Category: Announcements


Sep
2025

Call for Papers – Mechademia 2026 Conference: “Traversing Trans-Asian Imaginaries: Anime, Manga, and Media Cultures”

categories: Announcements, Call for Papers

In a new paper just published in Theory, Culture & Society, Sharon Kinsella makes the point that “Japan and neighbouring Asian states are now conjoined in a transregional visual cultural symbolic language, with relatable though not identical cultural symbolic meanings, based around animation characters and computer games”

I would argue that over the last two or so decades, the discussion around Japanese popular culture in general has similarly shifted to where even something like Japanese animation is commonly addressed as a “transnational industry“. In fact, when the journal Mechademia originally launched in 2006, it had the specific – and perhaps somewhat narrow – subtitle “An Annual Forum for Anime, Manga and Fan Arts”. This subtitle was retained through the journal’s first ten volumes, but when Mechademia returned from a two-year hiatus in 2018, the focus was expanded to “the study of East Asian popular cultures, broadly conceived”.

And this expanded focus is now also what is behind the announcement for the Call for Papers for the 2026 Mechademia Conference – the first to be held in a specifically East Asian location!

Mechademia 2026
Traversing Trans-Asian Imaginaries: Anime, Manga, and Media Cultures
National University of Singapore
May 29-30, 2026

The main question around which the 2026 conference will be organized is “what does it mean to study anime, manga, and their associated media forms within and across Asian contexts?” To approach this question, Mechademia is now accepting papers, panels, and creative works on topic that relate to or involve Southeast Asia in general – and is welcoming submissions from scholars, graduate students, and industry professionals/practitioners.

All presentations must be in English, and unlike in previous years, there will not be a remote or online component. The keynote speaker for this year will be NUS Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Anthropology and Singapore Management University School of Social Sciences Visiting Fellow Dr. Beng Huat Chua.

Some potential areas to consider exploring for the conference can include:

  • Trans-Asian flows and circulations of anime, manga, and games
  • Comparative studies: Japanese, Korean, Chinese, South Asian, Southeast Asian, and global contexts
  • Gaming cultures and the regional e-sports scene
(more…)

Aug
2025

Call for Papers – Critical Paths in Manga Studies

categories: Announcements, Call for Papers

InTO.MANGA – Critical Paths in Manga Studies
Torino, Italy
January 22-24, 2026

This fall, with two leading university presses each publishing a major new scholarly monograph (Manga: A New History of Japanese Comics by Eike Exner from Yale University Press and Manga’s First Century: How Creators and Fans Made Japanese Comics, 1905–1989 by Andrea Horbinski from University of California Press), it’s clear that manga studies as an academic field is continuing its rapid growth and development. And now, a different university has announced plans for what going may very well become a global center for the study of Japanese comics.

And now, the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures and Modern Cultures at the University of Torino (Italy) has announced that in January, it will host the inaugural symposium InTO.MANGA – Critical Paths in Manga Studies, with a stated goal of establishing a forum for debate and discussion on manga as a “form” with particular narrative, visual, and cultural dimensions. The symposium will specifically recognize manga as complex objects, and will specifically welcome multidisciplinary approaches and perspectives grounded in fields such as:

  • posthuman studies
  • medical humanities
  • translation studies
  • narrative theory
  • platform studies (including interplays between manga and other kinds of media)

Participants are invited to submit proposals for individuals presentations of approximately 20 minutes in length (300 words) or complete panels with up to 4 speakers to info.intomanga@gmail.com.

The deadline for submissions is September 15, and speakers will be notified by September 30.

InTO.MANGA – Critical Paths in Manga Studies is partly funded by the Japan Foundation. The symposium organizing committee is composed of Dr. Jaqueline Berndt (Stockholm University, editor of last year’s The Cambridge Companion to Manga and Anime), Marta Fanasca (University of Bologna), Paolo La Marca (University of Catania), and Gianluca Coci, Edouardo Occhionero, Asuka Ozumi, and Anna Speccio (all University of Torino).

The full Call for Papers, with additional details, follows:

(more…)

Jun
2025

Call for Papers – Mechademia: Second Arc, 19.2 “Graphic Narratives”

categories: Announcements, Call for Papers

English-language scholarly writing on Japanese comics is not something that just started last year – or five years ago – or ten. Fred Schodt’s Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga, the first book on the topic from a U.S. publisher, appeared in 1996 – and more than a decade earlier, he had already written Manga! Manga!: The World of Japanese Comics for Kodansha International. For that matter, already in the late 1970’s, The Journal of Popular Culture had published a paper about “Salaryman comics in Japan“, and the journal Youth & Society featured an article entitled Contemporary Japanese youth: Mass media communication that opened with the statement that “[C]omic books are both endemic and ubiquitous to contemporary Japanese society”.

