Recently in 09. For ICU Students Category

We would like to invite you all to our tea party scheduled from 12:40 p.m. on September 28th. We will be waiting with tea and snacks! Anybody who is interested in our activities and yet has not visited us, please come and join us!

CGS will invite Ms. Aya Kamikawa, a Setagaya ward assembly member, to "Approaches to Gender Studies," the core course of the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Elected for the Setagaya ward assembly as an openly transgender candidate in 2003, Ms. Kamikawa was returned for a second term in the election held this April, as the 2nd on the list of all the candidates.

A Lecture Co-hosted by CGS and the Institute for the Study of Christianity and Culture

Rev. Yuri Horie will visit ICU on February 2 for a lecture co-hosted by CGS and the Institute for the Study of Christianity and Culture (ICC). As a lesbian pastor and the representative of The Ecumenical Community for Queer Activism, she has been actively engaged in issues of homosexuality, especially lesbianism, both within and outside the church.

In this lecture, Rev. Horie will focus on the various issues concerning homosexuality and the church, as well as the common, discriminative hotbeds that create homophobia and cause sexual harassment.

Open Lecture Co-hosted by the Center for Gender Studies and the COE Program
Professor Terrell Carver will visit ICU for an open lecture on January 10th co-hosted by CGS and the COE program. Known as a researcher of Marx and his philosophy, He's written a number of books and and his latest work, Men in Political Theory, published in 2005, builds on feminist re-readings of the traditional canon of male writers in political philosophy, such as Plato, Machiavelli and Engels, by turning the 'gender lens' on to the representation of men in widely studies texts.

Time: May 23rd (Tue) 12:30 - 14:30 p.m.
Place: Auditorium, The Diffendorfer Memorial Hall

Outline: Ms. Kanako Otsuji, an assembly member, Osaka Prefectural Govt., was the first Japanese politician to publicly come out as a lesbian. She has spoken out in support of minorities in the Osaka
prefectural assembly, actively pushing for the legal protection of same-sex partners and raising issues such as the necessity of psychological care for young sexual minorities. In keeping with the C-Week theme of "wa", she will discuss, from the perspective of a public official, the difficulties faced in the attempt to achieve harmony through interaction with the self and through interaction with others.

CGS Staff

PGSS + CGS Open Lecture:
Approach to Gender Studies Open Lecture: Transgender & Sexuality

Leturer: MITSUHASHI, Junko
(Cross-Dresser / Sexual and Social History Researcher)CONTACT:
Date: May 8th (Tue) 15:10-16:55
Place: H-213
Language: Japanese (Interpretation Unavailable)

The Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies (PGSS) at ICU started in the Spring Term of 2005. Also starting this term is the new foundation class, “Approach to Gender Studies”, in which 15 scholars lecture on the possibilities of gender and sexuality studies in a diverse range of fields, including natural science.

Moreover, on Friday, May 27, CGS will commemorate the establishment of PGSS with a guest lecture, “What Can Gender and Sexuality Studies Do?” by Chizuko Ueno, a professor of Tokyo University and a recognized authority on gender studies.

The Interdisciplinary Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies provides a　model curriculum for students who wish to create an interdisciplinary major that focuses on issues of gender and sexuality. Human experience is inextricably linked with sex and gender. We enter the world with the biologically defined sex of our bodies and then over the course of our lives become gendered social actors. In doing so, we encounter and engage the wide array of socio-cultural ideas, values and practices that define gender, with its associated ideas regarding masculinity, femininity, and other gender identities. In recent decades scholarly research in multiple disciplines has explored the profound ways in gender and sexuality are constructed and defined in social life and also influence and inform social action. This research has demonstrated not only the centrality of sex, gender, and sexuality in social life, but also their critical linkages to such basic everyday issues as access to education, language use, and political participation, or such large scale theoretical issues as inequality, class, power, and nature versus nurture debates.

Center for Gender Studies (CGS) has books related to gender topics and audio-visuals of gender related lecturers given at ICU.

There are a wide variety of books. Books are recommended by CGS-affiliated faculty that range from introductory explanations of gender to academic pieces employing gender analysis as a key method of critique. Selected DVDs related to Gender Studies will be added as well.

We started the Books and Audio-visual Aids Lending Service to make resources available for students, faculty, and staff at ICU.

Those who want to only reference the books are welcomed to as well.

Please come to CGS (ERB-301)

The term “Gender”, which was not very common in a while ago, has been gradually becoming familiar to people today. On the other hand, “Gender” has also received a negative image by mass media. In particular, since the enforcement of Basic Law for a Gender-Equal Society, the criticism has been made on the notion of a “Gender Free” ideology. It is argued from the mass media perspective that “Gender Free” is a vicious ideology that that invalidates the importance of fixed gender roles among human beings and dismantles the traditions of Japanese society.

Languages: Hibiya, Junko [CGS NewsLetter 001]

ICU is now planning to launch the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies (PGSS) in AY2005. In the contemporary development of learning, “gender” is considered to be an important concept and analytical framework. It is necessary not only for the Humanities and the Social Sciences, but also for the Natural Sciences to investigate from the gender perspective in order to develop new academic understandings. Up to now at ICU, there have been several gender related courses. From AY2005 ICU is preparing to offer the curriculum with the consistency and continuity and to integrate the gender courses in an organic way, aiming to meet the request of the students who are interested in gender and sexuality studies.

As the plans above are still tentative, please get in touch with CGS PGSS preparation office for more detailed information.