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September 15, 2005
Analyzing Gender & Sexuality in Japan: Using "Takarazuka" As An Example
Tuesday, October 18_*
*12 noon – 1:00 p.m. Nolte Library*
*Screening of /Dream Girls /**(1993) by Kim Longinotto and Jano Williams*
Description (from Women Make Movies) This fascinating documentary, produced for the BBC, opens a door into the spectacular world of the Takarazuka Revue, a highly successful musical theater company in Japan. Each year, thousands of girls apply to enter the male-run Takarazuka Music School. The few who are accepted endure years of a highly disciplined and reclusive existence before they can join the Revue, choosing male or female roles. Dream Girls offers a compelling insight into gender and sexual identity and the contradictions experienced by Japanese women today.
*_Thursday, October 20_*
*1:00 – 3:00 p.m.* *Collaborative workshop with Jennifer Robertson, Nolte 335.*
*“Robot Revue: Anthropometry as Performance in the Takarazuka Revue”*
This workshop will be open to 15 participants. Graduate students and faculty may sign up by contacting Josephine Lee at jolee@umn.edu
*7:30 p.m. Lecture by Jennifer Robertson. Nolte Center 125. Free and open to the public.*
*“Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: ‘History’ and the Disturbing Ethics of ‘Japanese’ Bioethics.”*
Robertson will trace the unsettling history behind the concept of “East Asian bioethics” coined in the mid-1990s, and raise questions about processes of history-making (and –unmaking) in bioethical debates. A barometer of socio-political attitudes and orientations, bioethics poses reflexive questions about cultural, national and global identity. The century-old janusian relationship between eugenics and bioethics continues to inform the popular perception of the nature and future of postmodern Japan, which since the mid-1990s has been shaped by an asymmetrical and ahistorical celebration of pan-Asianism. The bioethical dilemma posed and produced by a politics of renewal and strategic “dehistoricization,” together with “re-Asianization,” is introduced and analyzed.
Posted by at September 15, 2005 11:14 PM | NEWS & EVENTS