Session 2: Ariko Ikehara

Sketches of Teruya Ar(t)chive: Map 1 (2021)

Monday, May 24, 2021, 9 am EST
Webinar Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87834665716
Webinar ID: 878 3466 5716

In this session we will hear from Ariko Ikehara - artist, scholar, writer, and the founder of the Mixtopia Research Center in the Koza district of Okinawa, Japan. This session will focus on her book manuscript in progress “Teruya Soul Mixtory: A Dramaturgy of Place” which is an experimental, experiential, and collective ethnographic exploration of a neighborhood of Teruya where her research center is based. We will discuss knowledge and how it is produced, community and self-documentation, and the ways such narratives can be shared.

Ariko S. Ikehara is Director at Koza X MiXtopia Research Center in Okinawa. She earned her Ph.D. in Comparative Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2016. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Osaka University (2017-19). Her peer-reviewed publications include “Champurū Text: Postwar Okinawan Writing,” in Beyond American Occupation: Race and Agency in Okinawa, 1945-2015 (2017), and “Third Space as Decolonial Con/Text: Okinawa’s American Champurū,” in Transnational Asia: An Online Interdisciplinary Journal 1-1 (Fall 2016). Since 1995, she has published essays and articles in Japanese about Teruya in Okinawan journals and local Okinawan newspapers. She is currently working on two book projects.