Personal Presentation Topic

The topic that I would like to present on is the representation and visibility of the queer experience in anime and manga. Japan has a different outlook on queer lives than much of the Western world, and I would like to explore this further, as well as the fetishizations of the queer experience seen in yaoi/"Boy's Love"/yuri/Yurizoko genre. My suggestions for when to present this would either be February 14th, as Valentine's Day seems to be fitting for an exploration on love and sexuality, or March 7th, in conjunction with My Lesbian Experiences With Loneliness.

Suggested texts and resources for this presentation would be:

•  Lonely Wolf, Lonely Sheep, by Fuka Mizutani. Two women with the same name happens to meet each other when they're at the same hospital for the same injury. They want to become closer, but both must overcome their insecurities and self-loathing first - this story is an exploration of internalized shame, homophobia, and mental illness as well as a sweet love story that has a happy ending. Trigger warnings for self harm. 
• Yuri: An In-Depth Look at Women in Love, from the Artifice -- examining the genre as a whole and specifically in regards to the lack of queer writers for what are explicitly queer stories.
• Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan, by Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, James Welker. Specifically looking at this excerpt here in regards to fetishization of the M/M romance or yaoi and fujoshi. 
• AsiaPacifiQueer: Rethinking Genders and Sexualities, by Fran Martin, Peter Jackson, Mark McLelland, Audrey Yue