It is also not an understatement to say that in the last several years years, English-language scholarly writing on Japanese comics has been booming. In 2022, Comics and the Origins of Manga: A Revisionist History became the first book on Japanese comics to receive the Best Academic/Scholarly Work Eisner Award. This was followed by the publication of a comprehensive – and much-needed Manga: A Critical Guide – in my review, I called it a “the go-to book for anyone interested in the medium”. Then, last year, Cambridge University Press felt that it was time to add a Companion to Manga and Anime to the series of volumes of what it calls “authoritative guides, written by leading experts, offering lively, accessible introductions to major writers, artists, philosophers, topics, and periods”. For that matter, later this year, two more major academic publishers are each bringing out a monograph – Yale University Press, with Manga: A New History of Japanese Comics, by Comics and the Origins of Manga author Eike Exner, and the University of California Press, with Manga’s First Century: How Creators and Fans Made Japanese Comics, 1905–1989, by historian and manga scholar Andrea Horbinski.

And beyond those, there is one more to look forward to. Mechademia: Second Arc, the premier scholarly journal with a focus on “studying objects and practices that have developed around media forms associated with Japan”, is now accepting submissions for a Graphic Narratives issue – scheduled for a Summer 2027 publication. Submissions for the issue are accepted through July 1. Its main goal will be to expand the range of scholarship of graphic narratives from Japan – as well as from other Asian countries/areas/regions – to emphasize attention to form and style, as well as “purpose”, rather than content alone.

(more…)

Jun
2025

Anime Expo 2025 Academic Program Schedule

categories: Anime Expo, Announcements, Programs

In three weeks, starting on July 3, Anime Expo, the largest Japanese animation and comics convention in the U.S., will once again return to the Los Angeles Convention Center. The AX 2025 schedule is packed with dozens of talks, presentations, premieres, guest appearances, company announcement sessions, and other live events. And, as it has for fifteen years now, though with some breaks (including for when AX itself was cancelled due to COVID), the Anime Expo live programming schedule will include a full Academic Program track – a unique opportunity for anyone who will be at the convention to sit in on one or more scholarly lectures and panel discussions on different aspects of anime and manga. This year, AX itself is organized around an “Academia” theme, and “Academics” is also the general topic for the Academic Program. When the Call for Papers for it was distributed earlier this year, some of the possible suggested topics that speakers were invited to consider included:

  • ways that anime and manga present or interpret knowledge and education, as well as classroom settings
  • specific educational/instructional uses of anime and manga
  • tools, techniques, methodologies, and trends in anime/manga research.

For 2025, the Academic Program is officially known as JAMS@AX Symposium, presented as a partnership between Anime Expo and the Journal of Anime and Manga Studies.

The full program for JAMS@AX Symposium 2025 consists of:

Thursday, July 3

10:00 a.m.
Keynote Address – Anime Goes to College
Emilie Waggoner (University of Colorado)

Emilie Waggoner is the Director of First Year Student Experiences at the University of Colorado Denver, where she teaches the unique course “Anime Goes To College: Analyzing Anime Characters Through a Sociological Lens”, as well as several others. She recently published Isekai as a Reflection of College Student Transition Theory (Popular Culture Review, Fall 2024), and is completing a EdD program in Leadership for Educational Equity.

11:30 a.m.
Performing Girlhood: Princesses, Cosplay, and Identity in Anime

  • Magical Girl Operation: Costume & Cosplay in Witch Hat Atelier
  • Azumanga Daioh and “Nichijou”: Absurdity and the Japanese Schoolgirl
  • The functional view in the constructed family: Animation as a Tool to Redefine the Concept of Family in Spy x Family
  • Floating Castles, Staged Narratives: Genre Conventions and Gender in Revolutionary Girl Utena

1:00 p.m.
Music of Studio Ghibli
David Lopez, Elliott Jones, John Marr (Santa Ana College)

Friday, July 4

10:00 a.m.
Family Bonds and Queer Community: Finding Acceptance, and Oneself, in Anime

