Event Host: East Asian Studies Center
The Institute for Japanese Studies presents:
Lynne Miyake
Professor of Japanese, Asian Studies, and Gender and Women's Studies
Core Faculty of the Intercollegiate Department of Asian American Studies
Department of Asian Languages & Literatures
Pomona College
"Gender Flipped, 'Cutie,' (Non)Eroticized Subject/Objects of Consumption and Production: The Manga Comics Tales of Genji"
Abstract: Written a millennium ago by lady-in-waiting Murasaki Shikibu in service to Shôshi, consort to Emperor Ichijô (986-1011), The Tale of Genji has captured the imaginations of readers, artists, writers, and even the Japanese government, transposing into woodblock prints, novels, films, a symphony, and even an opera in English. Journeying from an elite, circumscribed courtly society through the domains of warlords, townspeople, and a modern nation state, it has been utilized time and again as cultural and political soft power, appearing in one of its newest iterations—Japanese manga comics—in the 1970s. To date, the over thirty manga Genjis visually, narratively, and affectively remediate male and female gazes, gently add humor, eroticize, gender flip, queer, and simultaneously re-inscribe and challenge heteronormative gender norms. “Pretty boy” heroes, dazzling, luminous (fe)male objects of desire, young men targeted “eye candy,” and more abound!
Free and open to the public. Click here for more information.
