The Ethnicity of Things in America's Lacquered Age

Abstract

This essay analyzes the cultural meaning of the enormous popularity of, and significance attributed to, Japanese objects in the United States during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. By locating this significance at the intersection of the United States' racial, economic, and material imaginaries, the essay argues for an interpretation of the Japanese object as an "ethnic thing" that suggests new ways of understanding of the relationship between objectification and racialization.

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