AHA Session 284
Sunday, January 7, 2024: 9:00 AM-10:30 AM
Continental Ballroom 7 (Hilton Union Square, Ballroom)
Chair:
Amy B. Stanley, Northwestern University
Panel:
Peter J. Carroll, Northwestern University
Rachel Hsu, National Chengchi University
Yiwen Yvon Wang, University of Toronto
Tomomi Yamaguchi, Montana State University
Rachel Hsu, National Chengchi University
Yiwen Yvon Wang, University of Toronto
Tomomi Yamaguchi, Montana State University
Session Abstract
As many historians have argued, sex and the discourses surrounding it bring together some of the most intimate textures of life with big issues of sociopolitical control, material life, and identity. East Asia is a compelling site analytically from which to explore sexual politics, because this region, as opposed to much of the European ecumene, did not posit sexual desire or sexual activity per se as sinful or negative despite a highly bureaucratized and often "intrusive" state apparatus and strong hierarchies of cultural authority. Closely considering the specific understandings of and limitations on sexual expression and activities in East Asia can be a way to denaturalize the categories by which we today talk, or argue, over sexuality. But at the same time, it is precisely because these categories had different meanings in the past that they are so often considered threatening or off-limits in the present. In this panel, historians who study gender and sexuality in East Asia bring will discuss their research as well as the current political climate -- in the region and beyond -- that makes much of this history contentious and even unspeakable in public and on university campuses.
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