(FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC) This lecture draws from Professor Shigematsu’s recently published book about the 1970s women’s liberation movement in Japan, offering an analysis of the movement’s history, politics, and internal dynamics. Emerging in the wake of the Anti-Vietnam War and student movements of the late 1960s, the activists and intellectuals of this feminist movement forwarded a trenchant critique of Japanese society and the Japanese left. Professor Shigematsu will discuss the movement’s contributions, contradictions and legacy, illuminating its most important interventions and the enduring effects of its feminist legacy. This presentation highlights how the movement’s critiques and contradictions remain relevant to contemporary politics.

About the Speaker: Setsu Shigematsu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Her research and publications focus on feminist movements, U.S. and Japanese imperialism, gendered state violence, militarization and incarceration. She is co-editor of "Militarized Currents" and director of "Visions of Abolition," a documentary film about the prison industrial complex.