University of British Columbia

Post-Doc, Asian Studies

Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow

About

I am a cultural historian whose work focuses on gender and sexuality in modern and contemporary Japan. I am particularly interested in the role of transnational cultural flows—and the actors who generated those flows—in the construction of Japanese genders and sexualities. At present, I am a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia.

My current book project, _Transfiguring the Female: Women and Girls Engaging the Transnational in Late Twentieth Century Japan_, examines female genders and sexualities in 1970s and 1980s Japan, and the role of transnational flows of ideas and images in their construction. Much of my published research to date has been on gender and sexuality in shōjo manga (girls' comics) and on the lesbian community in Japan (and their overlap). By expanding my focus to incorporate the ūman ribu (women's lib[eration]) movement, I have been able to develop a richer understanding of ways the most engaged women and adolescent girls were working to challenge and change gender and sexual norms for women in the 1970s and 1980s, when Japan's rapid economic growth was creating increasing opportunities for women and facilitated various new forms of political and cultural activism. At the same time, this project has helped me develop a better understanding of how cultural change is generated through processes of what I term "transfiguration," that is, most simply, changes in transit(ion) from one culture to another.

After completing this book, I intend to return to my work that is more specifically focused on the history and cultures of gender-bending shōjo manga. My next project will incorporate new research on queer female comic and animation consumption in Japan in the amateur comics sphere from the 1970s to the present, as well as the domestic and global transformation of both commercial and amateur consumption and production by the internet. As with earlier work, this research will incorporate archival research and interviews. This book will also include revised versions of my articles on commercial texts and fandoms in 1970s–1980s Japan, which examine such issues as the role of translation in liberating gender and sexual expression, and the relationship between images of homoeroticized beautiful boys and lesbian identification.

I have additional related research interests in the translation and reception of texts related to sexual and gender norms in foreign cultures, such as the Kinsey Report, and surveys of sexual practices that were often summarized or reproduced in magazines aimed at various audiences in the first several decades following World War II; and in the reception of Western popular music and related culture in Japan, particularly in the period from the 1940s to the 1980s.

I welcome contact from those with overlapping research interests.

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