Virtual Third Thursday Speaker Series: Exiled To Motown

July 15 2021 | 6:30pm to 7:30pm

In honor of the Detroit Historical Society’s centennial anniversary, our upcoming Third Thursday Speaker Series events will focus on Detroit stories from the past that still impact us today. Each month's discussion will bring a contemporary perspective to a different decade of the last hundred years!

This month's virtual conversation will feature Celeste Shimoura Goedert and Dr. Mika Kennedycurators of the new Exiled to Motown exhibition at the Detroit Historical Museum, which examines the lives of Japanese Americans in Detroit and explores how dispossession and resilience remain contemporary themes for API Americans. The exhibition opens in the Community Gallery on Saturday, July 17.

Participation is free with registration!

Register now

 

Celeste Shimoura Goedert is a yonsei (fourth generation Japanese American) of mixed heritage. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 2017 with a degree in Social Theory & Practice. She is currently based in Southeast Michigan and is the Operations & Program Associate at Rising Voices, a new local organization founded in 2019 with the goal of organizing and building power with other Asian American women, femmes and young people to imagine a better world. Inspired by the legacy of Detroiter Grace Lee Boggs, Celeste is interested in understanding how women of color build spaces that help us to heal from cultural assimilation and racial capitalism while building multiracial solidarity amongst POC communities. 

Dr. Mika Kennedy is gosei (fifth generation Japanese American), and has been a member of the Japanese American Citizens League Detroit Chapter since 2014. Professionally, she is a Visiting Assistant Professor in English at Kalamazoo College, where she teaches literature courses that intersect with critical ethnic studies, environmental humanities, and social justice. She earned her PhD at the University of Michigan in 2020, and today continues to work on narratives of Japanese American incarceration during World War II, as told from within and beyond the dark imaginary of the "American West." Her family is rooted in California and Hawai’i.