2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

This lightning session will feature six presentations and a commentary that engage the themed track of “Politics and Popular Culture” utilizing the analytical lenses of gender and the trans-Pacific world. First, the presenters engage with a “Pacific World” framework to explore historical and contemporary connections across the Pacific Ocean especially in relation to diaspora, empire, and race. Second, they emphasize the gendered nature of the Pacific World.  Presenters Chrissy Yee Lau and Fang He frame late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century American anti-immigrant movements against Japanese and Chinese women in new ways by featuring the unique roles that respectability campaigns and ideas about footbinding played in nativist politics.  Tessa Ong Winkelmann and Genevieve Clutario expand our understandings of the politics and popular culture of U.S. imperialism in the Philippines with their analyses of the creation of new sexual geographies and frontiers in the northern and southern Philippines, and the use of beauty pageants in Philippine nationalist as well as U.S. colonial agendas.  And Miliann Kang and Stella Oh challenge contemporary Orientalist stereotypes of Asian tiger mothers and wives through in-depth interviews with Asian American mothers and critical readings of graphic narratives about Korean sex trafficking.  The session will conclude with commentary by session organizer Catherine Ceniza Choy, co-editor of the Brill book series  “Gendering the Trans-Pacific World: Diaspora, Empire, and Race.”  Karen Leong, an editorial board member of the book series, will moderate the session.