Speaker: Lindsey DeWitt Prat (UGent)
When: Thursday, March 24, 2022
Venue: Auditorium 1, Jan Broeckx, Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Gent – Ghent University
This lecture is part of Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies lecture series Permanent Training in Buddhist Studies.
Abstract:
Few icons of Japanese culture are more widely recognized than the sumo wrestler. He sports a loin cloth and a slicked back topknot. His hulking body is aimed to engage. And the sumo wrestler is always a man, in the popular imagination at least. The Japan Sumo Association, a quasi-governmental corporation, champions itself as the custodian of a divine affair cultivated by male deities and mortal men, and exclusive of women. Juxtaposing modern and contemporary sumo literature with historical documents and present-day practices, Dr. DeWitt Prat will peer behind the icon to show how the fantasies surrounding sumo obscure the richness and diversity of its cultural history, a history that includes women.
Speaker: Lindsey DeWitt Prat
