The Transcultural Studies Division of the Graduate School of Letters wishes all students and faculty a
Happy New Year!
Continue reading “Happy New Year 2025!”Happy New Year 2025!
Prof. James Welker Book Talk (2024/12/12)
Date & Time: December 12, 2024, 13:15-14:45
Location:Lecture Room 9, Besement Floor, Research Building No.2, Kyoto University (MAP㉞)
Language: English
Prior registration is required.
Click here to register.
Everyone is welcome to attend.
Book Talk: Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Girls’ Comics Artists and Fans
In the early 1970s, Japan saw the emergence of three dynamic and overlapping communities of women and adolescent girls who challenged Japanese gender and sexual norms: the women’s liberation (ūman ribu) movement, the lesbian community, and a sphere comprised of artists and fans of queer shōjo manga (girls’ comics). In this talk, Prof. James Welker introduces his new monograph, Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Girls’ Comics Artists and Fans, which examines these communities and their cultural import. As he shows, individually and collectively, they found the normative understanding of the category “women” untenable and worked to redefine and expand its meaning by transfiguring ideas, images, and practices selectively appropriated from the “West.” They did so, however, while remaining firmly fixed on the local. Prof. Welker argues that their transfiguration of Western culture into something locally meaningful had tangible effects far beyond these communities.
About the Speaker
James Welker is a professor in the Department of Cross-Cultural Studies at Kanagawa University, Yokohama, Japan. His research examines gender and sexuality in postwar and contemporary Japan as well as the global spread of Japanese popular culture. He is the author of Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Girls’ Comics Artists and Fans (Hawai‘i, 2024). He is also the editor of Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia (Hawai‘i, 2022), BL ga hiraku tobira: Hen’yō suru Ajia no sekushuariti to jendā (BL opening doors: Sexuality and gender transfigured in Asia; Seidosha, 2019), and a special issue of the journal Mechademia: Second Arc on “Queer(ing)” (2020), as well as a co-editor of Rethinking Japanese Feminisms (Hawai‘i, 2018), and Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan (Mississippi, 2015), among other publications.
For inquiries, please contact:
Prof. Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano
wadamarciano.mitsuyo.6w[at]kyoto-u.ac.jp
Role-Playing for Climate, Wellbeing, and Transcultural Understanding
2-Day Interactive Workshop and Lecture in Kyoto (2024/11/27-28)
Dates & Times
Workshop
November 27, 9:00-17:30
November 28, 9:00-16:30
Lecture & Reception
November 28, 17:00-20:00
Locations
Workshop
Kyoto University, Yoshida Izumidono
Lecture & Reception
Heidelberg University Office, Kyoto
Registration closes October 25. Language: English. Participation is free.
Continue reading “Role-Playing for Climate, Wellbeing, and Transcultural Understanding”Vampire Fandom’s Impact on Mental Health & Aesthetic Performance
Seminar and discussion with Dr. Riestra-Camacho (University of Oviedo, Spain).
Date and Time: November 1, 2024. 15:00-17:00
Location: Kyoto University, Faculty & Graduate School of Letters, Basement Meeting Room
Language: English.
Participation is free.
Screening of Documentary Film, The Roots (2013)
Professor Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano will be hosting a screening of a documentary film, followed by a Q&A session with the director.
Date & Time:
Monday, October 28, 2024
15:00-18:15
Location:
Seminar Room 2, 2nd Floor, Faculty of Letters Main Building, Kyoto University (MAP⑧)
https://www.kyoto-u.ac.jp/ja/access/campus/yoshida/map6r-y
Guest:
Kaoru Ikeya (Film Director, Professor at Konan Women’s University)
Language:
Japanese (English subtitles)
Free to all
For inquiries, please contact:
Prof. Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano
wadamarciano.mitsuyo.6w[at]kyoto-u.ac.jp
Find the poster here
Transcultural Cinema Forum 2024
The Transcultural Studies Division holds lecture series as a part of the course, “Transcultural Asian Cinema” conducted by Prof. Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano.
The theme of the Transcultural Cinema Forum in the second semester of 2024 is “New Film History from Women‘s Documentaries. ” The objective of this course is to examine Japanese documentary film history from the perspective of women through study of films of women such as Oda Kaori, Komori Haruka, and Toda Hikaru, who have worked as directors without learning filmmaking from “men.”
