Professor Brett Esaki has been invited by the Department of Philsophy and Religious Studies at Middle Tennessee State to give a public lecture entitled "Legacy of Dominance in Japanese American Monuments." The lecture will be September 14, 2018 in Murfreesboro, TN.
Lecture Abstract:
Controversies surround monuments because they dominate space with one version of history. Japanese Americans have created monuments and utilized this power to express their ancestors’ legacy of surviving dominance, notably the overt racism of the 19thcentury, the World War II internment camps, and WWII atomic bombs. Yet even while illustrating the horrors of domination, controversies arose around Japanese American monuments regarding their domination of space. In this lecture, Dr. Esaki will detail controversies around three monuments, especially how the Japanese American artists carefully negotiated politically fraught environments while maintaining roots in Japanese American religions. In the process, he will shed light on the hope and ruin intrinsic to the legacy of dominance in monuments.