WGST 267: Visual History and Memory: Representations of the WWII Japanese American Internment Experience in Photography & Film
Thursday: 2:20-5:00pm Room: Green Hall 130
Zoom Link: https://wellesley.zoom.us/j/4619592940
Embedded Files
Professor Elena Creef (WGST Department)
Office: 422 Founders. Office Hours: Thursday 5-6pm and by appointment
Phone: (508) 361-9062. Email: ecreef@wellesley.edu
Course Description:
The Japanese American Internment Experience during World War II has always had a vexed relationship with the camera. Cameras and other recording devices were banned in the camps until spring 1943. This course engages with the legacy of the Japanese American internment experience in visual culture and American historical memory. Using a gendered lens, we look at how the camps have been documented and remembered in photography, film, graphic memoir, camp newspapers, museum exhibitions, and new media since 1942. We will closely examine the photography of Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, and Toyo Miyatake, the intersection of internment camps and Indigenous lands, women filmmakers and activists, and explore major digital archives and recent augmented reality (AR) installations focusing on the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans.
Assessment Goals:
Students will gain a critical understanding of the complex relationship between the WWII Japanese American internment experience and the camera (which together with other recording devices were banned by the Western Defense Command until spring 1943). Graded assignments will include original reviews of photography and films, group presentations, and written final paper based on an archival research project (focusing on historical photographs & camp newspapers), and an exercise in augmented reality photography based on Japanese new media artist Masaki Fujihata’s work “BeHere/1942.”
In addition, students will
- gain visual literacy skills in analyzing photography, film and art
- develop a sophisticated understanding of visual cultural forms of this historical event and the cultural, political, and philosophical frameworks that shaped them
- gain a breadth of knowledge surrounding how the Japanese American incarceration experience has been remembered for the past 70 years
- will learn how to do archive-based research that will allow them to create an original body of work in written and visual form
Book List:
Ansel Adams. Born Free and Equal (PDF as well as available online URL)
Eric L. Mueller. Colors of Confinement: Rare Kodachrome Photographs of Japanese American Incarceration in World War II (Documentary Arts and Culture)
Miné Okubo. Citizen 13660 (Columbia University Press 1945)
Elizabeth Partridge & Lauren Tamaki graphic book: Seen and Unseen: What Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams's Photographs Reveal About the Japanese American Incarceration (Chronicle Books 2022)
Greg Robinson. A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America (Columbia UP 2009). Available as e-Book from Clapp Library.
Optional Book List:
Linda Gordon and Gary Okihiro. Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment (Norton 2006)
Sandra Sugawara. Show Me the Way to Go to Home (Radius Books 2023) [Note: This book will be placed on Reserve at the Art Library].
All PDF Readings will be placed in this Google Drive Folder labeled "Readings" for our class.
Film List:
Max Borenstein & Alexander Woo: AMC’s “The Terror”: Season 2: “Infamy” (2019) (10 episode series)
Scott Hicks. “Snow Falling on Cedars” (Universal 1999)
Ann Kaneko. “Manzanar Diverted: When Water Becomes Dust” (2022)
Betty LaDuke. "Persistent Women Artists : Pablita Velarde, Miné Okubo, Lois Mailou Jones (Cinema Guild 1996)
Alan Parker: “Come See the Paradise" (1990)
John Sturges: “Bad Day at Blackrock” (MGM 1955)
Rea Tajiri. “History & Memory: For Akiko & Takashige” (Women Make Movies 1991) & “Strawberry Fields” (Vanguard Cinema 1997)
I. Introduction to Studying the Japanese American Incarceration Experience in World War II--and the Legacy of the Camera
Week One (September 5): No Class Meeting. Read and listen to the pieces listed below:
Readings:
What’s in a Name? “Concentration Camp” vs “Incarceration Camp”: National Park Service: “Terminology and the Mass Incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.”
An Introduction to the Densho Archive: http://www.densho.org./
Listen to the following two podcasts:
Hana Maruyama & Noah Maruyama’s Densho Podcast series “Campu”: Episode 3 “Cameras”
John Tonai. “Photographing World War II Japanese-American Camps” (podcast)
https://www.unco.edu/news/articles/photographing-japanese-american-camps.aspx
Week Two (September 12): The Photographs of Ansel Adams at Manzanar
Readings:
Ansel Adams: Born Free and Equal (1944) printable PDF. You can access Full Text Version with Photographs at Library of Congress Archives: https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdclccn.45002975/?st=gallery
Additional Manzanar photographs from Ansel Adams’s collection are archived here at Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/manz/about.html
Week Three (September 19): Japanese American Internment History
Special Guest Speaker: Professor Greg Robinson, Professor of History at l'Université du Québec À. Montréal.
Readings: Greg Robinson: A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America (Columbia UP 2009). Read Intro and Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, and 7. Available as e-Book at Clapp Library
Week Four (September 26). The Photographs of Dorothea Lange and Toyo Miyatake
Readings:
1. Elizabeth Partridge & Lauren Tamaki graphic book: Seen and Unseen: What Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams's Photographs Reveal About the Japanese American Incarceration (Chronicle Books 2022)
2. Elena Creef. Chapter 1: Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake in Imaging Japanese America (NYU Press 2004).
