Reminder
30 September 2020 16:30-18:00 (Tokyo Time)
Miya Shichinohe-Suga: American Census and the Boundary of "Race"

https://temple.zoom.us/j/91012489352?pwd=TGpzblEyeEtXaGpLVm9CSVZSdTNGUT09
Meeting ID: 910 1248 9352 Passcode: 883357

Dear friends,

We are happy to invite you to this session where Professor Shichinohe-Suga will discuss her latest book America Census to "Jinsyū" o meguru Kyōkai: Kohyō nimiru Minority eno Chōsa jittai no Rekisi, Keisō Shobō, 2020 (American Census and the Boundary of "Race": A History of Census Taking on Minority Groups through Manuscript Population Schedules).

Miya Shichinohe-Suga is professor in the Area Studies Department at Tokyo Gakugei University. A historian specializing on the US Census, race and immigration/migration, her monograph published in January 2020 discusses 100 years of Census history from 1790 to 1890, examining how the local census takers had enumerated minorities, e.g., "Free Blacks," "Civilized Indians," and Asians by exploring vast amount of manuscript population schedules as its main primary sources. It reveals how Census history has been implicated in the system of surveillance and control of minority populations. At the same time, the reflection of local knowledge and impression of enumerators who visited minority households reveals the arbitrariness of official race categorizations and the fluctuating boundary of "whiteness." Furthermore, this book argues that census manuscripts can shed new lights on minorities including Japanese migrants dating back from 1860 and on. Such endeavor makes US Census history be also narrated through a lens of Transpacific Migration History.

Shichinohe-Suga's other recent publications include the following: "Nihonjin ijyūshi to sensasushi no linkēji: 1860-1870" [Linking US Census history and Japanese migration history: 1860-1870], Journal of the Japanese Overseas Migration Museum, JICA Yokohama 12 (March 2018). She serves as Vice President of Japanese Association of Migration Studies and Japanese Association of American History. She holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. from International Christian University (ICU) and a B.A. from Tsuda College.


Robert Dujarric
Co-Director, Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies (ICAS), Temple University Japan