Keynote speaker: Kazumi Nagaike

Minneapolis, MN – September 27-29, 2019

Keynote: “A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Men’s Desires to “Become” Fudanshi: On the Psychology, Physicality, and Communication Strategies of Male Fans of BL in East Asia”

Japanese manga, anime, and games culture is associated with excessive sexuality and gender-bending that have unsettled cultural norms in multiple, often queer, ways. The appeal of such queer(ing) and hypersexual attributes has at least partially driven the spread of these media and fan practices around Asia and beyond. In spite of the ongoing strong association with Japanese popular culture, however, Japan is but one of multiple centers of queer(ing) media and fan practices in contemporary Asia.

This year’s North American conference will focus on queer(ing) comics, animation, and games, and other related media as well as their fandoms in Asia. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• Asian media and fandoms and intersectional queer studies
• Fujoshi and fudanshi fan cultures
• Boys love/yaoi, and slash media
• Yuri/girls love, and femslash media
• Representations of queer identities (transgender, intersex, bisexual, pansexual, gender-fluid/genderqueer/nonbinary/X-gender, asexual, lesbian, gay, etc.)
• Queer(ing) pornographies (“hentai,” tentacles/“consentacles,” BDSM/fetish media, etc.)
• Queer(ing) fan practices (crossplay, maid cafes, butler cafes, etc.)
• Flows of queer(ing/ed) media and fandom practices around Asia

Presenters may register to attend either in person or via GoToMeeting. Paper and/or panel proposals of not more than 250 words are due on or before May 15, 2019. Send conference proposals to mechademia [at] mcad.edu with the subject line “Mechademia Conference 2019.” Prospective presenters may also wish to submit their work to the related issue of Mechademia: Second Arc, due 1 June 2019.