Gender and Sexuality Studies Workshop
The Gender and Sexuality Studies Workshop's Spring Quarter schedule is curated by Susan Burns, Associate Professor of Japanese History and East Asian Languages and Civilizations, with outside guest Leslie Reagan, Professor of History at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. This quarter's theme, "Transnational Perspectives on Gender and Sexuality," explores the historical dimensions of gender, sexuality, and feminism with an emphasis on work that is transnational or comparative in perspective.
April 4: Susan Burns, Associate Professor of History and East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago, "Human Rights, Biological Citizenship, and Reproductive Policy in Japan's Leprosy Sanitaria"
Abstract: In May 2001, a local court in Kumamoto Japan issued a ruling that both jurists and journalists would later term "epochal." It held that the Japanese government had infringed upon the human and civil rights of the Japanese leprosy sufferers who were confined within the public and national sanitaria and it required the state to pay reparations. The subsequent announcement by the Japanese government that it would not appeal the court's decision and would enter into negotiations with former patients over a settlement was widely celebrated by progressive groups, who had seen other human rights cases, including those brought by so-called "comfort women," former POWs, and victims of biological warfare, end in failure. At the center of the suit heard by the Kumamoto Court was the charge that the Japanese state had required that male patients submit to sterilization and coerced female patients who became pregnant to undergo abortion, policies that many have argued reflect the prewar state's biopolitical concerns. In this presentation, I explore the reproductive policies deployed in the sanitaria in light of the politics of sexuality and gender and Rose and Nova's theory of "biological citizenship."
Papers are made available in advance via our email list. If you are interested in joining the email list, go to http://lists.uchicago.edu/web/subscribe/sexuality-gender-wkshp or contact the workshop coordinators, Annie Heffernan and Danya Lagos, at gssworkshop@gmail.com. Additional workshop information, including past schedules, can be found at http://voices.uchicago.edu/genderandsexuality
Date: April 4, 2017
Time: 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
See:http://voices.uchicago.edu/genderandsexuality/
Date: April 4, 2017
Time: 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
See:http://voices.uchicago.edu/genderandsexuality/