In a few days, Anime Expo, the largest convention in the U.S. for fans of Japanese popular culture broadly defined will once again return to the Los Angeles Convention Centere, where it will run from July 3 to July 7. AX’s live programming schedule is packed with a line-up of panels and workshops – and, since 2011, has also included a track of academic presentations and panel discusions – the Anime Expo Academic Symposium. Among the Symposium’s goals are to present anime and manga scholars with an opportunity to share their work and knowledge directly with fans, to introduce convention attendees to the methods, tools, and language of academic research, and to foster information-sharing and facilitate the developing of an anime and manga studies community. Over the years, it has featured presentations from scholars from around the world, including many of the most important names in anime and manga studies, and has consistently been one of the most unique features of AX’s overall program. In 2018, the Symposium went on a redevelopment hiatus, and now, it returns for Anime Expo 2019, with a total of 14 presentations and a line-up of returning and brand-new speakers!
[Ed. note: I developed the original idea for the Symposium, and was the producer from 2011 to 2017, but did not work on this year’s program]
AX 2019 Academic Program
“Anime Chronotopes: Nostalgia in Japanese Animation and Comics”
Anime Expo 2019
Los Angeles Convention Center
LACC 411 / AX Live Programming 4
July 4-7
Thursday, July 4
12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Nostalgia/Intertextuality
- The OG of Black Revolutionary Japanese Anime: Golgo 13
– Dexter Thomas (Cornell University) - 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 (University of California, Santa Cruz)
2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Nostalgia/Society
- 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
Saturday, July 6
11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.
Intermediality & Anime
- Nostalgic Reinvention of Anime Onstage: Takarazuka Kagekidan
– Amoretta Cockerham - Resisting Samurai Nostalgia: Aurality and Silence in Rurouni Kenshin:Tsuioku-hen
– Stacey Jocoy (Texas Tech University) - 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
Sunday, July 7
12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Topics in Anime Studies
- 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