Since this course is taught in two consecutive classes, the entire course is three hours long. Therefore, the course is eight weeks instead of fifteen. During this period, we will have six guest speakers to share their thoughts and films, and at the same time, discussions with all participants are planned during the Q&A session after the screenings.
Date & Time: October 8, 15 29, November 5, 12, 19 15:00-18:15
Location: Lecture Room 9(講義室9), Basement Floor,
Research Building No.2 (総合研究2号館)
Language: English
Free to All
Please find posters here: PDF
Seminar Series on Open Access Publishing for Journals of Kyoto University (in Japanese)[update]
This three-session series of seminars reconsiders the significance of university-published journals such as Diamond Open Access (OA) and teaches about the open-source tools available to improve their sustainability and reputation.
Sessions: May 30, June 27, July 25
Continue reading “Seminar Series on Open Access Publishing for Journals of Kyoto University (in Japanese)[update]”Intensive Lecture Course : Learning the Power of Observation (2024/7/30-2024/8/5)
The Transcultural Studies Division holds an intensive lecture course entitled “Learning the Power of Observation” (Foundation I – Seminar (VMC)), taught by Filmmaker, Kazuhiro Soda on July 30-31 and August 1-2 and 5.
In this intensive course, he will explain how and why he takes his particular approach to documentary filmmaking, covering all phases of filmmaking from filming to editing to marketing. It will give students an opportunity to learn how a documentary filmmaker thinks and works. Examining actual day to day problems he faces, students will also learn and study various issues around documentary, such as ethics, economics, reality vs fiction, subjectivity vs objectivity, etc. At the end of the course, each student must write and submit a final paper which discusses such issues analyzing my films and methods.
Date & Time: July 30-31, August 1-2, 5 10:30-12:00, 13:15-14:45, 15:00-16:30
Location: Lecture Room 9, Basement Floor, Research Building No.2 (Map㉞)
Language: English and Japanese
Poster
Welcome all students who are interested in cinema and media studies.
Prior registration is required.
Click here to register.
If you have questions about it, you may contact Prof. Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano at wadamarciano.mitsuyo.6w[at]kyoto-u.ac.jp.
Documentary Film Screening :Red Maria 2 (2024/6/21)
Professor Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano will hold a screening of documentary film, Lee Kyung Soon’s Red Maria 2 (2015) .
Date & Time: June 21, Friday 15:00-18:00
Location: Basement Meeting Room (地下1階会議室), Faculty of Letters Main Bldg.
Language: Korean (English Subtitles)
Free to all
If you have questions about it, you may contact Prof. Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano at wadamarciano.mitsuyo.6w[a]kyoto-u.ac.jp.
Please find the poster here: PDF
Lectures for the 2024 Spring Semester
The Transcultural Studies Division will offer four lectures in June. We have invited four researchers who specialize in film and music to give these lectures.
“Women in Cities: Comparative Modernities and Cinematic Space in the 1930s”
Catherine Russell
Professor, Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Concordia University
Date & Time: 2024/06/03 (Mon), 13:15-16:30
Location: Lecture Room 3,Faculty of Letters Main Bldg.
“Itinerary of a Melody: Transnational Journey of Popular Music from Japan”
Lauri Kitsnik
Assistant Professor, Department of Asian and North African Studies, Ca’ Foscari University
Date & Time: 2024/06/14 (Fri), 13:15-16:30
Location: Basement Meeting Room (地下1階会議室) Lecture Room 3, Faculty of Letters Main Bldg.
“Precocious Modernism, Queer Homosociality, and Mou Tun-fei’s The End of the Track”
Chang-Min Yu
Assistant Professor, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, National Taiwan University.
Date & Time: 2024/06/18 (Tue), 15:00-18:00
Location: Lecture Room 9,Basement Floor, Research Building No.2
“Beyond the Auteur: The Diversity of Korean Independent Cinema of the 2010s”
Marc Raymond
Professor, Department of Communication, Kwangwoon University
Date & Time: 2024/06/20 (Thu), 15:00-18:00
Location: Lecture Room 9,Basement Floor, Research Building No.2