Phi Beta Kappa and School of Art to Host Visiting Scholar Osamu James Nakagawa

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Osamu James Nakagawa

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The Alpha of Arkansas Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa and the School of Art will host Osamu James Nakagawa, a 2017-18 Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar. His talk, titled "Fences, Maps, and Darkness: Visualizing Okinawa," will be at 5:30 p.m. Feb. 22, in Hillside Auditorium, Room 206.

The Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program offers undergraduates the opportunity to spend time with some of America's most distinguished scholars.

Nakagawa is Ruth N. Halls Distinguished Professor of Photography at Indiana University, where he directs the Center for Integrative Photographic Studies. He was named the 2015 Sagamihara Photographer of the Year and the 2010 Higashikawa New Photographer of the Year. His work has been exhibited internationally and is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, George Eastman Museum, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago.

He is best known for his Okinawa trilogy, a series of works that address the atrocity of WWII in Japan. Other major works include Mado, Drive in Theater, and Kai: Following the Cycle of Life. He has received grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Houston Center for Photography, American Photography Institute, and Tisch School of the Arts.

Phi Beta Kappa was founded in 1776 at the College of William and Mary and is the oldest Greek Letter fraternity in America. Later, the society was established at Harvard and Yale, and in 1932 it was chartered at the University of Arkansas. Membership includes giants in American history such as J. William Fulbright, John Marshall, Helen Keller, Eli Whitney, Booker T. Washington, Eleanor Roosevelt, Alexander Graham Bell, Pearl Buck, Henry Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Helen Keller, Booker T. Washington, Samuel Morse, Jonas Salk, William Henry Seward, Daniel Webster, and Eli Whitney, as well as 17 presidents, 40 Supreme Court Justices, and more than 130 Nobel Laureates.  

Over the last 60 years, 648 Visiting Scholars have made 5,288 visits to Phi Beta Kappa sheltering institutions through the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholars Program.