Good afternoon. I hope you all are well.
I am Victoria Rahbar (she/they), a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia where I do research on manga as well as multisensory (non-visual, tactile) art and Japanese popular culture.
I am interested in organizing a Lighting Talk Session at the Association of Asian Studies Annual Conference 2026. Lighting Talk Sessions are new-ish to the conference and described as follows: "Lightning Talk Sessions: A pre-organized session with 5-7 presenters, who each speak for no more than 5-7 minutes. Useful format for presenting around a certain theme, a new publication, celebrating a specific scholar, or exploring new methods of teaching or research. Panels of lightning talks offer an opportunity to feature more speakers who do not present fully developed individual papers but short provocations (or lightning talks) around a specific theme." For more information, please visit
https://www.asianstudies.org/conference/call-for-proposals/. Possible themes I am interested in exploring together with you all include Japanese popular culture and multisensory art – accessible manga (yes, you too can enjoy manga in Braille and audio formats!) and multisensory arts in the museum (For example, Universal Museum: Exploring the New Field of Tactile Sensation exhibition at the National Museum of Ethnology in 2021 or the upcoming exhibition Shokkan: Japanese Art Through the Sense of Touch (Title TBC) at the Royal Ontario Museum in 2026).
If anyone is interested, please write to me at
vrahbar@student.ubc.ca. If anyone just wants to chat about all things manga, doing manga studies while partially blind, or multisensory art, I'm happy to chat too.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Victoria Rahbar
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V Rahbar MLIS, MA (she/they | Mx.)
Core Working Hours: Monday to Friday 9:30 - 17:30 Pacific Time
PhD Candidate, School of Information
The University of British Columbia | Vancouver Campus | Musqueam Traditional Territory
ischool.ubc.edu | comics.arts.ubc.ca |
vrahbar@student.ubc.caThe UBC Vancouver campus is located on the traditional, ancestral, and occupied territory of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓-speaking xʷməθkʷəy̓əm Musqueam peoples.
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