I'm Stephanie Takaragawa and
I'm an associate professor
of sociology.
My background is in something
called visual anthropology,
which is the anthropology
of visual communication
that looks at how media,
semiotics, film, photography,
art, how all of those things
are reflections of culture.
I became particularly
interested in how
history and
anthropology and culture
are represented in museums.
So my research for
my dissertation
was on the Japanese
American National Museum
and I was interested in
how that particular history
of the Japanese American
internment and the immigration
and this very long
history was represented
and how that impacted
the community.
Because as a Japanese
American, when I was going up
the internment was not
something that my family ever
spoke about.
Even though both my paternal
and maternal grandparents
and my father was born
in an internment camp.
After the development
of the museum,
after talking about
this it actually
really shifted the discourse
and all of a sudden
it became re-framed.
In the last 10 years
they've developed
two of the internment sites.
One in California, Manzanar,
and one in Cody, Wyoming, Heart
Mountain, which is the one
that my dad was born at.
So I'm interested in looking at
how those have sort of reframed
the discourse about
the internment
and how that affects
the community
and how this has sort of put
Japanese American history back
into more mainstream
American history.
One of the things that's made
this project really great
is that California is the site
of a lot of this information
so students have become really
interested in learning about it
and also because
it has become part
of the curriculum for
California education.
I think it's really
important to you
include an experiential
research community,
any kind of component
that actually connects
what it is that students
are doing in the classroom
to something that's
outside on the ground.
I teach a class called the
anthropologists space in place
which is conducted
at Disneyland,
where we study
social theory and how
that impacts the way people
behave by watching people
at Disneyland.
Which is a lot of
fun because there's
all these theories
about behavior
and being able to
actually apply them
to people who are just
behaving in what they think
it's a natural way
and is really sort
of more like a Disney
induced behavior
is really good for them.
Because all of a sudden
they're able to apply theory
to behavior.
And I think that's something
that we don't really
get to do in the
classroom very much.
So actually having an
understanding of culture
and people and behavior is
really important to whatever
it is they do.
So being able to sort of
take theories and methods
and apply them to what it is
that they're doing that they
could may be use
for their major,
their discipline,
whatever kind of project
they're going to
engage in, is something
that I really strive for.
Because especially with
cultural anthropology
it's about culture
and people and I
keep trying to impress upon
them that it doesn't really
matter what major you
have, at some point
you're going to
interact with people.
Anthropology is a
good way of sort
of looking at other
cultures in order
to really think about what it
is you're doing in your own.
