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Thinking Back Through Mythical Mothers: Modern Japanese Women Writers Retell the Past – Rebecca Copeland
January 31, 2020 @ 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Free
As part of the Languages, Literatures, and Cultures 2019-2020 Speaker Series: Print, Power, and Parable in Japanese Literature, Rebecca Copeland of Washington University in St. Louis will present this talk.
In her famous line from “A Room of One’s Own,” Virginia Woolf invites women writers to think back through their mothers—biological, literary, and imaginative. In so doing, she disrupts the heterosexual dyad of male poet-female muse and authorizes a maternal source for inspiration. In this paper, I will discuss the way Japanese women writers have often turned to mythic mothers as a way to legitimize their creativity. From Izanami, to Kishimojin, to the yamamba, these potent images of both nurture and destruction have invited women writers to explore alternate forms of power, sexuality, and social entitlement. Authors to consider will include Kurahashi Yumiko, Ōba Minako, and Kirino Natsuo.
This event is sponsored by the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures; Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere (Rothman Endowment); Japan Foundation; and the Asian Studies Development Fund.
For more information, visit the website.