The Ballard Institute Virtually Presents 'Animating Memories Of Japanese American Incarceration' This Month

For its first installment of the 2021 Fall Puppet Forum Series, and in conjunction with the Puppetry's Racial Reckoning exhibit, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will host "Animating Memories of Japanese American Incarceration" with theater artist Kimi Maeda and UConn Professor Hana Maruyama on Thursday, Sept. 23 at 7 p.m. ET. This forum will take place on Zoom (registration required: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Z05AoYdKTnCb3pxSXR11-Q) and Facebook Live (facebook.com/BallardInstitute/) and will be available afterwards on Facebook and the Ballard Institute YouTube Channel (youtube.com/channel/UC3VSthEDnYS6ZjOwzT1DnTg).

During WWII people of Japanese descent living in the United States were considered a national security threat. Those living on the West Coast were incarcerated in concentration camps in remote areas. The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry invites Japanese American theater artist Kimi Maeda and UConn historian Hana Maruyama to reflect on the historical context and social impact of the incarceration camps to discuss its continuing impacts on lives of Asians in the US and the importance of keeping the memories alive in art and scholarship. This forum expands on themes in the exhibition Puppetry's Racial Reckoning, which is at the Ballard Institute until November 1st.

This forum is co-sponsored by the UConn Asian American Cultural Center and the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute.

Kimi Maeda is a Japanese American theater artist based in Japan. Her ephemera trilogy, a collection of sand drawing and shadow performances that deal with memory, home, and trans-cultural identity, was nominated for a Drama Desk Award in 2017. Maeda received a Creative Artists Exchange Fellowship from the Japan-US Friendship Commission in 2017. That same year she was selected by Ford Foundation Just Films to participate in Open Immersion Lab. She was the recipient of the 2015 Jasper Magazine Visual Artist of the Year Award and the 2005 Rose Brand Award in Scenic Design from USITT.

Hana Maruyama is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut. She received her PhD from the University of Minnesota's American Studies Department. She co-produced/hosted the Densho podcast Campu, about Japanese American incarceration during World War II. She formerly worked for American Public Media's Order 9066, the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center and the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation. She is a fourth-generation Japanese American descended from the Heart Mountain, Gila River, and Jerome concentration camps.

For more information and to learn about other online programming, visit bimp.uconn.edu or email bimp@uconn.edu.

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