Closely Examine These Archival Photographs:
Dorothea Lange’s War Relocation Authority Photographs (archive):
https://calisphere.org/collections/24123/?q=&sort=a&rq=Dorothea%20Lange
Toyo Miyatake’s photographs: http://www.toyomiyatake.com/manzanar.html
Week Five (October 3) Rare Still and Moving Images in Color: The Work of Bill Manbo & Dave Tatsuno
Readings:
Eric L. Mueller. Colors of Confinement: Rare Kodachrome Photographs of Japanese American Incarceration in World War II (Documentary Arts and Culture) PDF
2. Karen L. Ishizuka. "Topaz" (Dave Tatsuno's illicit 8mm home movies made in camp).
3. Watch Dave Tatsuno's (illicit) home movies in camp on Youtube (15 min).
Bring your laptop or iPad to class so we can write notes together on a shared Google Doc as we watch Robert A. Nakamura's film compilation "Something Strong Within": Japanese American National Museum exhibition “America’s Concentration Camps” and Robert A. Nakamura: "Something Strong Within"
Week Six (October 10). Photographing Camp Ruins
Readings:
1. Sandy Sugawara's Show Me the Way To Go To Home. Note: Read BOTH text and look at the Photographs (two separate files)
2. Masumi Hayashi's "American Concentration Camps" collage series (https://www.masumihayashi.com)
October 18 Paper #1 Due (5 pages) by 6pm
Email to Elena Creef as a Shared Google Doc
(no other format will be accepted)
Week Seven: (October 17) Archival Research Session
First Part of Class: Meet for special session with Sara Ludovissy (Wellesley College archivist). Meet in Modulars: M101. Bring a laptop or tablet with you!
Second Part of Class: Meet in Classroom: Getting Started with Final Project Archival Research
Readings: Elena Creef. Chapter 3. "Beauty Behind Barbed Wire" and "Epilogue (Images)" in Shadow Traces: Japanese/American and Ainu Women in Photographic Archives (University of Illinois 2022).
Week Eight (October 24): Mine Okubo's Citizen 13660
Readings:
Mine Okubo's Citizen 13660 (1946)
Elena Creef. Ch. 2: "Mine Okubo's Citizen 13660" in Imaging Japanese America (NYU Press, 2004)
Elena Creef. "Following Her Own Road: Mine Okubo" in Following Her Own Road: Mine Okubo (Univ. of Washington Press, 2008)
Film (will be shown in class): Betty La Duke's "Persistent women artists : Pablita Velarde, Mine Okubo, Lois Mailou Jones" (Southern Oregon State College Productions, 1996).
III. The Intersection of Internment Camps & Indigenous Lands
Week Nine (October 31)
Watch Film Before Class: Ann Kaneko & Jin Yoo Kim: “Manzanar–Water Diverted” (2022)
Readings:
Optional:
Densho: Japanese American Incarceration on Indigenous Lands Archive: Watch video of panel discussion moderated by Hana Maruyama and Indigenous scholars, historians and community leaders:
https://densho.org/catalyst/japanese-american-incarceration-on-indigenous-lands/
Sho Tanaka’s Tadaima panel “Alaska Native Memories of the Japanese American Incarceration.
Watch Youtube: Japanese American Incarceration on Indigenous Lands
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IKWc3gN66Q
UCB Resource Page: http://arf.berkeley.edu/theme/japanese-american-internment-camps
IV. Representations of Internment in Contemporary Digital Media and in Hollywood Film
Week Ten (November 7). Time Traveling to 1942 via Augmented Reality
Assignment: Masaki Fujihata’s “BeHere/1942” (AR interactive project). Download Be/Here App (from iTunes) and play with App and record screen and video shots.
Readings:
Masaki Fujihata. Excerpts from BeHere/1942: A New Lens on the Japanese American Incarceration (Yanai Initiative/Japanese American National Museum, 2022).
Elena Creef Review of Fujihata: “Back to the Future: Time Traveling to 1942—an Exhibition Review of Masaki Fujihata’s ‘BeHere/1942’: A New Lens on the Japanese American Incarceration.” Special issue on “Images at War.” Trans Asia Photography 13.1 June 2023.
Note: You will all be presenting your experimentations with
Masaki Fujihata's "BeHere1942" App in Class
Week Eleven (November 14). Camp History in Film
Readings:
Marita Sturken. "Absent images of memory: Remembering and reenacting the Japanese internment." positions: east asia cultures critique 5, no. 3 (1997): 687-707.
Glen Mimura. "Antidote for Collective Amnesia? Rea Tajiri's Germinal Image," in Countervisions: Asian American Film Criticism (Temple University Press, 2000).
Robert Payne. "History & Memory . . Visions of Silence," Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media No. 41 (1997): 67-76. [Read Payne's discussion of "History and Memory"].
Film: (We will watch in class): Rea Tajiri: “History & Memory: For Akiko & Takashige”(Women Make Movies 1991) [30 min]
We will watch clips from some of the following films: Alan Parker: “Come See the Paradise" (1990), John Sturges: “Bad Day at Blackrock” (MGM 1955), Scott Hicks: “Snow Falling on Cedars” (Universal 1999) & Rea Tajiri “Strawberry Fields” (Vanguard Cinema 1997), and Max Borenstein & Alexander Woo: AMC’s “The Terror”: Season 2: “Infamy” (2019).
Week Twelve (November 21)
Densho Archive Research Projects Class Presentation. [Sign Up Sheet]
V. Primary Research Project Utilizing the DENSHO Archives
Week Thirteen (November 28) Thanksgiving Break!
Week Fourteen (December 5)
Densho Archive Research Projects Class Presentation. [Sign Up Sheet]
Final Projects Due: December 19 by 4pm
Email to Elena Creef as a Shared Google Doc (no other format will be accepted)
Assignments:
(30%) One 5 page paper based on one of the following topics: 1. Compare and contrast any two of the following photographers: Bill Manbo, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake. October 18.
(30%) Attendance, class participation, and presentaton of your experimentation with Masaki Fujihata’s “BeHere/1942” Installation. November 7.
(40%) A formal class presentation on your research in the DENSHO Archives plus a 10-12 page final research paper based on Densho.org research due December 19 at 4pm.
All papers must be submitted to me as Shared Google Docs.
Not PDFs. No exceptions.
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