| Description |
My honors thesis is a historical, theoretical, and methodological approach to understanding the social and physical formation of Japantown and Japantown Street in Salt Lake City. I am interested in the formation of a specific ethnic enclave and micro-neighborhood which once existed. My thesis will analyze and record archives of Salt Lake City's Japantown, in addition to oral histories of individuals who lived in Japantown and have connections to the Topaz internment camps of Delta, Utah. This research project's purpose is to understand the gaps of recorded history in Salt Lake City, and the ways in which racialized, discriminated, and minoritized ethnic communities' histories are often erased and disappear due to dominant Euro-centric modes of knowledge production and power. I aim to fill these gaps through the stories of community members. These individual narratives will allow for a perspective of identity formation through the lens of gender, race, class, and ethnicity. The thesis will also look at the past decisions made to destroy and develop over Japantown, and the decisions/influences which led to the designation of a certain group of people to segregated and cheap industrial lands high influenced and impacted by urban externalities such as noise and pollution. For this project, I am directly working with graduate student Naba Faizi on her thesis also related to Japantown. I will be assisting her with recording oral histories/interviews, creating a short documentary, and building an archival website of photographs, documents, information, etc. regarding the history and current state of Japantown. My work will assist in supplementing her project which is rooted in the present and future of Japantown, as well as community engagement and activism contingent with the Japanese community and individuals of Salt Lake City. |
