The Anime Expo Academic Symposium is a special track of programming featuring conference-style panels presenting scholarship on anime, manga, and Japanese culture to Anime Expo’s attendees. This program grants unique opportunities for scholars to share their work with a diverse popular audience, for fans and scholars to share their enthusiasm with one another, and for all to delve deeper into the world of Japanese pop culture. Anime Expo is honored to have been able to showcase over 50 different speakers from over 30 different universities since the program’s inception in 2011.

This year’s focus is “Anime Chronotopes: Nostalgia in Japanese Animation and Comics.”

Nostalgia/Intertextuality (Thursday, July 4, 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM)
  • The OG of black revolutionary Japanese anime: Golgo 13 (Dexter Thomas)
  • Wakon (yo)sai – Tracing Japanese Technomodernity back to 1970s and 1980s Science Fiction Anime (Anthony Lee)
  • Western Culture’s Influence in Japanese Entertainment: Intertextuality and Metafiction in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (Ericka N Rivera Figuero)
  • Feminist Recontextualization of Nostalgia in Lupin the Third: The Woman Called Mine Fujiko (Yasheng She)
Nostalgia/Society (Thursday, July 4, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM)
  • Survival Strategies for Future Fate: Loss and Nostalgia in Mawaru Penguindrum (Cynthia Zhang)
  • Remediating Histories: Millennium Actress and the Productive Capacity of Nostalgia (Susan Noh)
Intermediality & Anime (Saturday, July 6, 11:30 PM – 1:30 PM)
  • Nostalgic Reinvention of Anime Onstage: Takarazuka Kagekidan (Amoretta Cockerham)
  • Resisting Samurai Nostalgia: Aurality and Silence in Rurouni Kenshin: Tsuioku-hen by Stacey Jocoy
  • Integral Intersections: Suicide, Ikigai, and Nostalgia in Orange. Christopher Hepburn
  • Cardcaptor Sakura and the History of the Book – Exploring the history of manga domestication in the United States ( Victoria Rahbar )
Topics in Anime Studies (Sunday, July 7, 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM)
  • Longing for Home: Isekai Food Manga and Love for Food in Japanese Anime (Jasper Ferehawk)
  • The Metastory: The Failure of Filler Episodes within Anime (Bobbi Steele)
  • “This is a Game I Made”: Ludonarrative Dissonance in Incidental Isekai or the Genre that Refuses Refusal (Lillian Marie Martinez)
  • Ceaselessly into the Past: Anti-Nostalgia in Studio MAPPA’s Banana Fish (Breanna Robles)

Anime Expo 2019  will run from July 4 through July 7 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, with Pre-Show Night on July 3, 2019.

Get Your Badge Today!

For more information about attending AX, check out our How to Attend guide.

Download our mobile app to stay up-to-date on announcements!