Monthly Archives: March 2024

Lecture Title: “Cats, Single Ladies, and Manga: Feminist Fantasies of Cohabitation in East Asian Discourses”

Date: Thursday, April 4th
Time: from 12:50 to 2:00 pm 
Location: Baruch College, 55 Lexington Ave, New York, NY 10010
Venue: VC-4-165
Registration: https://forms.gle/obrMgAnKF9LLCG6H6
*Registration is required to attend the event (updated on 3/19). For non-Baruch students: Please note that members of the general public are welcome, but registration is required and must be completed by April 1st. You must also bring a valid ID in order to enter the venue.

Abstract:
My talk opens with an analysis of the 2023 anime series The Masterful Cat is Depressed Again Today (Dekiru neko wa kyō mo yūutsu), based on a manga by Yamada Hitsuji. The Masterful Cat depicts an incompetent protagonist who cannot cook and has an apartment full of trash before her new cat begins to manage her household. From a queer feminist perspective, how might we analyze the depiction of an utterly fulfilling lifestyle in which a cat prepares dinner everyday for an unmarried young woman? 

This manga can be contextualized within Japanese popular cultural representations of platonic cohabitation as well as anthropomorphic cats functioning as charming figures. In particular, I read The Masterful Cat against recent manga discourses about women building everyday lives together, especially those LGBTQ-friendly in nature. 

At the same time, these texts are linked to broader transnational discussions within East Asia concerning heteronormative pressures regarding marriage and reproduction. My talk touches upon Two Women Live Together (2019), a Korean essay collection by Kim Hana and Sunwoo Hwang that details the cohabitation of two women and four cats, as well as the term sheng nü  (“leftover woman”) and struggles over reproduction in mainland China. Especially compared with so-called “radical” East Asian feminisms harshly denouncing heterosexual marriage and childbirth, what kind of critique does Japanese popular culture offer?

About the Lecturer:
Grace En-Yi Ting is an assistant professor of gender studies at the University of Hong Kong, specializing in queer feminist approaches to Japanese literature and popular culture, particularly women writers and girls’ culture. She also writes on race and gender in academia. Her recent work reorients Japanese literature through transnational encounters with the Sinophone and women of color feminisms, theorizing a queer feminist ethical praxis for marginalized readers in diasporic Asian contexts.

Co-organized by The Japanese Program in Modern Languages and Comparative Literatuer and Baruch Japan Club and sponsored by the Harman Writer-in-Residence Program.

Should you have any questions/concerns, please contact Professor Shige (CJ) Suzuki SHIGERU.SUZUKI@baruch.cuny.edu

En-yi’s Queer Study 恩宜老師的酷兒書房:
A border-crossing practice of teaching, healing, and solidarity from Hong Kong

Date: Wednesday, April 3rd.
Time: 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Venue: VC14-270

Registration: https://forms.gle/41vDJ76fYLVmDem97
*Registration is required to attend the event (updated on 3/19). For non-Baruch students: Please note that members of the general public are welcome, but registration is required and must be completed by March 31^st. You must also bring a valid ID in order to enter the venue.

A border-crossing practice of teaching, healing, and solidarity from Hong Kong

How does a queer feminist window into Hong Kong unsettle ideas about social justice in a North American context?

What are challenges of teaching on language, colonialism, ethnicity/race, and politics in a gender studies classroom in Hong Kong? 

What forms of trauma, discrimination, and violence divide feminist and queer communities?

Can we move beyond anger and “survival mode feminism” to imagine queer and feminist practices in terms of both justice and care?

This event welcomes anyone with an interest in learning about and discussing feminist/queer issues in the context of Hong Kong, particularly students and non-academics. The concept is a “traveling classroom” in which Professor Grace En-yi Ting will give an informal lecture followed by small group discussion, before concluding with a discussion between her and the participants as a whole. Topics will include: 

• Rethinking North American/Anglocentric frameworks for social justice
• A brief intro to issues in Hong Kong: assumptions vs. complex realities
• What is it like to be a student in Prof. Ting’s gender studies classroom in Hong Kong?
• LGBT+/gender-related advocacy outside the classroom in Hong Kong
• Prof. Ting’s experience: a Taiwanese American in Hong Kong, being a “bridge” between communities and places, teaching as a queer woman of color academic, experiences of discrimination in feminist/queer communities

The event will be conducted primarily in English, with partly bilingual lecture slides (English/Chinese). Small group discussion will take place using English as well as Mandarin and/or Cantonese depending upon the makeup of participants. 

Speaker:
Dr. Grace En-yi Ting 丁恩宜 (she/they) is an assistant professor of gender studies at the University of Hong Kong. She previously specialized in queer and feminist approaches to Japanese literature and popular culture. After moving to Hong Kong in 2020, she began to teach on Hong Kong, mainland China, and Taiwan while engaging with Sinophone and Asian American studies. As a Taiwanese American, she is a heritage speaker of Mandarin, fluent in Japanese, and a beginner in Cantonese. 

She came up with the idea for “En-yi’s Queer Study”—informal lectures/events on Hong Kong planned in different cities in North America, Japan, & elsewhere—after noticing a lack of dialogue on queer/feminist issues x Hong Kong. As a queer feminist teacher and advocate, she hopes to create makeshift spaces for new connections and possibilities while sharing with others the Hong Kong that she sees.

The lecture event is co-organized by The Asian and Asian American Studies program, The Japanese Program in Modern Languages and Comparative Literature, and Baruch Japan Club