An absent presence : Japanese Americans in postwar American culture, 1945-1960 /
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| Author / Creator: | Simpson, Caroline Chung, 1963- author. |
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| Imprint: | Durham : Duke University Press, 2001. |
| Description: | 1 online resource ( xi, 234 pages) : illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Series: | New Americanists New Americanists. |
| Subject: | |
| Format: | E-Resource Book |
| URL for this record: | http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/13403156 |
| Summary: | There have been many studies on the forced relocation and internment of nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. But An Absent Presence is the first to focus on how popular representations of this unparalleled episode in U.S. history affected the formation of Cold War culture. Caroline Chung Simpson shows how the portrayal of this economic and social disenfranchisement haunted--and even shaped--the expression of American race relations and national identity throughout the middle of the twentieth century.<br> Simpson argues that when popular journals or social theorists engaged the topic of Japanese American history or identity in the Cold War era they did so in a manner that tended to efface or diminish the complexity of their political and historical experience. As a result, the shadowy figuration of Japanese American identity often took on the semblance of an "absent presence." Individual chapters feature such topics as the case of the alleged Tokyo Rose, the Hiroshima Maidens Project, and Japanese war brides. Drawing on issues of race, gender, and nation, Simpson connects the internment episode to broader themes of postwar American culture, including the atomic bomb, McCarthyism, the crises of racial integration, and the anxiety over middle-class gender roles.<br> By recapturing and reexamining these vital flashpoints in the projection of Japanese American identity, Simpson fills a critical and historical void in a number of fields including Asian American studies, American studies, and Cold War history.<br> |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource ( xi, 234 pages) : illustrations |
| Format: | Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 216-225) and index. |
| ISBN: | 0822380838 9780822380832 9780494986080 0494986085 0822327562 9780822327561 0822327465 9780822327462 |
