AX Anime and Manga Studies Symposium

Japanese animation and comics have fascinated fans around the world for decades. At the same time, professors and teachers at all levels are becoming interested in the ways Japanese popular culture can be approached from an academic perspective. American, Canadian, European – and of course Japanese scholars are writing books and articles exploring topics, themes and issues related to anime and manga, teaching classes, organizing exhibitions, and working to promote a greater global understanding of Japanese animation and comics.

For the first time this year, Anime Expo will host a track of programming dedicated to the academic study of Japanese popular culture. The AX Anime and Manga Studies Symposium will be composed of a keynote address by a major scholar of Asian popular culture, three roundtable panel discussions, and a series of short individual presentations on a wide range of topics related to anime, manga, the global anime/manga industry, and the worldwide fandom of Japanese popular culture.

Keynote Address

Keynote speaker: Ian Condry (Associate Professor, Comparative Media Studies, MIT)

Professor Ian Condry is a cultural anthropologist in Comparative Media Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He specializes in ethnographic approaches to media, popular culture, and globalization with a focus contemporary Japan and the US. He is currently completing his second book, The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan’s Media Success Story (Duke UP, estimated summer 2012), based on fieldwork in Tokyo anime studios and interviews with creators, fans, and merchandisers. His first book, Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization (2006, Duke University Press), is an ethnography of Japanese rap musicians that focuses on nightclubs and recording studios (published in Japanese in 2009, NTT Publications). His next project explores the uses of social media in the US and Japan, especially in light of the recent triple disaster. From 2006 to the present, he is the founder and organizer of the MIT/Harvard Cool Japan research project, which examines the cultural connections, dangerous distorations, and critical potential of popular culture.

Web: http://iancondry.com & http://mitcooljapan.com

Roundtable Discussions

Roundtable Session 1

Theoretical Perspectives on Japanese Visual Culture
Friday, July 1, 3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.

The complex, complicated world of Japanese animation and comics yields itself to many different approaches. Fairly straight-forward close readings, modes of analysis based in particular schools of thought, examinations of the roles of authors and creators, producers, distributors and the global audience all have a part in anime and manga studies.

• How anime/manga studies fit into existing theoretical approaches to studying visual culture
• What is the relationship between particular theoretical approaches and the kinds of questions that anime/manga scholars can ask?
• Are some modes of inquiry in anime/manga studies overused – and are there others that are underutilized?
• Does anime/manga studies in the U.S. differ markedly from how these topics are approached in Japan and elsewhere in the world?

Speakers:
- Mikhail Koulikov (Anime and Manga Research Circle)
- Samantha Close (University of California, Irvine)
- Amanda Landa (University of Texas at Austin)
- Gino Zarrinfar (University of Hawaii Manoa)

Roundtable Session 2

Teaching, writing and thinking about anime/manga: New directions, new
opportunities.
Saturday, July 3, 3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.

Japanese animation and comics have been common in American high school classes and college programs throughout the last decade, if not more. “Teaching” anime and manga has unique challenges, but also a potentially wide range of results and goals. For its own part, anime and manga studies is an emerging field that must win a place for itself in a disciplinary landscape that is already crowded with fields, directions, and approaches.

• How to introduce anime and manga into the classroom at all levels, from high school to graduate
• “Studying anime” vs “anime studies”: Does the field need a label, and what does the label mean?
• Where does “anime studies” take place: Existing, new and prospective areas of research in Japanese visual culture
• Where to next?: The real and possible goals of scholarly approaches to Japanese visual culture

Speakers:
- Northrop Davis (University of South Carolina)
- Druann Pagliassotti (California Lutheran University)
- Kim Rudolph (University of Oklahoma)

Paper Presentations

Open Session 1

Friday, July 1, 8:00pm – 9:00pm

Andrea Gilroy (University of Oregon)
* This place is a nightmare: Globalization as horror in Katsuhiro Otomo’s Domu

Casey Brienza (University of Cambridge)
* Manga Revolution or logical evolution? Field theory on the rise and
demise of Tokyopop’s U.S. publishing programme

Open Session 2

Saturday, July 2, 12:00 noon – 1:30pm

Annie Manion (University of Southern California)
* Modernity and pre-war Japanese animation

Samantha Close (University of California, Irvine)
* Real ninjas make AMV’s! Anime through the eyes of vidders

Sandra Alagona (Claremont Graduate University)

Sherrie Bakelar (University of Nevada, Las Vegas)
* Between Yasashii and Bushido: The balancing power of warrior mothers in anime

Open Session 3

Saturday, July 2, 3:30pm -5:00pm

Paul Cheng (University of California, Riverside)
* History, memory and aesthetics in animation: Isao Takahata’s Grave
of the Fireflies

Kukhee Choo (Tulane University)
* “Cool Japan”: Soft power in the 21st century

* Gino Zarrinfar (University of Hawaii Manoa)
The Guyver and societies of control

Open Session 4

Sunday, July 3, 10:30am – 12:00 noon

Forrest Greenwood (University of Southern California)
* “Past fungibility”: Examining the speculative value of history in
the doujin works of Takeshi Nogami

Alex Leavitt (University of Southern California)
* “Open-source culture”" and the cult of Hatsune Miku
Roundtable Discussion 2: – 60 minutes LP5 3:30pm -4:30pm

Northrop Davis (University of South Carolina)
* WeMakeManga.com – A bridge between teaching and creating mang

Closing Remarks

Sunday, July 3, 4:30pm – 5:00pm

Lawrence Eng (Anime and Manga Research Circle)
* Writing about otaku: Lessons from fandom, academia, and beyond