Tuesday, September 16, 2008

GLBT History Month; research for class

the GLBT History Month site

I'm doing it again! This time with official resources, a booth in the student union, and hopefully much more success. Last year I shot myself in the foot several times, not preparing well enough, not advertising well enough, etc. In lieu of shiny printed logo-bearing things I made a couple of picture boards that are pretty cool (I will take and post pictures soon), a fact sheet-timeline thing, and a bibliography for the curious. I may post PDFs if my updates to these things turn out spiffy. Updates as they come.

I am also doing more of the "tie in queer history to every class I take ever" thing for my Feudal Japan class. Paper 1 is a historiographical book review (The Love of the Samurai: A Thousand Years of Japanese Homosexuality by Tsuneo Watanabe and Jun'ichi Iwata), paper 2 is topical (same-sex relationships and structures in Buddhist monasteries- a huge topic! there's a whole genre of literature!), and paper 3 is a term research project carrying the grade for the final (same-sex love poetry and literature in historical and political context- still working on the boundaries of that one, just got the initial proposal back today).

Things I'm reading for that aside from Watanabe:
Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan by Gary Leupp, Buddhism, Sexuality, and Gender edited by Jose Ignacio Cabezon, which has an essay I need by Paul Gordon Schalow and hopefully some other good stuff (but I don't know, because the interlibrary loan system hasn't spit it out yet), a couple of essays out of Monumenta Nipponica on the Chigo Monogatari ("tale of the acolyte", the aforementioned Buddhist genre of same-sex love poetry, literature, and sermons) and Kitamura Kigin's Tokugawa poetry collection Iwatsutsuji ("Wild Azaleas"). The class does not cover the Tokugawa era, but all of these sources include information and insight on former eras if they don't focus on them. Iwatsutsuji, in particular, is very interesting because the items it collects are all pre-Tokugawa expressions of ideal nanshoku- male love.

Things I will not be covering: kabuki theater or Ihara Saikaku, even if I have Schalow's cool translation of The Great Mirror of Male Love. Both distinctly Tokugawa. Those are the two things that are invariably mentioned on this particular topic, and it's probably good that I'm restricted to the earlier, more obscure material.

Related to nothing, apparently when I took this same prof's East Asia class last year I did a short review of Passions of the Cut Sleeve, which I totally do not remember and contains the telltale phrase "in conclusion", which means I wrote it the morning it was due after drinking too much coffee and bullshitting with Prism people into the wee hours. Good book. Terrible paper. What was I thinking?

1 comment:

Karo Caran said...

Dear Hyakinthia,
Sorry to contact you this way, but I lost your email address. I'm the person who asked you to send me the Japanese love poetry for my novel.

Well, now I'm done with the writing and would like to ask you if your permission to mention your contribution in the "acknowledgments" section. Also, if you agree to that, do let me know if you want to use your pseudonym or your name. Please, send your reply to creamorchid at ymail.com