Download or read book Queer Asia written by J. Daniel Luther and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Queer studies is now a rapidly expanding field, as scholars from a variety of disciplines seek to address the long-running marginalisation of queer perspectives and experiences. But there has so far been little effort to unify the study of queer communities outside the West, and much of the current writing views these communities through a narrowly Western lens. Building on the work of the annual Queer Asia conference, which the editors helped to establish, this collection represents the most comprehensive work to date on queer studies in an Asian context. Featuring case studies and original research from across the continent, covering the Middle East, South and East Asia, and Asian diasporas, the collection offers a genuinely pan-Asian perspective which places queer Asian identities and movements in dialogue with each other, rather than within a Western framework. By considering how queerness is imagined within plural Asian experiences and contexts, the contributors show a that re-envisioning of 'queer' through Asian perspectives has the potential to challenge existing discourses and debates in the wider field of contemporary gender, sexuality, and queer studies.

Download or read book Queer Transfigurations written by James Welker and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The boys love (BL) genre was created for girls and women by young female manga (comic) artists in early 1970s Japan to challenge oppressive gender and sexual norms. Over the years, BL has seen almost irrepressible growth in popularity and since the 2000s has become a global media phenomenon, weaving its way into anime, prose fiction, live-action dramas, video games, audio dramas, and fan works. BL’s male–male romantic and sexual relationships have found a particularly receptive home in other parts of Asia, where strong local fan communities and locally produced BL works have garnered a following throughout the region, taking on new meanings and engendering widespread cultural effects. Queer Transfigurations is the first detailed examination of the BL media explosion across Asia. The book brings together twenty-one scholars exploring BL media, its fans, and its sociocultural impacts in a dozen countries in East, Southeast, and South Asia—and beyond. Contributors draw on their expertise in an array of disciplines and fields, including anthropology, fan studies, gender and sexuality studies, history, literature, media studies, political science, and sociology to shed light on BL media and its fandoms. Queer Transfigurations reveals the far-reaching influences of the BL genre, demonstrating that it is truly transnational and transcultural in diverse cultural contexts. It has also helped bring about positive changes in the status of LGBT(Q) people and communities as well as enlighten local understandings of gender and sexuality throughout Asia. In short, Queer Transfigurations shows that, some fifty years after the first BL manga appeared in print, the genre is continuing to reverberate and transform lives.

Download or read book Queer Singapore written by Audrey Yue and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Singapore remains one of the few countries in Asia that has yet to decriminalize homosexuality. Yet it has also been hailed by many as one of the emerging gay capitals of Asia. This book accounts for the rise of mediated queer cultures in Singapore's current milieu of illiberal citizenship. This collection analyses how contemporary queer Singapore has emerged against a contradictory backdrop of sexual repression and cultural liberalisation. Using the innovative framework of illiberal pragmatism, established and emergent local scholars and activists provide expansive coverage of the impact of homosexuality on Singapore's media cultures and political economy, including law, religion, the military, literature, theatre, photography, cinema, social media and queer commerce. It shows how new LGBT subjectivities have been fashioned through the governance of illiberal pragmatism, how pragmatism is appropriated as a form of social and critical democratic action, and how cultural citizenship is forged through a logic of queer complicity that complicates the flows of oppositional resistance and grassroots appropriation.

Download or read book Queer Asia written by J. Daniel Luther and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Queer studies is now a rapidly expanding field, as scholars from a variety of disciplines seek to address the long-running marginalisation of queer perspectives and experiences. But there has so far been little effort to unify the study of queer communities outside the West, and much of the current writing views these communities through a narrowly Western lens. Building on the work of the annual Queer Asia conference, which the editors helped to establish, this collection represents the most comprehensive work to date on queer studies in an Asian context. Featuring case studies and original research from across the continent, covering the Middle East, South and East Asia, and Asian diasporas, the collection offers a genuinely pan-Asian perspective which places queer Asian identities and movements in dialogue with each other, rather than within a Western framework. By considering how queerness is imagined within plural Asian experiences and contexts, the contributors show a that re-envisioning of 'queer' through Asian perspectives has the potential to challenge existing discourses and debates in the wider field of contemporary gender, sexuality, and queer studies.

