READING AND WRITING
JAPANESE WOMEN'S TEXTS

 Focusing on Japanese Women and their Contributions to Poetry, Fiction, Essay, Memoir, Historiography, Criticism, Music, Theatre, Film, Painting, and Calligraphy, from the Pre-Modern to the Post-Modern.

 Writing by Japanese women can be traced back some 1400 years and across a variety of genres. Much of contemporary inquiry in North America into this area has focused on prose fiction by Japanese women, a project which has resulted in numerous translations and a burgeoning of critical works, the most prominent being The Woman's Hand: Gender and Theory in Japanese Women's Writing. Venturing into the critical space set forth by this foundational volume, we aimed at promoting further study and research in this area through the hosting of a conference which brought together participants from around the world. In addition to crossing the divide between pre-modern and modern, we wanted to extend the boundaries of inquiry to include a variety of genres and formats which have constituted and continue to constitute literary and cultural expression by women in Japan. Our current objective is to produce a volume of critical essays, which were delivered during the conference presentations. Some very general questions pertaining to the subject matter are as follows:

why study Japanese women's texts?
what is important about Japanese women's writing and cultural production?
how are we to view Japanese women's contributions to literature and culture?
if women's writing and reading is different from that of men, how are we to read such 'difference'?
does the attempt to re-read and recuperate Japanese women's texts invoke an "essentialist" agenda?
how does the reading of gender 'difference' intersect with other 'differences,' such as class and/or political/philosphical/ideological persuasions?

 For further information, contact:

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