As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I am currently trying out a new way to manage the work-flow that would go into developing a comprehensive listing of English-language academic publications of anime and manga – i.e., the Bibliography of Anime and Manga Studies. Whereas previously, i would work to put together comprehensive lists of all types of publications (books, chapters in edited collections, entries in academic encyclopedia, journal articles, studies/working papers/other grey literature), and only present it once the list was complete, now, I am breaking the final list into major components, and presenting them separately. I presented the directory to/list of articles on Japanese animation (anime) and comics (manga) published in English-language academic journals in 2008 already. Right now, I am also pleased to present a similar list of monographs, edited essay collections, and individual chapters (as well as articles published in “scholarly encyclopedias”, and as grey literature.)

English-language academic publications on anime and manga: 2008, Part 2 – Books, Essay Collections, Book Chapters, etc. 

In terms of individual books, the clear highlight of 2008 for anime/manga studies was Andrew Osmond’s slim volume on Hayao Miyazaki’s Oscar-winning Spirited Away – not just for what the book was, but by its paratext – as a title in Palgrave Macmillan’s BFI Film Classics series:

“The BFI Film Classics series introduces, interprets and celebrates landmarks of world cinema. Each volume offers an argument for the film’s ‘classic’ status, together with discussion of its production and reception history, its place within a genre or national cinema, an account of its technical and aesthetic importance, and in many cases, the author’s personal response to the film.”

The series currently consists of about 140 individual titles. Spirited Away one of only a couple that focus on either Japanese films, or on animated films.

2008 also saw the publication of the first collection of academic essays on “Japanese visual culture” that gave equal billing – even in the title – to both anime and manga. By then, anime had already been the subject of both monographs (Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation; The What? Why? and Wow! of Japanese Animation; Stray Dog of Anime: The Films of Mamoru Oshii, and at least one essay collection, Cinema Anime: Critical Engagements with Japanese Animation), whereas writing on manga was still limited to books like 1996’s Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga – great, but growing more and more obsolete with each year, and Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society – obviously restricted in scope by its very title.

[This is actually particularly interesting (and something I hope to explore further), and perhaps ties back to the general perception that manga, as a type or mode of Japanese comics, are of course uniquely local, but not particularly different from, say French comics or Russian/Soviet comics, and so, do not merit particular attention – whereas anime, as Deborah Shamoon argues, in “The superflat space of Japanese anime”, is just so different from Western film and Western animation that we as scholars cannot avoid paying attention to it.]

Having said that, it is also useful to examine the kinds of edited essay collections published in 2008 that included books on anime/manga in more detail. Two of them (East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film and Imagined Families: Real Families: Culture and Kinship in Contemporary Japan can probably be thought of books that should, or at least may, have chapters on anime/manga. But, this leaves quite a few others, where from just the book title’s alone, it would be plain-out impossible to determine if there is anything in the book itself that deals with Japanese animation or Japanese comics. Of course, the flip side of this point is that any title that can potentially include an essay on anime/manga may very well have one. And, for that matter, if you are an author who is looking for essay collections to submit an “anime/manga studies” paper to – don’t be discouraged just because the call for papers for that particular book does not specifically mention Japanese animation/Japanese comics…

Perhaps, the bottom line here is that a well-written essay that you, the author, can connect to the title of a proposed essay collection has a very good chance of being included. A poorly-written one, regardless of how close you think it is to the title and scope and subject of the essay collection will probably be left out…

Books
(Total published: 4)

Black, Rebecca Ward. Adolescents and online fan fiction. New York: Peter Lang.

Cavallaro, Dani. The art of Studio Gainax: Experimentation, style and innovation at the leading edge of anime. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

Iles, Timothy. The crisis of identity in contemporary Japanese film: Personal, cultural, national. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.

Osmond, Andrew. BFI film classics: Spirited Away. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Essay Collections
(Total published: 2)

Mechademia, Volume 3: Limits of the Human

Mechademia: An Annual Forum for Anime, Manga and Fan Arts is a unique ongoing “monographic series” of essay collections. Every year’s volume is based around a specific theme, and includes original peer-reviewed essays as well as non-scholarly content such as interviews, comics, and photography. Many (though not all) volumes also feature translations of materials originally published in Japanese, both stand-alone articles, and excepts from longer works.

