AJLS news/call for papers
Eiji Sekine
Our apology for cross listing.
Here is AJLS News 29 with the call for papers for this year's annual
conference at Rutgers University.
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AJLS NEWSLETTER
Association for Japanese Literary Studies
No. 29 (Spring, 2009) Edited by Eiji Sekine
AJLS • Purdue University • 640 Oval Drive• W. Lafayette, IN 47907-2039 •
USA: 765.496.2258 (Tel) • 765.496.1700 (Fax) • ese...@purdue.edu (Email)
http://www.cla.purdue.edu/fll/AJLS (Website)
Newsletter Sponsor: FLL, Purdue University
The Eighteenth Annual Meeting
RETHINKING GENDER IN THE POSTGENDER ERA
November 6-8, 2009
Rutgers University
CALL FOR PAPERS
Elaine Showalter's A Literature of Their Own (1977) proposed a three-stage
model of the growth of feminist theory, beginning with an androgynist
poetics, then a feminist critique and female aesthetic, and finally gender
criticism. If feminist theory could but explain gender relations, the
promise of eliminating inequality between the sexes seemed within reach.
Perhaps contrary to Showalter’s expectations, the trajectory of gender
studies in the intervening three decades has moved it away from feminist
theory and in other directions.
Several forces motivated this shift, including the theoretical focus on
gender identity and sexual difference in the 1980s, and the growing
perception in the 1990s that gender was also a men’s issue. Gayle Rubin’s
“Thinking Sex” (1984) rejected the feminist assumption that sexuality is
simply derived from gender and argued that gender relations alone could not
account for the complexity of sexual behaviors. Judith Butler, in Gender
Trouble (1990), further identified subversive strategies of gendered
performance, such as parody and drag, as central to understanding how the
codes of gender work in creating normative and non-normative identities. The
recent postgenderism movement, galvanized by Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg
Manifesto (1991), advocates the voluntary rejection of biologically or
socially normative sexual and gender identities altogether in favor of an
understanding of human fulfillment outside the bounds of the male/female,
man/woman binary.
In the context of Japanese literary and visual culture, scholarship on
gender reflects a close engagement with these trends and is producing
numerous new critical approaches and concepts. Studies have addressed topics
such as: literary “intersexuality,” defined as representations of
ambivalence towards or rejection of categories of sex; the “postgender”
phenomenon of ambiguously gendered or ambiguously sexed bodies in popular
media; and narrative constructions of gender as a complex and porous
“labyrinth” rather than a simple binary; to name but a few.
This conference begins with a set of questions: How do texts and images work
to create gender identities or postgender alternatives to them, and for what
purposes? How are those gender or postgender identities related to or
distinct from sexual, national, ethnic, and other identities? What is the
history of these questions we inherit, and how does that history complicate
our attempts to address Japanese literary and visual culture? Conversely,
what questions has Japanese literary and visual culture raised about gender,
and how can they challenge our inherited set of questions?
The 2009 AJLS Conference at Rutgers welcomes proposals that approach gender
in innovative ways and examine its relationship to, or intersection with,
any issue relevant to Japanese literary and visual culture:
• Femininity and masculinity; their construction, representation,
performance
• Female and male authorship
• “Voice” in oral performance, such as biwa hōshi, ningyō jōruri, kabuki,
etc.
• Readership; who reads what, and why
• Escaping the limitations of gender binary: gender bending, gender
blending, postgenderism
• Literary genres: travel diaries, detective fiction, etc.
• Media analysis: film, theater, and anime
• Race and ethnicity
• Rhetoric and ideology of nationalism, including the production of national
language
• Rhetoric of desire (for example, within the triangular relationship as
described by René Girard)
• Construction of pre-modern or modern subjectivities and identities
• Normative and non-normative sexualities
• Place, space, landscape
• Japan and Japaneseness
• Diaspora
Papers and panels are especially welcome that address the life and literary
legacy of Oba Minako (1930-2007).
Deadline is June 1, 2009 for receipt of abstracts of no more than 250 words
on these and other questions. We welcome individual submissions as well as
three- or four-person panel proposals. Abstracts should be submitted by
e-mail attachment and must include the presenter’s name, institutional
affiliation, and e-mail address. (You may use the proposal form included in
the electronic version of our newsletter). In the case of panel proposals,
the organizer of the panel should send a cover sheet briefly explaining the
panel’s unifying rationale along with the abstracts for each paper and the
name of a chair and a discussant. Presentations will be organized in 1½-hour
time blocks. The conference languages are English and Japanese.