Download or read book Mobile Cultures written by Chris Berry and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2003-04-18 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mobile Cultures provides much-needed, empirically grounded studies of the connections between new media technologies, the globalization of sexual cultures, and the rise of queer Asia. The availability and use of new media—fax machines, mobile phones, the Internet, electronic message boards, pagers, and global television—have grown exponentially in Asia over the past decade. This explosion of information technology has sparked a revolution, transforming lives and lifestyles, enabling the creation of communities and the expression of sexual identities in a region notorious for the regulation of both information and sexual conduct. Whether looking at the hanging of toy cartoon characters like “Hello Kitty” from mobile phones to signify queer identity in Japan or at the development of queer identities in Indonesia or Singapore, the essays collected here emphasize the enormous variance in the appeal and uses of new media from one locale to another. Scholars, artists, and activists from a range of countries, the contributors chronicle the different ways new media galvanize Asian queer communities in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, India, and around the world. They consider phenomena such as the uses of the Internet among gay, lesbian, or queer individuals in Taiwan and South Korea; the international popularization of Japanese queer pop culture products such as Yaoi manga; and a Thai website’s reading of a scientific tract on gay genetics in light of Buddhist beliefs. Essays also explore the politically subversive possibilities opened up by the proliferation of media technologies, examining, for instance, the use of Cyberjaya—Malaysia’s government-backed online portal—to form online communities in the face of strict antigay laws. Contributors. Chris Berry, Tom Boellstorff, Larissa Hjorth, Katrien Jacobs, Olivia Khoo, Fran Martin, Mark McLelland, David Mullaly, Baden Offord, Sandip Roy, Veruska Sabucco, Audrey Yue

Download or read book Intimate Strangers written by Carmen Ho and published by Signal 8 Press. This book was released on 2019-08 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Family, love, friendship, acceptance-none of these pillars of happiness are certainties for LGBTQ+ people. Intimate Strangers showcases the nonfiction work of writers living life on their own authentic terms.

Download or read book Queer Bangkok written by Peter A. Jackson and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Thai capital Bangkok is the unrivalled centre of the country's gay, lesbian and transgender communities. These communities are among the largest in Southeast Asia, and indeed in the world, and have a diversity, social presence and historical depth that set them apart from the queer cultures of many neighbouring societies. The first years of the 21st Century have marked a significant transition moment for all of Thailand's LGBT cultures, with a multidimensional expansion in the geographical extent, media presence, economic importance, political impact, social standing, and cultural relevance of Thai queer communities. This book analyzes the roles of the market and media - especially cinema and the Internet - in these transformations, and considers the ambiguous consequences that the growing commodification and mediatisation of queer lives have had for LGBT rights in Thailand. A key finding is that in the early 21st Century processes of global queering are leading to a growing Asianisation of Bangkok's queer cultures. This book traces Bangkok's emergence as a central focus of an expanding regional network linking gay, lesbian and transgender communities in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines and other rapidly developing East and Southeast Asian societies. Peter A. Jacksonis associate professor in the School of Culture, History and Language at Australian National University. "The myriad faces of Thai gender/sexuality culture have been an attraction for both pleasure-seekers and researchers/scholars/activists. Exploring the rapidly changing LGBT cultures and Thai queer identities, the essays collected here provide insightful analyses of historical continuities as well as developing variations within the highly complex erotic/economic texture of Thai society. A must-read for anyone in the booming field of gender/sexuality studies." -Josephine Ho, Chair Professor, Center for the Study of Sexualities, National Central University, Taiwan

