Centre for Disability Studies event: Cripping Manga in Taiwan

We are delighted to welcome Dr Ta-wei Chi to the Centre for Disability Studies (CDS) for a special event in which he will present his paper, 'Cripping Manga in Taiwan'.

Event details

This event is open to past and present CDS members, University of Leeds colleagues and students, and any Disability Studies researchers from outside Leeds. There will be tea and cake for attendees. The event will take place in room 12.21.

If you would like to attend, please email Angharad Beckett, Co-Director of the Centre for Disability Studies: A.E.Beckett@leeds.ac.uk.

If you have any access requirements please let Angharad know. The room is wheelchair accessible. For full access information about the Social Sciences building, please visit accessable.co.uk.

About the speaker

Ta-wei Chi (PhD, Comparative Literature, UCLA) is currently associate professor of Taiwanese literature National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan, where he teaches queer theory and disability studies. His science fiction is available in French, Japanese, Chinese, Swedish and English. His award-winning monograph on historicizing homosexuality in Taiwanese literature was published in 2017. He is currently translating Michael Oliver’s The New Politics of Disablement (Second Edition, Revised Edition) into Chinese, and developing his next monograph on the intersection of disabilities and sexualities in cultural representations (literature, visual culture, internet culture etc.) in East Asian societies.

Abstract

Inspired by the strategic usage of “cripping” in critical disability studies, Ta-wei Chi will discuss the cultural representations of disabilities in “manga,” the comic books hugely popular in East Asia and beyond. Chi suggests the reading strategy of “cripping manga” exposes the not necessarily explicit representations of disabilities in popular culture. As reading literature facilitates understandings of the collective (mis)understandings of disabilities, according to numerous scholars in literature on disabilities, reading manga might update such understandings in our era, which is more dependent on visual pleasure. For examples, Chi will introduce a Japanese “BL” (boy love) manga on deafness and Jimmy Liao’s Sounds of Colors, a pictorial book, both widely enjoyed in Taiwan.