Decolonial and Deimperial Crossings: An Inter-Asian Feminist Genealogy

Lecture | February 21 | 12-2 p.m. | 602 Barrows Hall

Speaker: Laura Kang, Professor of Gender & Sexuality Studies, English and Comparative Literature, UC Irvine

Sponsors: Department of Gender and Women's Studies, Center for Race and Gender, Center for Korean Studies (CKS)

Part of the Feminist Studies and Decolonial Epistemologies Lecture Series

This talk recalls and retraces the inter-Asian network of feminist mobilizations against Japanese sex tourism and U.S. military prostitution in the early 1970s. The work of attending to the discrepant yet linked histories of imperialist sexual violence, military dictatorship, and neocolonial exploitation of Asian women’s sexual labor yielded a critical feminist consciousness of the non-unity of “Asia” and “Asian women.”

Short Bio:
Laura Kang is Professor of Gender & Sexuality Studies, English and Comparative Literature at UC Irvine. She is the author of "Traffic in Asian Women" (2018) and "Compositional Subjects: Enfiguring Asian/American Women" (2002). She is the editor of "writing away here: an anthology of korean/american writings" (1994) and "echoes upon echoes: new korean/american writings" (2003) co-edited with Elaine Kim.

Funding provided by: The Chau Hoi Shuen Foundation Fund for Gender & Women's Studies

Event Contact: gilliane@berkeley.edu