Download or read book Queer Asian Cinema written by Andrew Grossman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-24 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore queer themes in films from Hong Kong gangster flicks to Bollywood melodramas! Although Asian films have reached a new height in popularity worldwide, Queer Asian Cinema: Shadows in the Shade is the first full-length book in English solely devoted to examining the aesthetics and politics of homosexuality in Asian films. This unique book presents multiple points of view on the portrayal of gay, lesbian, and transgendered people in film throughout Asia. From the subversive sadomasochism of Japan's ”pink films” to the hard-boiled world of Hong Kong's gangster movies, Queer Asian Cinema analyzes and discusses attitudes toward homosexuality in the full spectrum of Asian film. In addition to studies of the representation of identified gay men, lesbians, and transgendered individuals, it reveals the hidden homoerotic subtext of otherwise conventional films. Queer Asian Cinema: Shadows in the Shade examines diverse aspects of Asian films, including: the political and psychological links between feudal and sadomasochist hierarchies the inevitable punishment of homoerotic bonds in gangster films the integration of the homosexual couple into the Confucian family structure in Korean films the complexities of cross-gender casting the differences between transvestism and cross-dressing the definition of male genitalia as obscene Queer Asian Cinema: Shadows in the Shade brings together experts in both film-making and movie criticism, providing a balanced viewpoint to unite the worlds of academic and popular perceptions on this subject. It opens an exciting discussion of this important and largely neglected area of cinematic discourse.

Download or read book Queer Asia written by J. Daniel Luther and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Queer studies is now a rapidly expanding field, as scholars from a variety of disciplines seek to address the long-running marginalisation of queer perspectives and experiences. But there has so far been little effort to unify the study of queer communities outside the West, and much of the current writing views these communities through a narrowly Western lens. Building on the work of the annual Queer Asia conference, which the editors helped to establish, this collection represents the most comprehensive work to date on queer studies in an Asian context. Featuring case studies and original research from across the continent, covering the Middle East, South and East Asia, and Asian diasporas, the collection offers a genuinely pan-Asian perspective which places queer Asian identities and movements in dialogue with each other, rather than within a Western framework. By considering how queerness is imagined within plural Asian experiences and contexts, the contributors show a that re-envisioning of 'queer' through Asian perspectives has the potential to challenge existing discourses and debates in the wider field of contemporary gender, sexuality, and queer studies.

Download or read book Maid to Queer written by Francisca Yuenki Lai and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-03 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maid to Queer is the first book about Asian female migrant workers who develop same-sex relationships in a host city. Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews with Indonesian domestic workers in Hong Kong, the book explores the meanings of same-sex relationships to these migrant women. Instead of searching for reasons to explain why they engage in a same-sex relationship, this book provides an ethnographic perspective by addressing their Sunday activities and considering how migration policies and the practices of Hong Kong people unintentionally produce alternative sexuality and desires for them. The author contrasts the migrant experiences of same-sex relationships with the Western discourse that individuals carry a strong sense of sexual identification prior to migration; same-sex desires among Indonesian domestic workers are often not realized until they leave home. Addressing the changes from maid to queer, this book documents the intersections of domestic work, labor migration, race, and religion on the sexual subject formation, specifically how Indonesian women negotiate heteronormativity and remake a space for their love, sex, and intimacy. For those interested in lesbian studies, Asian labor migration, sexual citizenship, and queer migration, this ethnography fills an important gap in explaining how the feminization of international migration and the constraints imposed on live-in domestic workers unintentionally become productive possibilities of queerness and normativity. “Maid to Queer combines insights from migration studies with those of LGBT studies, contributing to both. It examines the sexual subjectivities and shifting sexualities of these domestic workers, in relation to both migrant labor policies and the anxieties and practices of their employers in Hong Kong. Lai’s book is very enticing to read.” —Saskia Wieringa, University of Amsterdam “This is the first book I know of exploring sexuality among domestic workers. Lai shows that sexuality is relative to both imagination and opportunity, and that it can change over time. Women may desire women, or they may not; context shapes this desire and how this desire plays out.” —Sharyn Davies, Monash University

