{"id":355,"date":"2023-08-18T10:38:46","date_gmt":"2023-08-18T17:38:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/live-usc-dornsife.pantheonsite.io\/cjrc\/?page_id=355"},"modified":"2026-03-31T16:20:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T23:20:32","slug":"lgbtq-studies-speaker-series","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/cjrc\/lgbtq-studies-speaker-series\/","title":{"rendered":"LGBTQ Studies Speaker Series"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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\n\n \n Faculty Organizer: Jason Webb<\/span>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n \n
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The purpose of this speaker series is to explore overlapping concerns of LGBTQ Studies, Japan Studies, and Japanese American\u00a0Studies. We sponsor events that showcase the latest developments in research and activism, with an aim to foster candid, constructive, and mutually beneficial dialogue among all participants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n

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\n Grace Ting – “Sayaka Murata\u2019s Madness, Cannibalism, and Aliens: A Crip Queer Reading of Global Japanese Literature”<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Thursday, April 16, 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

This talk takes a crip\/queer approach to engage with representations of women by Japanese writer Sayaka Murata (b. 1979), who achieved international fame with the English publication of\u00a0Convenience Store Woman\u00a0<\/i>(Konbini ningen)\u00a0<\/i>in 2018, paving the way for new opportunities for other Japanese women writers in translation.<\/p>\n

I begin with a brief outline of recent Japanese works in English translation by Murata, Natsuko Imamura, Emi Yagi, and others that portray noticeably \u201ceccentric\u201d female characters, sometimes in a humorous and\/or charming way. For example, I introduce Murata\u2019s depiction of the female protagonist of\u00a0Convenience,\u00a0<\/i>whose dislike of mainstream society and its gender roles\u2014her desire to exist only as a worker within the controlled space of the convenience store\u2014clearly suggests a queer\/feminist critique of heteronormative expectations.<\/p>\n

I argue that queer and feminist readings are productively expanded by engaging with questions concerning neurodiversity, mental illness, trauma, and so on from a crip\/Mad studies approach. While avoiding a medicalizing framework that seeks to \u201cdiagnose\u201d fictional characters, I explore ethical questions that surface in Murata\u2019s work precisely because of the impossibility of pinning down such answers. Specifically, in her later work\u00a0Earthlings\u00a0<\/i>(Chiky\u016bjin), Murata depicts a complex narrative of sexual violence and resistance against gender\/sexual norms in a world of child-like fantasy, seemingly mixed with themes of mental illness and trauma, which ends in scenes of cannibalism. I argue for readings that recognize both madness operating as queer\/feminist critique and realities of crip\/mad existence.<\/p>\n

I end by reflecting upon mental illness, psychiatric institutions, and sexual violence depicted in other East Asian novels such as Cho Nam-Joo\u2019s\u00a0Kim Ji-young, Born 1982,\u00a0<\/i>Han Kang\u2019s\u00a0The Vegetarian,\u00a0<\/i>and Lin Yi-han\u2019s\u00a0Fang Si-Qi\u2019s First Love Paradise,\u00a0<\/i>considering broader implications of reading such novels for East Asian and global feminist discourses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n\n \n \n \n

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\n Joseph Hawkins – “Queer Japan: Tatemai, Honne, and Visibility”<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Wednesday, February 28, 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this presentation Hawkins speaks of navigating the trials and tribulations of queer research about Japan from the 1980s to the present.\u00a0 From ethnographic inquiry, to archiving, and recently advising a Japanese pop star on why to come out, the talk looks back at the disattendance of Japanese gei<\/i> and doseiai<\/i>…<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n\n \n \n \n

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\n Chris Lowy- “Early Cultural Responses to the AIDS Crisis in Japan”<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Thursday, April 21, 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n

As preventative strategies and clinical treatment for HIV\/AIDS have improved in recent years, the traumatic sense of fear and the widespread panic of the early days of the AIDS crisis has become history for those who did not live through them…<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n\n \n \n \n

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\n Stephen D. Miller – “Tales That Haven’t Been (and Sometimes Can’t Be) Told”<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Thursday, February 13 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n

In some sense, every tale\u2014and every poem\u2014tells a story that\u2019s never been told in the exact same way. But some tales and poems, under certain circumstances, cannot be told or are forbidden to be told for reasons that are sometimes not clear or are clearly political. Recently, it\u2019s become more commonplace for the tales of people who belong to sexual minorities to be expressed in Japan and in Japanese….<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n\n \n \n \n

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\n Sachi Schmidt-Hori- “Chigo no s\u014dshi”: A Homoerotic Handscroll of Five Buddhist Acolytes from 14th-Century Japan<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Thursday, February 21, 2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Daigoji nanshoku-e<\/i>\u00a0[Daigoji\u2019s Illustrations of male-male love], more commonly known as\u00a0Chigo no s\u014dshi<\/i>\u00a0[A booklet of acolytes] (ca. 1321) is a collection of five stories characterized by caustic humor and sexually explicit images of\u00a0chigo<\/i>\u2019s (adolescent boy acolytes) infidelities to their master priests…<\/p>\n

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\n J. Keith Vincent – “AIDS and Queer Theory in 1990s Japan”<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Thursday, February 1, 2018<\/strong><\/p>\n

If Queer Theory now \u201chas a history,\u201d as many have begun to argue in recent years, that history is not limited to the US context. It was also big in 1990s Japan, when key works by Eve Sedgwick, Judith Butler, Leo Bersani, Gayle Rubin, David Halperin, and others were translated into Japanese more quickly than into any other language, sparking collaborations and joint actions between scholars and AIDS activists in both countries…<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n\n \n \n \n

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