| This dissertation is a study of the reciprocal relationship between large-scale socio-cultural disruptions and the methods used to assess them. Psychiatrists and social scientists were present in the interment camps from the moment inmates began to arrive, and these camps became both laboratories in which to gather data and crucibles in which to forge methodology. In order to understand this important reciprocity, my project examines four scholarly moments, dating from 1942–2006, when researchers and clinicians have chosen strikingly different methods to examine this pivotal event in American history. No less important, my research illuminates the role that Japanese American intellectuals have played in this process—in part because they helped propel a redefinition and expansion of approaches to the study of internment, and in part because they provide us with a glimpse of how members of a dispossessed group represent themselves to themselves as well as to others. |
