Please join the Department of Art History for this lecture presented by Dr. Lynne Horiuchi. Dislocation addresses the spatial violence inflicted upon Japanese and Japanese Americans during WWII, who were forcefully incarcerated under the wartime Executive Order 9066. Expanding the extensive scholarship on the history of Japanese American Internment camps, Dislocation brings to focus the role architectural design played in spatializing anti-Asian racism, exposing the supposed neutrality of architectural tectonics and the complicity of modernist architecture in sustaining the United States’ racialized prison complex. At the same time, the lecture also demonstrates the internment camp as a “minoritarian space” in which the incarcerated Japanese and Japanese Americans used various spatial strategies, from map making to gardening, to contest spatial violence and exercise resilience. Equally a story about brutality and hope, Dislocation reveals the complex interplay between racialization, environmental design, and wartime hysteria. Dr. Horiuchi's has published extensively about Japanese American spaces in journals such as the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Landscape Journal, and Amerasia. Her forthcoming book, titled the same as the lecture, will be published in 2027 by the University of Washington Press. This event is presented with support from the Clarence Ward Visiting lectureship in Architectural History.
