Committee:
Eiichiro Azuma (Advisor)
Kathy Brown
Frederick Dickinson
Dissertation Title:
"Making the Japanese American Citizen: Loyalty, Identity, and Gender in the United States, 1918-1945"
My dissertation repositions Japanese American youth culture as integral to the acceptance of Japanese immigrants in the United States in the early twentieth-century. Second-generation youths represented a dense transfer point of exchange in the creation of racialized immigrant loyalty and citizenship. I study the performance of social and cultural competence of second-generation urban youths through their participation in sports teams, religious organizations, and civic leagues. Their involvement in these groups created the model for Japanese American masculinity, loyalty, and citizenship throughout the twentieth-century.
B.A. in American History, Highest Honors, University of California Davis
19th and 20th Century U.S. Transnational History, Immigration, and Labor History, 20th Century United States Social Movements, Gender and the Body, Race Creation, Race Relations, Sports, and Social Justice