James Welker

I am a professor in the Department of Cross-Cultural Studies in the Faculty of Cross-Cultural and Japanese Studies at Kanagawa University, Minatomirai Campus, in Yokohama, Japan.

My research focuses on gender and sexuality in modern and contemporary Japan. I am particularly interested in the role of transnational cultural flows—and the actors who have engendered those flows—in the construction of Japanese genders and sexualities. My current research is part of a collective project examining the relationship between boys love (BL), yuri, and other queer manga, anime, and related media from Japan, and local LGBTQ+ cultures and identities around the world.

I am the author of Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Girls’ Comics Artists and Fans (Hawai‘i, July 2024). I am also the editor of Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia (Hawai‘i, 2022), BL ga hiraku tobira: Hen’yō suru Ajia no sekushuariti to jendā (BL opening doors: Sexuality and gender transfigured in Asia; Seidosha, 2019), and “Queer(ing),” a special issue of the journal Mechademia: Second Arc vol. 13, no. 1 (2020), as well as a co-editor of Rethinking Japanese Feminisms (Hawai‘i, 2018), and Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan (Mississippi, 2015), among other publications.

Please visit my Academia.edu profile for more details about my research interests, including a more comprehensive list of my publications.