  • Ace in Practice: Uta Isaki’s Manga and the Production of Asexual Identity
  • Can I Get An Amen?: Teaching English and Queer Acceptance in Japan via RuPaul’s Drag Race in Until We’re Together
  • Henshin Dekinai: The Doomed Queen is Doomed No More
  • Beyond School Walls: Queer Families and Self-Acceptance in Hinowa Kozuki’s Elegant Yokai Apartment Life

11:30 a.m.
Monstrous Lessons: Teaching Horror Anime

  • Horror and Transformation: A Curriculum Exploring Junji Ito
  • Designing an Anime Studies Syllabus: Teaching Monstrosity and Tolerance
  • Cataloguing the Creepy: Japanese Anthology Horror and Its Connection to Literary History

1:00 p.m. – Educator Roundtable

Saturday, July 5

10:00 a.m.
Worlds of Knowledge: Anime’s Keepers of Discovery

  • Frieren and the Value of Inquiry
  • The Guardians of the Louvre: How Manga Mythologizes Museums
  • Anime as Information: Mapping the Resources of Anime and Manga Studies
  • Anime Music Academia: Reborn as a music theory student with unlimited potential

11:30 a.m.
Pirates, Ecology, and K-Pop – How Anime Explores Worlds and Cultures

  • Teaching Culture Analysis and Anthropological Research through One Piece and the Fantasy-Journey Setting in Anime/Manga
  • Wagyu with a Fenrir: The Instructive Evasion of Ecology in Campfire Cooking in Another World
  • Anime’s Korean Wave: The Rise of South Korean IP in Japanese Animation

1:00 p.m.
Physics of Anime

All of the Academic Program sessions will be held in Los Angeles Convention Center Room 411.

You can view an archive of previous years’ schedules and speaker biographies on the AX website.


Jun
2025

Call for Papers – Mechademia: Second Arc, 19.1 “Semiosis/Symbiosis”

categories: Announcements, Call for Papers

With the release of the new Summer 2025 Methodologies issue, Mechademia: Second Arc, the major “forum for studying objects and practices that have developed around media forms associated with Japan” is now approaching its twentieth anniversary (although publication was paused in 2016 and 2017). The twenty-three issues that have appeared since the journal first launched, in 2006, originally as Mechademia: An Annual Forum for Anime, Manga and Fan Arts, have hosted some of the most important scholarly writing on these topics that have appeared in English over this period – as well as translations of important Japanese scholarship, and even some original non-scholarly work. Mechademia can reasonably be considered the leading journal for the developing field of Japanese popular culture studies – and in fact, is becoming increasingly important as a venue for research on Asian popular culture more broadly.

The journal’s publication schedule is currently set through at least the Summer 2028 issue. As has been the practice so far, each issue is organized around a common general theme, whether somewhat specific or fairly abstract, and the themes for the next six are, in order:

  • Death and Other Endings (Winter 2025)
  • Studio Ghibli (Summer 2026)
  • Semiosis/Symbiosis (Winter 2026)
  • Graphic Narratives (Summer 2027)
  • Game Studies (Winter 2027)
  • Erotic Bodies – Hentai, BL, and Beyond (summer 2028)

The Death and Other Endings and Studio Ghibli issues are already in preparation. And the calls for papers for the next two – Semiosis/Symbiosis and Graphic Narratives – are currently open, with submissions accepted until July 1.

Call for Papers
Mechademia: Second Arc, Volume 19, Number 1 (Winter 2026)
Guest Editor: Vincenzo Idone Cassone (Tampere University)

This volume of Mechademia: Second Arc seeks essays that address how new meaning-making worldviews emerge out of the interaction between different forms of life, and how indeed, even popular media themselves are entangled and propagate these dynamics.

(more…)

Apr
2025

Online Symposium – Queer and Feminist Perspectives on Japanese Popular Cultures 2025

categories: Announcements, Programs

First announced at the end of 2023, and running successfully in April of last year, the online symposium Queer and Feminist Perspectives on Japanese Popular Cultures represents a major and exciting new stage in the development of Japanese popular culture studies as a vibrant academic field. The 2024 program brought together speakers from academic institutions in the U.S., Japan, Canada, Australia, UK, and several EU countries – and the event was free and open to all interested participants. Following up on the successful first year, this past February, its organizers launched the Call for Papers for the 2025 Symposium, and now, are able to present this year’s program!

