{"title":"James Welker","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"queer-transfigurations-book-james-welker-9780824888992","title":"Queer Transfigurations","description":"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.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49742419591441,"sku":"NGR9780824888992","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0824888995.jpg?v=1762597177"},{"product_id":"queer-transfigurations-book-james-welker-9780824892845","title":"Queer Transfigurations","description":"Offers the first detailed examination of the boys love (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.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49746109890833,"sku":"NGR9780824892845","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50364561424657,"sku":"CIN0824892844G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008844988689,"sku":"NIN9780824892845","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0824892844.jpg?v=1762598316"},{"product_id":"transfiguring-women-in-late-twentieth-century-japan-book-james-welker-9780824872687","title":"Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan","description":"Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Girls' Comics Artists and Fans examines three dynamic and overlapping communities of women and adolescent girls who challenged Japanese gender and sexual norms in the 1970s and 1980s. These spheres encompassed activists in the ūman ribu (women’s liberation) movement, members of the rezubian (lesbian) community, and artists and readers of queer shōjo manga (girls’ comics). Individually and collectively, they found the normative understanding of the category \"women\" untenable and worked to redefine and expand its meaning by transfiguring ideas, images, and practices selectively appropriated from the \"West.\" They did so, however, while remaining firmly fixed on the local. Thus, for many, this ostensibly Western focus was not a turn away from Japan but integral to their understanding of being a woman within Japan.  Following broad historical overviews of the ūman ribu, rezubian, and queer shōjo manga spheres, the book takes a deeper look through the lenses of terminology, translation, and travel to offer a window onto how acts of transfiguration reshaped what it meant to be a woman in Japan. The work draws on a vast archive that encompasses early twentieth-century dictionaries, sexology texts, and literature; postwar women’s and men’s magazines and pornography; translated feminist and lesbian texts; comics and animation; and newsletters, fanzines, and other heretofore largely unexamined ephemera. The volume’s characterization of the era is also greatly enriched by interviews with more than sixty individuals.   Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan demonstrates that the transfiguration of Western culture into something locally meaningful had tangible effects beyond newly (re)created texts, practices, images, and ideas within the ūman ribu, rezubian, and queer shōjo manga communities. The individuals and groups involved were themselves transformed. More broadly, their efforts forged new understandings of \"women\" in Japan, creating space for a greater number of public roles not bound to being a mother or a wife, as well as a greater diversity of gender and sexual expression that reached far beyond the Japanese border.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51008475496721,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008478806289,"sku":"NIN9780824872687","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0824872681.jpg?v=1762598655"},{"product_id":"transfiguring-women-in-late-twentieth-century-japan-book-james-welker-9780824872694","title":"Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan","description":"Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Girls' Comics Artists and Fans examines three dynamic and overlapping communities of women and adolescent girls who challenged Japanese gender and sexual norms in the 1970s and 1980s. These spheres encompassed activists in the ūman ribu (women’s liberation) movement, members of the rezubian (lesbian) community, and artists and readers of queer shōjo manga (girls’ comics). Individually and collectively, they found the normative understanding of the category \"women\" untenable and worked to redefine and expand its meaning by transfiguring ideas, images, and practices selectively appropriated from the \"West.\" They did so, however, while remaining firmly fixed on the local. Thus, for many, this ostensibly Western focus was not a turn away from Japan but integral to their understanding of being a woman within Japan. \t  \t  \tFollowing broad historical overviews of the ūman ribu, rezubian, and queer shōjo manga spheres, the book takes a deeper look through the lenses of terminology, translation, and travel to offer a window onto how acts of transfiguration reshaped what it meant to be a woman in Japan. The work draws on a vast archive that encompasses early twentieth-century dictionaries, sexology texts, and literature; postwar women’s and men’s magazines and pornography; translated feminist and lesbian texts; comics and animation; and newsletters, fanzines, and other heretofore largely unexamined ephemera. The volume’s characterization of the era is also greatly enriched by interviews with more than sixty individuals. \t  \t  \tTransfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan demonstrates that the transfiguration of Western culture into something locally meaningful had tangible effects beyond newly (re)created texts, practices, images, and ideas within the ūman ribu, rezubian, and queer shōjo manga communities. The individuals and groups involved were themselves transformed. More broadly, their efforts forged new understandings of \"women\" in Japan, creating space for a greater number of public roles not bound to being a mother or a wife, as well as a greater diversity of gender and sexual expression that reached far beyond the Japanese border.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52153052496145,"sku":"NGR9780824872694","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780824872694.jpg?v=1757618733"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-james-welker.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}