UB CDS hosts Prof. Wei Yu "Wayne" Tan, Hope College, "Japan's Hidden 19th Century: Disability Perspectives on the Ordinary (and Extraordinary) Lives of Blind Women."

Japan’s nineteenth century was marked by events that wrought tremendous and violent changes to Japanese society, from the social and political upheavals that brought down the Tokugawa ruling regime to the rise of enlightened ideas in the new Meiji nation-state by the end of the century. This top-down narrative, focused on Japan’s newfound modernity and the triumph of public ideals over private lives, however, acquires a different complexion when it is retold through the lens of disability and, more specifically, the life stories of blind women. How was disability understood? What role did gender differences play in determining the experiences of  disability? This talk seeks to address these questions and shows how hidden aspects of Japan’s  long nineteenth century are brought to light through a gendered account of disability.

Tan received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2015 and was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at Dartmouth College from 2015 to 2016. He is currently completing a book manuscript that uses blindness as a case study to explore the social, cultural, and political meanings of disability in early modern and modern Japan.

This event is cosponsored by the UB Center for Disability Studies, the Humanities Institute Disability Studies Research Workshop, and the Asia@Noon Lecture Series.