Dear colleagues,
I write to invite you to a lecture (online and in-person) by Kimura Saeko this Wednesday, February 1 from noon to 1:30 pm PST.
Christina Laffin
University of British Columbia
Lecture announcement
“Surviving Queer: A Reading of Shinkurōdo monogatari”
Dr. Kimura Saeko, Professor, Tsuda University
Wednesday, February 1 | 12:00 - 1:30 PM Pacific
In-person in room 604 at the Asian Centre (1871 West Mall, Vancouver) and online
Please register for online access.
Presented in English with visuals in Japanese and English, followed by a bilingual discussion.
Abstract: Shinkurōdo monogatari (The New Chamberlain) is an illustrated scroll produced in the Muromachi period (1336–1573) which was painted by women for their own amusement. The story depicts a girl who wishes to become a man and who enters court society as a man, thus suggesting it was the dream of girls to become men in order to walk around freely. In this presentation I will read Shinkurodo monogatari as a text revealing forms of freedom as a woman and as a queer woman.
Dr. Kimura Saeko is a professor at Tsuda University, where she leads classes in premodern to contemporary literature of Japan. She completed a Ph.D. at the University of Tokyo on cultural production and the history of sexuality in Japan from ancient to medieval times. In 2009 she received the Japanese Women's History Studies Prize for her book Breasts for Whom? Sexuality and Authority in Japanese Medieval Tales. She has published widely on post-3.11 literature including the recently translated Theorizing Post Disaster Literature in Japan: Revisiting the Literary and Cultural Landscape after the Triple Disasters (2013; English translation 2022).
This event is organized by Dr. Christina Laffin, Associate Professor, Department of Asian Studies, UBC.
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