“I continue to work on a book length project entitled Foundational Violence: U.S. Settler Colonial Articulations of Racialized and Gendered Citizenship. This project builds on and expands ideas developed in my 2015 article in the inaugural issue of the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity. It takes the settler colonial origins of the U.S. seriously as foundational to the formation of an American national identity rooted in whiteness and masculinity. It traces the concept of endangered whiteness and white victimization to settler-Indian relationships and its continuation through tropes of black violence and alien immigrant invasion.
A second longterm project documents the heretofore untold story of certain West Coast Japanese Americans who avoided internment during World War II by “voluntarily” relocating to inland areas. As revealed through in-depth interviews with survivors, the experiences of self evacuees varied a great deal, but many ended up in remote rural areas where living conditions were harsh and where relocatees faced hostility and threats to their safety. Because they did not share the central experience of the vast majority of Japanese Americans, many self-evacuees felt that their experiences were not acknowledged by the ethnic community or the larger society.”
Dr. Evelyn Nakano Glenn is Professor of the Graduate School, Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies, at University of California, Berkeley.