors themselves.
That amnesia continues. Much of the broader public
has also “forgotten” much of this history, despite ample
documentation of internment policies and practices, an
official apology by the U.S. government, and the opening
of the camps to visitors. So have many scholars, despite
ongoing efforts to decolonize design and, more broadly, to
reckon with racial violence and white supremacy.
The project is part of a larger research and archival initiative
based at Washington University in St. Louis, where the
conference will be held. WashU was one of a handful of
institutions that accepted Japanese Americans as students
during the internment period. About thirty attended the
university, and four of them––Gyo Obata, Richard Henmi,
George Matsumoto, and Fred Toguchi––went on to be
architects of note. Their work and experiences will be
featured in an on-site exhibition during the conference.
Interested authors are invited to develop an abstract for an object-focused essay (c. 5000 words) to be presented
at the conference. The essay would then be considered
for inclusion in an edited volume. Essays should consider
localized “artifactual” details such as the genesis, use,
form, and materiality of the object. Beyond that, they might
consider any number of other contextual factors, starting
with the foundational facts and psychological impacts
of incarceration, and extending to the personal/family
experiences of the designers, their specific career arcs, and
the broader social and cultural worlds in which they did
their work. Contributors are encouraged to develop creative
approaches to reading their chosen objects, exploring their
complex social meanings and potential as lieux de memoire.
How might such objects be interpreted in relation to issues
of inclusion, exclusion, and broader civic and social identity
formation; or to memorializing and forgetting the war;
or perhaps to advancing modernist design and planning
agendas, including urban “renewal,” so often predicated on
erasure of communities of color; or to consumer culture and
suburbanization; or to “mid-century modern” as a signifier
of elite design culture, or more recently, middlebrow
nostalgia? This list is suggestive, not limiting; authors are
welcome to identify other factors of interest.
Prospective contributors should send the following to
editors by November 21, 2022: a 350-word abstract for the
proposed essay (word count exclusive of footnotes), a CV,
and a short (100-word) biography.
PROJECT TIMELINE
Deadline for proposals: November 21, 2022
Essay drafts due for initial review: March 15, 2023:
Colloquium: April 14-15, 2023, Washington University in
St. Louis (NOTE: A stipend will be provided to help defray
travel expenses; lodging will be covered by the university.)
Essay revisions: Following the conference, a set of
recommendations for the final round of edits will be
provided, and a final submission date will be set in late fall,
2023.
Please submit your abstracts to: kelleyv@wustl.edu
Co-editors: Heidi Aronson Kolk, Kelley Van Dyck Murphy,
and Lynnette Widder