Download or read book Contact Moments written by Katsuhiko Suganuma and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-01 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sheds light on 'contact moments' between Japanese male-queer culture and that of the West in the postwar period, and critiques various contemporary examples of persistent Orientalism and nativism. Focusing on a range of Japanese as well as English male-queer materials including magazines, memoirs and cybertexts, Suganuma shows how the interactions of the two cultures affected the subject formation process of queer selves. The instances examined range from the hentai magazines of the 1950s and their depiction of men who had sex with foreign men (mostly American servicemen); the depiction of race in the magazine Barazoku; John Whittier Treat's memoir of his sabbatical in Japan and his depiction of his own Orientalism; the writings and strategies of OCCUR and Fushimi in the 1990s; and the GJN news site. The author sees the depiction of and reaction to Japanese men who had sex with foreigners in the hentai magazines as part of a larger pattern of representation manifesting gender anxieties among Japanese men (both heterosexual and homosexual) who found themselves feminized by defeat in the war. He draws on Dyer's understanding of whiteness as a flexible default position in his discussion of Barazoku, but argues that in this case Japaneseness is the default position and whiteness is othered. In his final chapter, he argues for an understanding of the activities of GJN also as a space of mediation rather than simply as a wholesale importation of American or 'global gay' culture. Suganuma argues that the binaries of cross-cultural comparison (local/global, Japan/West, acts/identities, and us/them) can be generative and productive as well as repressive and reductive.

Download or read book Impossible Desires written by Gayatri Gopinath and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2005-04-19 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By bringing queer theory to bear on ideas of diaspora, Gayatri Gopinath produces both a more compelling queer theory and a more nuanced understanding of diaspora. Focusing on queer female diasporic subjectivity, Gopinath develops a theory of diaspora apart from the logic of blood, authenticity, and patrilineal descent that she argues invariably forms the core of conventional formulations. She examines South Asian diasporic literature, film, and music in order to suggest alternative ways of conceptualizing community and collectivity across disparate geographic locations. Her agile readings challenge nationalist ideologies by bringing to light that which has been rendered illegible or impossible within diaspora: the impure, inauthentic, and nonreproductive. Gopinath juxtaposes diverse texts to indicate the range of oppositional practices, subjectivities, and visions of collectivity that fall outside not only mainstream narratives of diaspora, colonialism, and nationalism but also most projects of liberal feminism and gay and lesbian politics and theory. She considers British Asian music of the 1990s alongside alternative media and cultural practices. Among the fictional works she discusses are V. S. Naipaul’s classic novel A House for Mr. Biswas, Ismat Chughtai’s short story “The Quilt,” Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy, and Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night. Analyzing films including Deepa Mehta’s controversial Fire and Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding, she pays particular attention to how South Asian diasporic feminist filmmakers have reworked Bollywood’s strategies of queer representation and to what is lost or gained in this process of translation. Gopinath’s readings are dazzling, and her theoretical framework transformative and far-reaching.

Download or read book Obsession written by Wenqing Kang and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-01 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the most serious study to date on the topic of male same-sex relations in China during the early twentieth century, illuminating male same-sex relations in many sites: language, translated sexological writings, literary works, tabloid newspapers, and opera. Documenting how nationalism and colonial modernity reconfigured Chinese discourses on sex between men in the early twentieth century, Wenqing Kang has amassed a wealth of material previously overlooked by scholars, such as the entertainment news and opinion pieces related to same-sex relations published in the tabloid press. He sheds new light on several puzzles, such as the process whereby sex between men became increasingly stigmatized in China between the 1910s and 1940s, and shows that the rich vocabulary and concepts that existed for male-male relations in premodern China continued to be used by journalists and writers throughout the Republican era, creating the conditions for receiving Western sexology.

