Karen L. Ishizuka | Visiting Artist Lecture Series

Karen L. Ishizuka is a third-generation Japanese American, Jodo Shinshu Buddhist, mother, grandmother, wife, friend, comrade and fellow traveler.  A writer, and currently chief curator of the Japanese American National Museum, she has also made films, plays, clothes, poems, and her fair share of mistakes. Her books include: Serve the People: Making Asian America in the Sixties (Verso Books, 2016), Lost and Found: Reclaiming the Japanese American Incarceration (University of Illinois Press, 2006) and co-editor of Mining the Home Movie: Excavations in Histories and Memories (University of California Press, 2008).  She has produced and/or written 27 films including: Toyo Miyatake: Infinite Shades of Gray, (2002), which was an official selection at the Sundance Film Festival; Looking Like the Enemy (1995); Something Strong Within (1994); and Fools’ Dance (1983). She pioneered the establishment of the historical and cultural significance of home movies in the United States and served on the National Film Preservation Board. She received a master’s degree in social work from San Diego State University and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles.  She is currently president of the board of the Okura Mental Health Leadership Foundation.

Presented as part of the Visiting Artist Lecture Series in the College of Visual and Performing Arts’ School of Art. The lecture is available to the public via livestream on the Syracuse University Art Museum YouTube channel.