As a collaborative partnership between the Allegheny County Bar Association and the Asian Studies Center, the Comfort Women: The Legacy of Sexual Slavery in Asia conference will focus on the historical and legal aspects of sexual enslavement of women by the military in the years before and during World War II. Reaching beyond the actual historical events, the conference will explore the reasons for the long silence and how performance practices—protests, tribunals, theater, and memorial building projects are used to demand justice for those who suffered the state-sponsored acts of sexual violence both in Asia and here in America. The conference provides the framework for understanding how actions designed to bring about redress can shift from the legal aspects to its cultural and social possibilities.
For details on Friday's activities, please see here.
On Saturday, Dr. Peipei Qiu (Vassar College) and Dr. Joshua D. Pilzer (University of Toronto) will speak on the history and legacy of comfort women, and Dr. Monica Eppinger (St. Louis University) and Dr. Mary McCarthy (Drake University) will speak on the legal challenges and the role of diplomacy in the matter of comfort women. Following a lunch, there will be a screening of Herstory (Min Kyu-dong, 2018), a film chronicling the 1991-1996 trials which led to the first case of reparations to former comfort women.