CFP: AJLS 2009 "RETHINKING GENDER IN THE POSTGENDER ERA" (Rutgers, NJ; 1 June; 6-8 Nov)

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 h�shi, ningyo j�ruri, 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 Rene 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 1-hour
time blocks. The conference languages are English and Japanese.

Proposals should be submitted to: ajls2009.rutgers at gmail.com
All other correspondence may be directed to the organizers: Paul Schalow
schalow at rci.rutgers.edu or Janet Walker
jwalk at rci.rutgers.edu

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PAPER/PANEL PROPOSAL FORM
DEADLINE: June 1, 2009
Title:


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Institution:


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Please attach your 250-words proposal to this form and send to:
ajls2009.rutgers at gmail.com
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