The Queer and Feminist Perspectives on Japanese Popular Cultures Symposium 2025 will run from Monday, May 19 to Wednesday, May 21. It will be held primarily online, with details for one public lecture to be announced. The program is set to feature keynote addresses and public lectures from some of the leading scholars currently working in the field, as well as up to 20 individual presentations – once again representing a truly wide range of global approaches, methodologies, and viewpoints, addressing anime and manga (as well as anime/manga fan cultures), video games, uses of and interactions with social media, and popular culture more broadly. The Symposium is FREE, but registration is required. Before the Symposium starts, you will receive a link to view the actual speeches and presentations.

You can direct any questions about the Symposium to the organizers at popculturesjapan (at) gmail (dot) com. Support for the Symposium is provided by the Media, Gender, and Sexualities Group (University of Tokyo) and the Platform Lab (Concordia University).

And for my part, I would like to thank the organizers of the Symposium for their dedication and hard work, and wish them and every one of the participants in this year’s event the best of luck!

===

Queer and Feminist Perspectives on Japanese Popular Cultures Symposium 2025

Monday, May 19

9:00 p.m. (EDT) / Tuesday, May 20 – 10:00 a.m. (JST)
Panel Session: Mediating Gender
Chair: Megan Catherine Rose (UNSW Sydney)

  • Romantic Archetypes and the Ideology of Love in Otome Games
    Kelly Li (University of Sydney)
  • Kawaii as Contradiction: Gender Performativity and Embodied Resistance in Odottemita Dance Culture
    Zhaoyang Yang (University of Tokyo)
  • Afro/Japanese Placemaking: An Inquiry into Black Women’s Intimacies with Anime Characters
    Sarah-Anne Gresham (Rutgers University)

Tuesday, May 20

7:00 a.m. (EDT) / 8:00 p.m. (JST)
Keynote Address
Michelle Ho
Assistant Professor, Feminist and Queer Cultural Studies, National University of Singapore
Author of Emergent Genders: Living Otherwise in Tokyo’s Pink Economies (Duke U. Press, 2025)
Chair: Megan Catherine Rose (UNSW Sydney, University of Tokyo)

(more…)

Feb
2025

Call for Papers – AX 2025 Academic Symposium: Academics

categories: Anime and Manga Studies Symposium, Anime Expo, Announcements, Call for Papers

Anime Expo, the largest anime convention in the U.S., scheduled to run July 3-6 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, will again feature an Academic Program track of presentations and panel discussions, and the Call for Papers for it is now open.

Anime Expo 2025 “will be showcasing an Academia theme” – and although submissions for the Academic Program can address any topic or perspective, some particular angle to consider can include ways that anime and manga present or interpret knowledge and education, as well as classroom settings, specific educational/instructional uses of anime and manga, and tools, techniques, methodologies, and trends in anime/manga research.

For consideration, please submit the title of your paper, an abstract (150 words), and a short biographical statement to https://forms.gle/xeheZc48SfUmr2Sa8

Submission deadline: April 7.

All speakers will be offered complimentary registration to Anime Expo 2025.

Additional Details

The organizer of the 2025 Symposium is once again Billy Tringali, the editor of the Journal of Anime and Manga Studies.

[ed. note: I first proposed the Academic Program track and managed the program from 2012 through 2017. I am not otherwise involved in this year’s event.]


Feb
2025

Call for Papers – 2025 Queer and Feminist Perspectives on Japanese Popular Cultures Symposium

categories: Announcements, Call for Papers

Building on the success of the inaugural Symposium, which ran from April 15 to April 17 of last year, and featured over 20 speakers and a range of presentations and panel discussions, scholars and practitioners from around the world are invited to submit papers that will explore topics related to intersections between Japanese popular cultures broadly defined and intersectional, trans-inclusive feminist studies. One of the specific goals of the symposium will be to explore points of convergence between race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, queerness, disability, class, and other similar characteristics. Some potential topics to explore can include:

  • Media theory examinations of gender
  • Trans-national consumptions of media
  • Expressions of gender and queerness on platforms
  • Subcultures, fan cultures, and alternative communities
  • Material cultures and practices

Abstracts must be in English, between 250 to 300 words, accompanied by a short biography, and sent to popculturesjapan@gmail.com.

Abstract submission deadline: March 21

The Symposium is currently being planned for mid-May, 2025, and will be held entirely online.

Additional details are available from the organizers (Aurélie Petit, Concordia University, and Megan Rose, UNSW Sydney), and at https://bsky.app/profile/aurelievpetit.bsky.social/post/3lincshwpws2w. This event is supported by the Media, Gender and Sexualities Study Group, University of Tokyo.


