Speaker:  Hiroko Hirakawa, Associate Professor of Japanese, Guilford College

A sociologist, Dr. Hiroko Hirakawa teaches courses on Japanese language as well as culture at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina. In her culture classes she problematizes orientalist notions of "traditional," "modern," "Asian," "Western," "Japanese," "American," etc. and challenges students to become conscious of how their own identities may uncritically assume such notions. In her presentation she will discuss the ways she finds that her courses unwittingly reinforce the very identities she attempts to deconstruct. Particularly true of her course, "Women in Modern Japan," where she deliberately introduces subject matter that can be easily interpreted in orientalist terms (such as geisha, comfort women, pornographic comics for women, cult of cuteness, etc.), she has also been dismayed to discover that along the way her own authority as a “professor” is sometimes undercut by her status as an “Asian woman.” Analyzing samples of student writings and course evaluations, Professor Hirakawa will explore questions of race and authority as well as the way her double position as a "native informant" and a non-native speaker of English interferes both positively and negatively with her (in)ability to achieve the course objectives.