MacWilliams, Mark (Ed.), Japanese visual culture: Explorations in the world of manga and anime. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

Book Chapters
(Total published: 26)

Allison, Anne. The attractions of the J-Wave for American youth. In Yasushi Watanabe and David L. McConnell (Eds.), Soft power superpowers: Cultural and national assets of Japan and the United States (pp. 99-110). Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

*** OPEN ACCESS *** Bainbridge, Jason, & Norris, Craig. Madman in the house: Understanding media merchandising, the implications for convergence, and new knowledge economics. In Susan Luckman, Jackie Cook, & Dino Murtic (Eds.), Proceedings from ‘Sustaining Culture’: Annual Conference of the Cultural Studies Association of Australia. Adelaide: University of South Australia.

Berndt, Jaqueline. Historical adventures of a post-historical medium: Japan’s wartime past as represented in manga. In Steffi Richter (Ed.), Contested views of a common past: Revisions of history in contemporary East Asia (pp. 287-320). Frankfurt: Campus Verlag.

Black, Rebecca Ward. Just don’t call them cartoons: The new literacy spaces of anime, manga and fanfiction. In Julie Coiro, Michele Knobel, Colin Lankshear, & Donald J. Leu (Eds.), Handbook of research on new literacies (pp. 583-610). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Caffrey, Colm. Using pupillometric, fixation-based and subjective measures to measure the processing effort experienced when viewing subtitled TV anime with pop-up gloss. In Susanne Gopferich, Arnt Lykke Jakobsen, & Inger M Mees (Eds.), Looking at eyes: Eye-tracking studies of reading and translation processing (pp. 125-144). Frederiksberg, Denmark: Samsfundliterattur

Chandler-Olcott, Kelly. Seeing the world through a stranger’s eyes: Exploring the potential of anime in literacy classrooms. In Nancy Frey & Douglas Fisher (Eds.), Teaching visual literacy: Using comic books, graphic novels, anime, cartoons, and more to develop comprehension and thinking skills (pp. 61-90). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Denison, Rayna. The language of the blockbuster: Promotion, Princess Mononoke and the daihitto in Japanese film culture. Leon Hunt & Wing-Fai Leung (Eds.), East Asian cinemas: Exploring transnational connections on film (pp. 103-122). London: I. B. Tauris.

Diffrient, Scott. From Three Godfather to Tokyo Godfathers: Signifying social change in a transnational context. In Leon Hunt & Wing-Fai Leung (Eds.), East Asian cinemas: Exploring transnational connections on film (pp. 153-171). London: I. B. Tauris.

Hashimoto, Akiko. Blondie, Sazae, and their storied successors: Japanese families in newspaper comics. In In Akiko Hashimoto & John W. Traphagan (Eds.), Imagined families, lived families: Culture and kinship in contemporary Japan (pp. 15-32). Albany: State University of New York Press.

Ito, Mizuko. Migrating media: Anime media mixes and the childhood imagination. In Marta Gutman, & Ning de Coninck-Smith (Eds.), Designing modern childhoods: History, space, and the material culture of children (pp. 301-315). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Jungst, Heike. Translating manga. In Federico Zanettin (Ed.), Comics in translation (pp. 50-78). Manchester, UK: St. Jerome.

Kitamura, Yuika. Sexuality, gender, and The Tale of Genji in modern Japanese translations and manga. In Haruo Shirane (Ed.), Envisioining the The of Genji: Media, gender, and cultural production (pp. 239-258). New York: Columbia University Press

Nakano, Yoshiko. Shared memories: Japanese pop culture in China. In Yasushi Watanabe and David L. McConnell (Eds.), Soft power superpowers: Cultural and national assets of Japan and the United States (pp. 111-27). Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

Napier, Susan J. From spiritual fathers to Tokyo Godfathers: Depictions of the family in Japanese animation. In Akiko Hashimoto & John W. Traphagan (Eds.), Imagined families, lived families: Culture and kinship in contemporary Japan (pp. 33-50). Albany: State University of New York Press.

Ng, Benjamini Wai-Ming. Hong Kong young people and cultural pilgrimage to Japan: The role of Japanese popular culture in Asian tourism. In Janet Cochrane (Ed.), Asian tourism: Growth and change (pp. 183-192). Oxford, UK: Elsevier.

