Queer Modernist Views of Japan During the Russo-Japanese War Era

Presenting "Queer Modernist Views of Japan During the Russo-Japanese War Era" for the panel "Why Queer History Matters: New Vistas for Japanese and East Asian Studies," hosted by the Humanities Center, The University of Tokyo.
 

Du Bois’ Configuration of Japan in the History (and Future) of Racial Capitalism

 

Paper abstract for the 2025 American Studies Association Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico:

"A Neglected Queer Play Hidden in Plain Sight: Soon Tek-Oh's Tondemonai—Never Happen! (1970)"

My article "A Neglected Queer Play Hidden in Plain Sight: Soon-Tek Oh's Tondemonai—Never Happen! (1970)" released in Journal of Asian American Studies!

Features archival stage photography both in the article and on the issue cover!

Article here:

https://doi.org/10.1353/jaas.2025.a967894.

  

UC Irvine visit

 

Presented "Queering the Color Line within the Color Line: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Transwar Transpacific" for a Global Studies course at UC Irvine:

"W. E. B. Du Bois fiercely criticized the duplicity of the Cold War Americanization of racial justice, but his sense of liberal pluralism’s earlier rise in the transwar transpacific has been neglected. This is because he has been framed as capitulating to it with his support of the pan-Asianist strategy of Imperial Japan. By turning to what Torsten Weber has called “pan-Asianism from below,” Williams reframes Du Bois beyond this impression. This presentation unpacks elements of his 2022 article in American Studies regarding Du Bois’ engagement with pan-Asianism, his 1928 novel Dark Princess as queer praxis, and his overlooked “color line within a color line” formulation concerning the projected future of global racial capitalism. Williams also considers what Du Bois and the transwar transpacific can tell us about why America is behaving so erratically vis-a-vis China’s rise today."

 

Resurfacing a Queer Play in Homonationalist Times: Soon-Tek Oh’s Tondemonai—Never Happen!

Paper abstract for the 2024 Association for Asian American Studies Conference in Seattle, WA:

"Queering the Color Line within the Color Line: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Transwar Transpacific"

My article "Queering the Color Line within the Color Line: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Transwar Transpacific" released in the journal American Studies!  Read the abstract here.

Article here: 

 https://doi.org/10.1353/ams.2022.a913747.

 

Supplementing the Peril–Model Binary with the Yellow–White Peril Binary

Paper abstract for the 2023 Association for Asian American Studies Conference in Long Beach, CA:

Queering the Transpacific: Race and Sexuality across the U.S. and Japanese Empires

Submitted my dissertation to the UW grad school. Here’s the abstract (in English and 日本語):

"Asian Racialization and the Early 20th-Century Queering of Empire"

Paper abstract for the 2020 Association for Asian American Studies Conference in Washington, D.C.
(Conference canceled due to Covid-19 ☹️).

Update: Will present this at the 2021 Association for Asian Studies conference (online) instead!

2019 Mormon Policy on LGBT members

Given my extensive previous work on the topic, I figured I'd offer brief thoughts on "Who is Actually Being Served by the Exclusion Policy Reversal?"

W.E.B. Du Bois and the Transpacific

A chapter of my dissertation focuses on W.E.B. Du Bois and the twists and turns of racial capitalism during the interwar, particularly the issue of U.S.-Japan imperial competition. While Du Bois erred in supporting the Japanese Empire, his mistake is not well-understood and his insights concerning racial capitalism in the transpacific and inter-Asian relations remain underanalyzed, but are significant contributions to his global "color line" thesis.

"Queer Temporality in the Films of Oshima Nagisa"

While in Japan this academic year at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies, I've been invited to guest lecture at Kanagawa University! (Thanks, James Welker for both the invitation and making the poster! 🙂)  A wonderful opportunity and a great springboard for delving into a planned chapter of my dissertation...

CFP: Queering the Transpacific: Asian American, American and Asian Queer Studies

Click here for this call-for-papers.

“Queering the Transpacific: Inter-imperial Relations in Lonny Kaneko’s ‘The Shoyu Kid’ and Oshima Nagisa’s Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence”

Paper abstract for the Association for Asian American Studies Conference in Portland, OR, this April!

"Japan Can Halt the Threat of Sino-U.S. (Cold) War"

My short essay, "Japan Can Halt the Threat of Sino-U.S. (Cold) War," won an essay contest for the Japan-America Society of the State of Washington!

- JASSW link to essay
- Northwest Asian Weekly blurb

Queer Asia and Homonationalism

Panel organized for the Association for Asian Studies in Asia conference held at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, this June.

"Rethinking Yaoi on the Regional and Global Scale"

Excited to release my essay "Rethinking Yaoi on the Regional and Global Scale" in the journal Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific!

Also, someone on their blog graciously translated the essay into Chinese!

Nephew's Baklâ Joke

During a conversation I was having with my partner, Michael, today over lunch, I remembered a joke our nephew made during a camping trip a year ago.  I want to recount it here so I don't forget it.

At the time our nephew was 8-years-old, and I had just taken him to the campsite restroom.  As we returned to the tents, he said to me, "When I go with my mom to the restroom, she takes me into the women's restroom.  But what if I went in there alone?  What would all the women in there think?  I could tell them, 'Don't worry.  I'm baklâ.'" We both then laughed.

For anyone who doesn't know what baklâ is, it's the Filipino (Tagalog) word for "gay" or more specifically, "effeminate gay man," but this does not fully capture the meaning of the word.  In that instance, I realized that (1) he was connecting with me as an uncle in a relationship with his other uncle (such a joke would've unlikely been uttered to his parents), but then (2) as a Filipino born in the US with multiple gay uncles, he is growing up with quite complex views on gender...more complex than what is captured in the categories "Hetero vs. LGBT."

Then and now he's doing all the sports-stuff that boys often do (plays basketball, soccer and football), and spends hours upon hours in Minecraft.  Somehow I doubt he'll take on the identity baklâ, but his momentary identification that day I remember with a smile.

(For more information, see Martin F. Manalansan, Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora,  Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2003.)

Mormon-Themed Posts of Mine at Main Street Plaza

I was a contributor to Main Street Plaza (a web-community interested in Mormonism) from 2010 to 2015.  My interests have moved in other directions now... probably because I'm 30+ years old now and left the Church half-my-life ago! Here are my posts, organized thematically.

Erotic Detours (or Destinations!)

 
 

As I work on my fantasy novel, I keep running into a conundrum...