Group items tagged

"'BL' (Boys' Love), a genre of male homosexual narratives (consisting of manga, novels, animations, games, films, and so forth) written by and for women, has recently been acknowledged, by Japanese and non-Japanese scholars alike, as a significant component of Japanese popular culture. The aesthetic and style of Japanese BL have also been assumed, deployed and transformed by female fans transnationally. The current thrust of transnational BL practices raises a number of important issues relating to socio/cultural constructs of BL localization and globalization.

Scholarly endeavors in relation to BL can be enriched by further research concerning the activities of transnational BL fans, fan communities, fandom, and the production of fan fiction. Most previous BL fan studies have remained circumscribed to Japan and North America. Therefore, in order to further develop transnational BL fan studies, we are seeking contributors who are engaged in the exploration of non-Japanese and non-North American contexts (e.g. Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, Africa, and others). Transnational BL fan studies may also be incorporated into the broader socio/political critical frameworks offered by studies in economics, gender/sexuality, race/class, and other areas. "

For those who are studying fandom and Boy's Love, this might be an opportunity to share your researches!

"Ten years ago, the first SGMS had to be delayed because of the tragic event of
9/11, but two months later, seven academics from a variety of disciplines spoke
on manga and anime to a crowd of 150 eager fans, academics, and students from
junior high to college-aged. Since then, on the last weekend of every September,
the expanding community of SGMS artists, actors, teachers, and students have
gotten together to celebrate manga, anime and Japanese popular culture.

Join us for the SGMS Masquerade Bash on Friday night with the Full Fashion Panic
Fashion Show, music, food and costumed frivolities will prevail! Even the guests
will be in costume! On Saturday and Sunday, there will be talks by guests Marc
Hairston, Crispin Freeman, Thomas LaMarre, Christopher Bolton, Gilles Poitras
and Frenchy Lunning. Classes in manga creation by Robert Ten Pas and Dennis Lo,
Lolita Fashion creation by Samantha Rei, and more will be held. Watch for the
announcement of our VERY SPECIAL GUEST soon!"

The Ankama Group has announced their plans to move deeper into comics publishing, specifically manga publishing, with an initiative to kick off January 2011. Ankama, the Roubaix, France-based developer and publisher of comics, games, and cartoons in the DOFUS and Wakfu universes, has always maintained a sensitive if not sentimental connection to the visual and narrative disposition of manga artwork. Now, the group will put their passions for underground Japanese comics and art to healthy use by publishing a manga anthology, Akiba. The monthly collection presently aims to print the works of young or new Japanese manga-ka for consumption by French-speaking comics enthusiasts.

Every Third Thursday of the month, the Sainsbury Institute hosts a lecture on a topic related to the art and culture of Japan. Talks begin at 6pm (50-minute lecture followed by refreshments). Speakers are all specialists in their field and the talks are intended to be accessible to those with no prior knowledge of Japanese history. Admission is free and all are welcome. Booking essential. To book a seat email us at sisjac@sainsbury-institute.org or fax 01603 625011 up to two days before the lecture stating your name, number of seats required and a contact number. Unless indicated otherwise the lectures are held at the Norwich Cathedral Hostry (Weston Room), Norwich NR1 4EH.

"Visualizing Cultures was launched at MIT in 2002 to explore the potential of the Web for developing innovative image-driven scholarship and learning. The VC mission is to use new technology and hitherto inaccessible visual materials to reconstruct the past as people of the time visualized the world (or imagined it to be).

Topical units to date focus on Japan in the modern world and early-modern China. The thrust of these explorations extends beyond Asia per se, however, to address "culture" in much broader ways-cultures of modernization, war and peace, consumerism, images of "Self" and "Others," and so on."

AnimeResearch.com is your starting point for academic research about anime, manga and other aspects of Japanese popular culture. In addition to original content, you will find links to articles and news reports that can be found on the web, as well as an extensive bibliography of books, journals and articles that are potential sources for academic or journalistic writing.

I'm not sure if it is already listed in the Let's Manga Diigo list, but I have just realized that the AnimeResearch.com website has undergone a complete revamp and has been updated too.

The purpose of the U.S.-Japan Women's Journal is to exchange scholarship on women and gender between the U.S., Japan and other countries, to enlarge the base of information available in Japan on the status of American women as well as women in other countries, to disseminate information on Japanese women to the U.S. and other countries, and to stimulate the comparative study of women's issues. Until 2000, the U.S.-Japan Women's Journal was published in both Japanese(Nichibei Josei Journal,from 1988) and English (English supplement, from 1991). It is now published in English only.
Formerly, it was produced jointly by the U.S.-Japan Women's Center,
the Center for Inter-Cultural Studies and Education and Purdue University. It is now co-produced by the Josai International Center for the Promotion of Art and Science and the Purdue University Department of History.

About the Conference

The Visualizing Cultures project and the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University are pleased to announce an academic conference focused on the relationship between visual imagery and social change in modern Asia entitled, "Visualizing Global Asia at the Turn of the 20th Century." This will be one of the first academic conferences devoted to "image-driven scholarship" and teaching about Asia in the modern world.

We have selected scholars of history, art history, history of photography, and history of technology specializing in China, Korea, Japan, United States, Europe and the Philippines to discuss how to integrate visual and textual media in research and teaching, using to the fullest the opportunities presented by the new technologies and the use of the internet as a publishing platform.

"Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) is an international, peer-reviewed journal published by the Organization for Transformative Works. TWC publishes articles about transformative works, broadly conceived; articles about media studies; and articles about the fan community. We invite papers in all areas, including fan fiction, fan vids, film, TV, anime, comic books, fan community, video games, and machinima. We encourage a variety of critical approaches, including feminism, gender studies, queer theory, postcolonial theory, audience theory, reader-response theory, literary criticism, film studies, and posthumanism. We also encourage authors to consider writing personal essays integrated with scholarship; hyperlinked articles; or other forms that test the limits of the genre of academic writing."

This online journal is opened to work on anime and manga fandom, so I thought this would be of interest to this group!

Indian Auteur is an independently run e-magazine, website, forum and blog started in Feb 2009.

As production houses cut costs by sending animation jobs to South Korea, India and Vietnam, the number of experienced workers in Japan is shrinking. Competitors in China are another threat to Japan's cultural icon.

Not directly related to manga or animes, but I'm sure that they could be topics addressed in such conference.

Exploring the expressive potentials of manga, our first manga competition seeks original image sequences that play with the themes and ideas traditionally associated with the classical 'ox-herding' sequence. Creative and innovative manga will be rewarded with publication and prizes!

Deadline: 31 October 2010