Lunchtime Lecture Series: Professor Sharalyn Orbaugh (UBC)
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
12:30pm – 1:30pm
Room 604, Asian Centre, 1871 West Mall, Vancouver
Abstract:
The usual narrative about queerness in postwar manga locates its origins in a shôjo story drawn by (male manga artist) Tezuka Osamu:Ribon no kishi (Princess Knight, serialized 1953-56). Whether manga historians celebrate the dual-gendered protagonist or criticize Tezuka’s heterocentrism, they tend to oversimplify and obscure some of the crucial elements that make this manga queer. This presentation will begin with a re-examination and repositioning of several of the most frequently cited examples of queer postwar manga, but will concentrate on the very large number of narratives from the past fifteen years that show how manga artists are queering normative ideas of sex, gender and sexuality in increasingly sophisticated ways, both visually and textually.