Download or read book COVID 19 Assemblages written by Niharika Banerjea and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-01-20 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book documents and analyzes the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic through queer and feminist perspectives. A testament of dispossessions as well as a celebration of various forms of resilience, community building and critical responses, it chronicles the social history of queer and trans persons and women in South Asia and the diasporas. Through a creative and collaborative form of ethnographic writing, the book enters in conversation with the worlds of domestic helps, caregivers, cultural workers, students, sex workers and other precariously employed people. It examines the confining effects of the pandemic on the lived realities of many queer and trans individuals, the caste-oppressed and women across socio-economic backgrounds. The chapters in the volume piece together narratives of prejudice, hardship, self-expression and resistance from interviews, personal accounts, as well as poems and stories from activists, artists and other collaborators. The book pays particular attention to issues of power and asymmetrical relationships amidst COVID-19 and offers critiques to deepen the understanding of the uneven fault lines within which historically oppressed persons reside in South Asia. Exploring themes of migration, disability and sexual politics, this book is an essential reading for scholars and researchers of gender and sexuality studies, cultural studies, South Asian studies, sociology and social anthropology.

Download or read book Queer Southeast Asia written by Shawna Tang and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-11-22 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tang and Wijaya present a range of new and established scholarly voices, including local activists directly involved in developments in Southeast Asia. This groundbreaking collection presents the current state of play and longstanding LGBTQ+ debates in this often-overlooked region of Asia. The diversity of both the subject and the region is reflected in the broad scope of topics addressed, from the impact of Japanese queer popular culture on queer Filipinos, to the politics of public toilets in Singapore, and the impact of digital governance on queer communities across ASEAN. Taken in combination, these investigations not only highlight the operations of queer politics in Southeast Asia, but also present a concrete basis to reflect on queer knowledge production in the region. A vital resource for students and scholars of gender and sexuality in Southeast Asia, or any Queer or LGBTQ+ studies looking beyond the West.

Download or read book Boys Love Cosplay and Androgynous Idols written by Maud Lavin and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chinese-speaking popular cultures have never been so queer in this digital, globalist age. The title of this pioneering volume, Boys’ Love, Cosplay, and Androgynous Idols: Queer Fan Cultures in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan already gives an idea of the colorful, multifaceted realms the fans inhabit today. Contributors to this collection situate the proliferation of (often online) queer representations, productions, fantasies, and desires as a reaction against the norms in discourses surrounding nation-states, linguistics, geopolitics, genders, and sexualities. Moving beyond the easy polarities between general resistance and capitulation, Queer Fan Cultures explores the fans’ diverse strategies in negotiating with cultural strictures and media censorship. It further outlines the performance of subjectivity, identity, and agency that cyberspace offers to female fans. Presenting a wide array of concrete case studies of queer fandoms in Chinese-speaking contexts, the essays in this volume challenge long-established Western-centric and Japanese-focused fan scholarship by highlighting the significance and specificities of Sinophone queer fan cultures and practices in a globalized world. The geographic organization of the chapters illuminates cultural differences and the other competing forces shaping geocultural intersections among fandoms based in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. “This important collection complicates our understanding of fan practices, showing how national and regional factors play an important role in how media texts and identities are understood. It also shows how the Chinese-speaking world is home to dense and often conflicting modes of audience reception of cultural texts deriving from Sinophone, Japanese, and Western contexts.” —Mark McLelland, University of Wollongong “An exciting anthology by a talented group of emergent scholars whose vibrant studies offer fresh insights on the diverse practices and transregional flows of queer fandom in the Chinese-speaking world. Local in its specificity and transnational in its scope, this book highlights the creativity of queer fan practices while critically locating them within the political and social structures that produce them.” —Helen Hok-Sze Leung, Simon Fraser University

Download or read book Gaysia written by Benjamin Law and published by Cleis Press. This book was released on 2014-05-13 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gay Asian-Australian man wonders what his life would be like if he grew up in Asia, so he travels to several Asian countries and investigates gay culture in Indonesia, Thailand, China, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, and India.