“The Media Review section of Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities calls for reviews that apply ecocritical and Green cultural studies approaches to the field of Japanese animation.
2014 was a watershed year for Studio Ghibli, arguably the leading anime studio, because it marked the retirement of the founding directors Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata. who issued their swan-songs The Wind Rises and Princess Kaguya. To honor this moment and attract more critical attention to anime, we are soliciting reviews of the following:
Miyazaki’s films, especially Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Ponyo.
Takahata’s Ken the Wolf Boy, Heidi: Girl of the Alps, Pom Poko aka “Tanuki Wars,” Grave of the Fireflies, and Princess Kaguya.
We are also interested in work inspired by or intertextually related to Studio Ghibli, such as Disney’s Lilo and Stitch; Irish director Tomm Moore’s The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea; and the animated version of Avatar: The Last Airbender (including its sequel, The Legend of Korra, which is a gold mine for feminist, post-colonial, eco-cosmopolitan, and queer ecocriticism, just sayin’).
Reviews of other anime films, TV series, and manga unrelated to Ghibli will also be considered.
Reviews should be 500 to 2,000 words long.
Final drafts are due April 16, 2015.
Please send inquiries or brief proposals to Anthony Lioi at alioi_at_juilliard.edu.”
[Note: Anthony Lioi is currently a member of the liberal arts faculty at the Juilliard School. His publications include The city ascends: Laputa: Castle in the Sky as critical ecotopia, in the Spring 2010 “Anime and Utopia” special issue of the scholarly journal ImageTexT: Interdiscipinary Comics Studies.
Resilience is a “digital, peer-reviewed journal of the Environmental Humanities”, published semi-annually by the University of Nebraska Press. Previous issues are available online via JSTOR, and several, including the “editors’ column” from the inaugural January 2014 can also be accessed on the journal’s website.]