Reimaginging “Women” in 1970s–1980s Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Queer Manga Artists and Fans

Reimaginging “Women” in 1970s–1980s Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Queer Manga Artists and Fans
James Welker (Kanagawa University)

Thursday, October 16, 7:00–8:00 pm EST/Friday, October 17, 8:00–9:00 am JST

(The lecture will not be recorded.)

Zoom Info
Meeting ID: 918 1599 7147
Password: 446539

Sponsors
Rutgers University Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Global Asia Initiative

Abstract
In the early 1970s, Japan saw the emergence of three dynamic and overlapping communities of women and adolescent girls who challenged Japanese gender and sexual norms: the women’s liberation (ūman ribu) movement, the lesbian community, and a sphere comprised of artists and fans of queer shōjo manga (girls’ comics). In this talk, James Welker will discuss Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Girls’ Comics Artists and Fans, which examines these communities and their cultural import. As he shows, individually and collectively, they found the normative understanding of the category “women” untenable and worked to redefine and expand its meaning by transfiguring ideas, images, and practices selectively appropriated from the “West.” They did so, however, while remaining primarily focused on the local. Welker argues that their transfiguration of Western culture into something locally meaningful had tangible effects far beyond these communities.