2026–2027 Lecture Series
Who counts as Japanese, and who holds the power to decide? This three-part series approaches the history of wartime internment and incarceration not as a single national story but as a comparative problem of classification and sovereign authority. Great Britain and its Dominions, the United States, and France used the racial category of "Japanese," prioritizing it over citizenship, and acted on it through uprooting and confinement. Japan, for its part, continued to regard emigrants and their descendants as subjects — so the question of who was Japanese was contested among states and never settled.
- Benjamin Hiramatsu Ireland analyzes the French Pacific, where, on de Gaulle's orders, French colonial authorities interned over a thousand Japanese civilians and deported them to camps in Australia;
- Jordan Stanger-Ross examines how the Canadian state defined "persons of Japanese race" and built the bureaucratic machinery that stripped Japanese Canadians of their property (Winter 2027; date TBD).
- (Third speaker TBD; watch this space and our Events Calendar for updates)
Together the talks show how the category of "Japanese" was imposed across national boundaries, overriding citizenship. They will bring transpacific perspectives into conversation with Asian studies. Each speaker will also present at the University Seminar on East Asia: Modern Japan during the same visit.
WEAI Faculty Sponsor: Sarah Kovner, Senior Research Scholar in the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace, Columbia University