This roundtable will draw on the histories of diverse Asian contexts to assemble an Inter-Asian vocabulary which includes terms like pleasure/risk, violence/security, public/private, culture, religion, class/caste, family/state/marriage, work, masculinity, femininity. We want to build on these keywords to formulate questions to help us navigate contemporary realities. Our focus will be on the creativity of political engagement around gender/sexuality concerns.

Format: Each instructor has assigned ONE reading and will make a 20-minute presentation on their sub-theme to initiate discussion or other activities. There is one general reading (Crenshawe). Students are expected to have done the 5 readings for this session and be prepared to discuss them in class. Additionally, time permitting, they could try to cover some of the Recommended Readings, and check out the online resources.

Texts to read:

Films to see:

Nirnay (Pushpa Rawat, 2012, 56 mins)

Extras:
Lisa Yoneyama, “Liberation under Siege: U.S. Military Occupation and Japanese Women's Enfranchisement”, in Niranjana and Wang (eds.), Genealogies of the Asian Present: Situating Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Delhi: Orient Blackswan (2015), 405-435.
Sealing Cheng, on sex work and human rights in South Korea, in Barnard online resources (URL below)
Yan Hairong, “Spectralization of the Rural: Reinterpreting the Labour Mobility of Rural Young Women in Post-Mao China”, in Niranjana and Wang (eds.), Genealogies of the Asian Present: Situating Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Delhi: Orient Blackswan (2015), 436-480.
Kim Hyun Mee, “Feminization of the 2002 World Cup and women’s fandom”, in Niranjana and Wang (eds.), Genealogies of the Asian Present: Situating Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Delhi: Orient Blackswan (2015), 535-550.
Ratna Kapur, “Multi-tasking Queer”, Jindal Global Law Review, 4:1 (Aug 2012), 36-59.
Anjali Arondekar, “In the Absence of Reliable Ghosts: Sexuality, Historiography, South Asia”, Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 25:3 (2015), 98-121.
Online resources: http://sfonline.barnard.edu/gender-justice-and-neoliberal-transformations/embodying-the-sexual-limits-of-neoliberalism/
Feminist e-zine: http://theladiesfinger.com/

DING Naifei teaches in the English Department and is a member of the Center for the Study of Sexualities at National Central University. Her publications include Obscene Things: Sexual Politics in Jin Ping Mei (2002, in English), and with Liu Jen-Peng and Amie Parry, Penumbra Query Shadow: Queer Reading Tactics (2007, in Chinese).

Tejaswini NIRANJANA works at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and Lingnan University, Hong Kong. She is the co-founder of the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society

Joseph CHO Man Kit is a lecturer at the Gender Studies Programme at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He received his PhD in Gender Studies from the same institution. Joseph is also an activist in the local LGBTQ movement for over a decade and a founder of Nu Tong Xue She, a Hong Kong LGBTQ group that literally means "les/let's love study". He has long been combining activism and knowledge production in the hope that both can empower each other. Joseph is currently researching open relationship as an alternative intimacy and exploring its implications for the affective and spiritual dimensions of social change.

Mikee INTON is a PhD student at the Department of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. She currently serves on the Board of the Society of Transsexual Women of the Philippines (STRAP) and as the Trans* Secretariat Representative of ILGA World (The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Association). Her current research involves tracing representations of the bakla in Philippine Cinema from the 1950s to the 2010s and looking at these representations in light of the various queer social movements, both global and local.