Proposals should be submitted to: ajls2009...@gmail.com
All other correspondence may be directed to the organizers: Paul Schalow
(sch...@rci.rutgers.edu <mailto:sch...@rci.rutgers.edu> ) or Janet Walker
(jw...@rci.rutgers.edu <mailto:jw...@rci.rutgers.edu> )
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PAPER/PANEL PROPOSAL FORM
DEADLINE: June 1, 2009
Title:
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____________________________________________________________________________
Please attach your 250-words proposal to this form and send to:
ajls2009...@gmail.com
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2007 MEETING REPORT
The seventeenth annual meeting of the Association for Japanese Literary
Studies was held at The University of British Columbia on August 19-21,
2008—the first such meeting in Canada. The theme of the conference was
“Parody” and featured a total of forty papers, and a keynote address by
Prof. Noriko Yamashita (Kokubungaku Kenkyû Shiryôkan) on “Edo-period Mitate
and Parody.” Presentations included organized panels on “Writing Parody in
Meiji Japan,” “Proving Parodies in Edo Literature, Drama, and Public
Storytelling,” “Verbal/Visual Parody Interplays in Late Edo-period Woodblock
Prints,” and “Murdering the Original—Corpses and Translations in Modern
Japanese Literature.” As can be seen, presenters considered parody in both
visual and written texts. Participants came from half a dozen countries,
including Austria, Italy, and Japan. Twenty-seven of the papers considered
modern Japan, twelve Edo, and only one the Heian period. There was lively
discussion on the various theoretical approaches to the related concepts of
parody, pastiche, mitate, and yatsushi. An exhibition, “Juxtaposition
(Mitate) and Slumming (Yatsushi) in Early Modern Japanese Culture,” curated
by Joshua Mostow, was on display in the Asian Library and included an
illustrated catalogue in the form of a sugoroku board-game.
We anticipate a thought-provoking and valuable proceedings volume.
Presenters are reminded that the final deadline for submission of their
papers is February 1, 2009.
The conference was co-hosted by Professors Sharalyn Orbaugh and Joshua
Mostow. It was supported by the Toshiba International Foundation and Japan
Foundation, and was recognized as an official event in the celebration of
the 80th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Canada and Japan.
COOPERATION WITH ATJ?
We have been contacted by the ATJ Board and officers, who seek a cooperative
arrangement with AJLS. They are interested in a membership arrangement—by
offering AJLS members membership in ATJ or by creating a sort of "joint
membership" which members of both associations might be able to take
advantage of. They also want more ideas from our members to encourage
literature specialists’ contributions to their journal and participation in
their annual seminar. Please come to our business meeting to be held in
conjunction with the AAS meeting (Friday, March 27, 7-9 p.m. at Parlor F) to
discuss this matter (some ATJ officers plan to join us and explain their
request). If you have suggestions regarding this, please also email me at:
ese...@purdue.edu.
AJLS MEMBERSHIP
The annual fee is $25.00 for regular, student, and institution members
($35.00 for overseas members outside North America). Membership provides you
with:
• Panel participation for our annual meeting (if your proposal is selected).
• Two newsletters
• One copy of our latest proceedings.
• One free copy of a back or additional current issue of the proceedings if
you are a student member.
Inquiries and orders (with checks payable to AJLS) should be sent to the
AJLS office. For further information visit our website.
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AJLS MEMBERSHIP FORM
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Status:
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( ) Institution
If you are a student, indicate which free copy you would like:( )
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YALE UNIVERSITY FOR 2010 HOST
Yale University will host our 2010 conference. If you are interested in
hosting an AJLS meeting for 2011 or later, please contact Professor Ann
Sherif: ann.s...@oberlin.edu <mailto:ann.s...@oberlin.edu> or
440-775-8827.
NEW PROCEEDINGS / BACK ISSUES
The new issue of our proceedings, Literature and Literary Theory (PAJLS,
vol. 9), will be published shortly. More information on this issue will be
posted on the jlit-l mailing list, as well as on our website. The following
PAJLS back issues are available (See our website for their tables of
contents). Each copy is $10.00 for AJLS members and $15.00 for non-members.
Orders should be sent to the AJLS office. (Add $15 for mailing if you order
from outside the North American area.)
• Issues of Canonicity and Canon Formation in Japanese Literary Studies
PAJLS, vol. 1: vi, 532 pp., 2000.
• Acts of Writing, PAJLS, vol. 2: ix, 428 pp., 2001.
• Japan from Somewhere Else, PAJLS,
vol. 3: vi, 158 pp., 2002.
• Japanese Poeticity and Narrativity
Revisited, PAJLS, vol. 4: vi, 344 pp., 2003.
• Hermeneutical Strategies, PAJLS, vol. 5: xiii, 517 pp., 2004.
• Landscapes Imagined and Remembered, PAJLS, vol. 6: vii, 215 pp., 2005.
• Reading Material, PAJLS, vol. 7: xiii, 149 pp., 2006.
• Travel in Japanese Representational Culture, PAJLS, vol. 8: viii, 498 pp.,
2007.