May 15: ‘Feminist “Failed” Reproductive Futures in Japanese Speculative Fiction’ with Kazue Harada, Miami University, Ohio

 Dr. Kazue Harada explores how reproductive futures are imagined by authors Murata Sayaka and Ueda Sayuri. Their imaginings counter ideologies of reproductive futurism, yet the narrative techniques they use—a circularity of the past, endless repetitions of the present moment, or the absence of a future for humanity—can point to the “failure” of the past and the present moment—failure as a denial of a linear progression of time with a singular goal-oriented success.