"What's Manzanar?" Excavating Stories of Racism, of the Erased, and of Family

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 10
  In Roundtable Session: Curriculum Studies in the Social Studies

Abstract

This ethnographic study explores how secondary students engaged with the history of Japanese American incarceration while participating in an archaeological dig at Manzanar. Using two tenets from Asian(Crit), (re)constructive history and story, theory and praxis, as a theoretical frame, one theme that emerged explores how the family history of one Japanese American student, informed her conceptualization of U.S. history curriculum as purposefully whitewashed. Two other findings contextualize her experience, exposing a dominant understanding by her classmates justifying incarceration as a wartime necessity, and the counter narratives revealed by their work at Manzanar. Of significance, however, is that Peyton and other BIPOC students doubted whether these and their counter stories would impact their white classmates.

Author

• Esther June Kim, William & Mary