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Hello, The following event may be of interest to you: Children as Imaginary Citizens:The Politics and Poetics of Childhood in Meiji Japan, 1868-1912 Thursday, March 29, 2018 How and why did the political discourse of “little citizens” become a rhetorical tool enabling both national mobilization and social contestation in modern Japan? Despite the print media’s celebration of children’s citizenship and their status as subjects in Meiji Japan, the rights bestowed upon children were inconsistent, as were expectations of their actions as “little citizens” with a political identity. In this talk, I discuss how the development of formal education and the circulation of children’s magazines, such as The Boy’s World (Shōnen sekai, 1895–1933), created the historical conditions necessary to mobilize children as “little citizens.” At the same time, heterogeneous configurations of linguistic and literary practices in different cultural settings demonstrated various ways in which the vernacular conventions of childhood occasionally deviated from the operation of the state apparatus, functioning as a subversive force against the standardization of childhood. To exemplify such power dynamics, this talk highlights a series of literary works called shōnen-mono (stories about children and childhood), which emerged right after the First Sino-Japanese War (1864-1865) as a site of poetic imagination to resist social normalization and negate children’s subjection as imperial subjects under state power. By unpacking various symbolic constructions of “little citizens,” I demonstrate how the multilayered representation of children, as a part of discursive practices, lead to a complex interplay between standardization and decentralization in the politics and poetics of childhood in a modern capitalist society. Time: 4:45 pm EDT/GMT-4 Location: Olin Humanities, Room 102 Sponsor: Asian Studies Program; Dean of the College; Division of Languages and Literature Contact: Nathan Shockey. E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 845-758-6822 If you would like to see more events please visit the following URL: http://www.bard.edu/academics/programs/physics/events/