Last week I had the extraordinary pleasure of lecturing for the Gender and Fandom class at Harvard University. I cannot express what joy I have when I stand up in front of a class and get to expound upon the vagaries of  publishing, sales, communications, queer manga and the role fans have played in the evolution of it all.

I’m always asked if I’ll have a video up and the answer is usually no. It’s still no today, but at least I can share with you the full text of the essay on which this talk is based. 

How Fandom Made Queer Manga Possible is up on the Yuricon Essays Page today. It’s also been added to the Big Book o’Yuri, which is closing in on 2/3 done. ^_^

While I was in the area, I also hit up the Boston Museum of Fine Arts to see the Murakami / Tsuji collaboration, Lineage of Eccentrics exhibition. It was fantastic.  And…it was fanart! Basically they pulled items out of the MFA collection and Murakami did a riff on the item. You can see what I mean a little on this video preview on the MFA’s website.

The MFA also had a delightful “showdown” exhibit, pitting Kuniyoshi’s bright colors and  Shounen Jump-eque heroes against Kunisada’s sophisticated body language and pretty women in Showdown! Kuniyoshi vs Kunisada. It probably comes as no surprise that I favored manga-like Kuniyoshi, but really think Kunisada’s work is stellar.

Thanks to everyone who came to the talk and thanks again to Kerry for the invitation and Jude for junketing us around. It was lovely to see you. (And also Brigid and Kate, who met up with us for dinner the night before.)

I hope you all enjoy the lecture!