Feb
2025

Japan Foundation New York Panel Discussion – Dragon Ball

categories: Announcements, Programs

When talking about Dragon Ball – the entire Dragon Ball franchise – it is simply hard to find words that will adequately describe its impact and influence in Japan and around the world. When its creator Akira Toriyama, passed away last year, the first sentence of the New York Times obituary was “His popular manga inspired numerous television, film and video game adaptations, reaching fans far beyond Japan’s borders.”

And now, the Japan Foundation New York has announced the latest event in its ongoing Japanese Popular Culture series of online panel discussions – the title for it will be Dragon Ball: How Black and Latin American Fans Found Themselves in This Anime.

Tuesday, March 4
7:00 p.m. EST
online – YouTube (registration required)

Featuring:

  • Dexter Thomas, writer and documentary filmmaker, Senior Fellow, Annenberg Innovation Lab

The discussion will be followed by a live question-and-answer session.

The Japanese Popular Culture series launched in the fall of 2020, with Why Do We Study Anime + Manga, and currently consists of almost two dozen individual events. Some of the others – all now archived on YouTube – have included:

Episode 5 (January 28, 2021): Sailor Moon: How These Magical Girls Transformed Our World

Episode 7 (April 29, 2021): Hayao Miyazaki: Children Entrusted with Hope

Episode 12 (December 16, 2021): Shoujo Manga: The Power and Influence of Girls’ Comics

Episode 19 (March 26, 2024): Leiji Matsumoto: Manga and Anime Legend of Sci-Fi and Beyond


Feb
2025

Authors’ Roundtable – The Cambridge Companion to Manga and Anime

categories: Announcements

When, in 1999, Susan Napier published her study Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation, a scholarly monograph of that kind was both unique and unexpected. It was also foundational to the field of anime studies – and paved the way for the easily several dozen full-length books on anime/manga that have come out since – titles such as Anime: A Critical Introduction, Anime’s Identity: Performativity and Form Beyond Japan, Leiji Matsumoto: Essays on the Manga and Anime Legend, and Rewriting History in Manga: Stories for the Nation. Perhaps predictably, the focus of many of these titles has gotten progressively more narrow – some recent examples are monographs on “The Moral Narratives of Hayao Miyazaki“, and on “Japan’s Graphic Memoirs of Brain and Mental Health“. This is of course not to dismiss these more narrowly focused studies, but rather, to argue that the field would also benefit from books that were perhaps broader in scope.

And, as it turned out, just last year, Cambridge University Press, one of the world’s most prestigious and recognizable academic publishers, met this need – by publishing The Cambridge Companion to Manga and Anime – a collection of 19 short essays, each around 10 pages long, that would serve as “a lively and accessible introduction, exploring the local contexts of manga and anime production, distribution, and reception in Japan, as well as the global influence and impact of these versatile media”.

The emphasis in the Companion is not as much on specific representative or prominent anime/manga titles (or directors/creators)as it is on exploring some of the major general characteristics of the two media forms. To this end, some of the topics of the individual chapters include “graphic style in manga and anime”, “voice acting for anime”, the nature of the relationships between “manga editors and their artists”, and a survey of “anime fandom in Japan and beyond”.

On February 19, Hosei University (Tokyo, Japan), will host a special round-table discussion bringing together the book’s editor and several authors of the individual chapters. The goal of the discussion will be to consider applications of the Companion to classroom instruction, and future perspectives in anime and manga studies, and it will also be accessible online.

Participants:

Dr. Jaqueline Berndt, Professor, Japanese Language and Culture, Stockholm University
– editor, and author, Introduction: Two Media Forms in Correlation and Premodern Roots of Story-Manga?

Dr. Akiko Sugawa-Shimada, Professor, Urban Innovation, Yokohama National University
– author, Anime Fandom in Japan and Beyond

Dr. Patrick W. Galbraith, Associate Professor, International Communication, Senshu University
– author, Manga Readerships, Imaginative Agency, and the “Erotic Barrier”

Dr. Bryan Hikari Hartzheim, Associate Professor, Culture & Communication, Waseda University
– author, Genre Networks and Anime Studios

Dr. Stevie Suan, Associate Professor, Global and Interdisciplinary Studies, Hosei University
– author, Character Acting in Anime

Location:
Hosei University, Ichigaya Campus
Ouchiyama Building, Room Y401
Time: 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.

[Additional Details and Registration]