Online Center for the Study of Japanese American Concentration Camp Art Now Available

14-Oct-2009

Last November the Center for Excellence in the Arts & Humanities awarded Jane Dusselier, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology and Asian American Studies Program and Tobie Matava, Assistant Professor, University Library, a fellowship for the creation of the Online Center for the Study of Japanese American Concentration Camp Art. This database, housed on the University Library's website provides access to digital displays of fine art, crafts, and folk art created by Japanese Americans confined in World War II internment camps. The Online Center can be found at: www.lib.iastate.edu/internart-main/2023/3007

In Dec 2008 Dusselier published a monograph with Rutgers University Press titled: Artifact of Loss: Crafting Survival in Japanese American Concentration Camps. The research for this book produced thousands of sources on camp made art, very little of which was publicly available. In addition to the art images the site also provides access to important contextualizing materials for students, historians, material culturalists, anthropologists, literary scholars, art historians, Asian Americanists and Ethnic Studies practitioners. It is our hope that this site will help foster an interdisciplinary dialogue and public engagement. Over 2,400 records and images have been scanned, edited, and uploaded to this database. Continued funding from the library's Travel and Research Committee and the Asian American Studies Program will allow the addition of more resources throughout this semester.

In March Matava will be traveling to the University of Cambridge, where she has been invited to give a talk about the website at a conference titled: Creativity Behind Barbed Wire, An Interdisciplinary Conference on the Products of Prisoners of War in the 20^th Century.