Nuckolls, Charles W. The uncanny and the feminine sublime in Japanese political fantasy. In Nancy Billias (Ed.), Territories of evil (pp. 99-116). Amsterdam: Rodopi.

O’Hagan, Minako. Fan translation networks: An accidental translator training environment. In John Kearns (Ed.), Translator and interpreter training: Issues, methods and debates (pp. 158-183). London: Continuum.

Otmazgin, Nissim. When culture meets the market: Japanese popular culture industries and the regionalization of East and Southeast Asia. In Takashi Shiraishi & Pasuk Phongpaichit (Eds.), The rise of middle classes in Southeast Asia (pp. 257-281). Balwyn, Australia: Trans Pacific Press.

Redmond, Dennis. Animation, anime, and the cultural logic of Asianization. In J.P. Telotte (Ed.), The essential science fiction television reader (pp. 127-142). Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky.

Rubin, Lawrence C. Big heroes on the small screen: Naruto and the struggle within. In Lawrence C. Rubin (Ed.), Popular culture in counseling, psychotherapy, and play-based interventions (pp. 227-242). New York: Springer Publishing.

Saeji, Junko. Beyond the geisha stereotype: Changing images of ‘new women’ in Japanese popular culture. In Rien T. Segers (Ed.), A new Japan for the Twenty-First Century: An inside overview of current fundamental changes and problems (pp. 187-197). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Stein, Wayne, & Browning, John Edgar. The Western Eastern: De-Coding hybridity and CyberZen Gothic in Vampire Hunter D (1985). In Andrew Hock Soon Ng (Ed.), Asian Gothic: Essays on literature, film and anime (pp. 210-223) Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

Welker, James. Lilies of the margin: Beautiful boys and queer female identities in Japan. In Fran Martin, Peter A. Jackson, Mark McLelland, & Audrey Yue (Eds.), AsiaPacifiQueer: Rethinking genders and sexualities (pp. 46-66). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Wilber, Dana J. iLife: Understanding and connecting to the digital literacies of adolescents. In Kathleen A. Hinchman & Heather K. Sheridan-Thomas (Eds.), Best practices in adolescent literacy instruction (pp. 57-77). New York: Guilford.

Yamanaka, Chie. Manga, manhwa, and historical consciousness: Transnational popular media and the narrative deconstruction of Japanese-Korean history. In Steffi Richter (Ed.), Contested views of a common past: Revisions of history in contemporary East Asia (pp. 321-338). Frankfurt: Campus Verlag.

*** OPEN ACCESS *** Yasumoto, Seiko. From whence does popular culture emanate and how is it re-made? Junguru Taitei or Lion King? In A. M. Vicziany, & Robert Cribb (Eds.), Proceedings from “is This the Asian Century?” 17th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia. Caulfield East, Australia: Monash University.

Encyclopedia Articles/Entries
(Total published: 3 titles, 9 articles)

Womack, Kenneth (Ed.), Books and beyond: The Greenwood encyclopedia of new American reading. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press

  • Poitras, Gilles. Manga and anime (pp. 600-612)

Mitchell, Claudia, & Reid-Walsh, Jacqueline (Eds.), Girl culture: An encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood.

  • Martinez, Katynka Z. Girls, digital culture and new media (pp. 94-100).
  • Yampolsky, Maya. Manga and anime fan culture (pp. 418-423).
  • Lesko, Nancy. Miyazaki’s anime girls (pp. 437-438).
  • Cheu, Hoi. Sailor Moon (pp. 515-516).

Donald Haase (Ed.), The Greenwood encyclopedia of folktales and fairy tales. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

  • Aldred, B Grantham. Amano, Yoshitaka (pp. 30-31).
  • Jorgensen, Jeana. Miyazaki, Hayao (pp. 630-632).
  • Sebastian-Jones, Mark. Mizuno, Junko (pp. 632-633).

Other Publications
(Total published: 2)

Levi, Antonia. Anime – an annotated filmography for use in the classroom. About Japan: A teacher’s resource. New York: Japan Society

Levi, Antonia. Anime and manga: It’s not all make-believe. About Japan: A teacher’s resource. New York: Japan Society.

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