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CJS Lecture Series | Intimate Disconnections: Divorce and the Romance of Independence in Contemporary Japan

Allison Alexy, Assistant Professor, Departments of Asian Languages and Cultures, Women’s and Gender Studies Studies, University of Michigan
Thursday, February 11, 2021
12:00-1:30 PM
Off Campus Location
What makes a good marriage? How should men and women feel confident deciding which relationships should end? In the early 2000s, amidst demographic and social changes, divorce in Japan rapidly became a newly visible and viable option. At individual, familial, and national levels, in the early 2000s divorce prompted serious conversations about the value of relationships, and the risks and security they bring to the people involved in them. Based on ethnographic work with men and women, and told through deeply personal narratives, Intimate Disconnections describes both the legal process and social transitions surrounding divorce, providing a complex portrait of people balancing the risks and possibilities of intimate relationships in an era when divorce is ever more common.

Allison Alexy is an assistant professor in the Departments of Asian Languages and Cultures, and Women’s and Gender Studies, at the University of Michigan. A cultural anthropologist focusing on intimacy and family conflicts in contemporary Japan, she has co-edited Home and Family in Japan: Continuity and Transformation (Routledge 2011) and Intimate Japan: Ethnographies of Closeness and Conflict (Hawai’i 2019).

Discussant: Ilana Gershon, Ruth N. Halls Professor of Anthropology, Indiana University.
Ilana Gershon is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University and the author of "Down and Out in the New Economy: How People Find (Or Don't Find) Work Today" and "TheBreakup 2.0: Disconnecting Over New Media.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

Please register in advance for this Zoom webinar here: https://umich.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_YtAfysaHS5OpN0-x1mzg_A
Building: Off Campus Location
Location: Virtual
Event Type: Livestream / Virtual
Tags: Asia, Japanese Studies
Source: Happening @ Michigan from Center for Japanese Studies, International Institute, Asian Languages and Cultures