Friday, May 19, 3:00 – 5:00 p.m. in Wieboldt 301N
Brian White, “Cyborg Self, Android Other: Race, Technology, and Subjectivity in Japanese SF”
Discussant: Sabine Schulz (PhD Student, EALC)
Please join us this Friday (5/19) as we host Brian White (PhD Student, EALC). Brian will present a draft of his dissertation proposal. He summarizes the project as follows:
The dissertation project outlined in this proposal seeks to bring together three conceptual concerns – technology, race, and the body – through the mediating object of Japanese science fiction (SF) media across the 20th century. Looking at the three key historical moments of the 1920s-30s, 1960s, and 1990s-2000s, the project asks how the racialized body has persisted as a site of contestation, even as technological advancement and (post)modernity attempted to efface it as such. In part a continuation of recent attempts to read genre literature into Japanese media history, and in part an investigation of how East Asian area studies can add additional nuance to the conversation on race and SF already begun by Afrofuturist studies, the proposed dissertation lies precisely at the intersection of media studies and area studies.
The paper is available at this link. If you do not have the password, or if you have concerns about accessibility, please contact Alex Murphy at murphya1@uchicago.edu.
