In a few weeks, the University of Minnesota Press will launch the new Mechademia: Second Arc series of books – the successor to its Mechademia: An Annual Forum for Anime, Manga, and Fan Arts titles that appeared between 2006 and 2015. This first volume’s theme will be “Childhood”, the next two, “Transnational Fandoms” and “Materialities Across Asia” are scheduled for release later in the year, it will then move to a twice-a-year publication calendar. The Call for Papers for Volume 13.1, “Queer(ing), is open until June 1, and the CFP for 13.2 is now available.

The theme for Mechademia: Second Arc issue 13.2 is “Soundscapes”, and it will be edited by Dr. Stacey Jocoy, Associate Professor of Musicology, Texas Tech University.

“This issue of Mechademia will consider sound and soundscapes, broadly conceived, as an aspect of the deeper narratives of anime, manga/ manhua, gaming, and related fields. The editors invite papers of 5000 to 7000 words revolving around critiques, musicological, socio-cultural, musico-psychological, music theory and analytical approaches, and acoustical considerations toward the investigation into the global ramifications of soundscapes.”

The full CFP is available on the Mechademia website, and submissions are due by June 15. Some potential topics it suggests include:

• Music, sound, and narrative in anime, manga, gaming, and other East Asian media, including sound effects and musical iconography
• Musical allusions to notable compositions, performers, or genres (e.g. classical, jazz, rock, traditional folk musics)
• Media representations of idol singers, musicians, bands
• Image songs, character albums, podcasts, and other tie-in audio media
• Fan creations: AMVs, MMVs, Vocaloids, Desk Top Music (DTM) software
• Voice acting, seiyû, voice-based celebrities

The issue will be published in the fall of 2020.

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Back in 2006, the University of Minnesota Press’s launch of Mechademia Volume 1: Emerging Worlds of Anime and Manga – the first in “a series of books…devoted to creative and critical work on anime, manga and the fan arts”, with the goal for the series stated as being “to examine, discuss, theorize and reveal this unique style through its historic Japanese origins and its ubiquitous global presence and manifestation in popular and gallery culture” was rightly seen as a major step in the development of anime/manga studies as a defined academic field.

Mechademia was, of course, not the only place where an author could publish their work on anime/manga, but it quickly became one of the most prominent and accessible – widely distributed to academic and even public libraries, available online via JSTOR and Project Muse, and priced at a point that made it affordable to readers who simply wished to purchase individual volumes. And, this volume, and the nine that followed, each centered around a general theme, among them “Networks of Desire“, “Lines of Sight“, “Tezuka’s Manga Life” and finally, in 2015, “World Renewal” each made a major and significant contribution to the growing field, especially with their unique and distinctive mix of original essays, translations of both recent and and historical Japanese scholarship, short commentary pieces, photo essays, comics/manga, and other types of content far beyond the range of what is normally seen in academic journals and essay collections. (more…)

Mechademia 2017: Science Fictions
Minneapolis College of Art and Design
Minneapolis, Minnesota
September 22-24, 2017

The organizers of the annual Mechademia conference, hosted at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design, are inviting scholars to present their work at this year’s event. Mechademia’s overall goal is to “explore the global innovations and creative and cultural implications of Japanese anime and manga”, and the specific focus of this year’s event is on science fiction, broadly defined. Some potential topics could include discussions of:

• Transnational science fiction forms
• Gender, feminist science fiction
• Emergent genre of “cli-fi”
• Fan Fiction
• Science fiction and environmental justice movements (more…)

Minneapolis College of Art and Design
September 23-25, 2016

The organizers of the annual Mechademia Conference on Asian Popular Cultures are now inviting proposals for individual paper presentations and panel discussions for this year’s event. The dates for Mechademia 2016 are Friday, September 23 to Sunday, September 25 and it will once again be hosted by the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (Minneapolis, MN).

The theme of this year’s conference is “World-Building in Asian Popular Cultures”, and some of the potential questions, issues and topics that speakers are invited to address in their proposals include:

• Popular culture frequently juxtaposes different realities in the form of alternative timelines or bifurcating temporalities. How might imaginative narratives jostling time and space function as axes of a potential alternate world reality?
• How might worldbuilding address and even transform the dark portend of the Anthropocene?
• How do new storytelling practices and forms of communication support worldbuilding across alternative locations and temporalities?
• What is the role language plays in creating alternate worlds? Does one have to change language to create an altered reality?
• Science fictions often encourage us to approach history and broad societal currents in terms of ‘what if’ scenarios. Such scenarios invite us to understand history through counterfactual narrations.  But rather than dismiss such scenarios as non-factual, we ask: What are potential relationships to be found in the social and political implications of understanding our historical reality in such terms?
• How do colonialism, social inequality and gender constitute frameworks toward the creation of alternate worlds? In what ways are these factors recontexualized in new fictional worlds?
• How do musical scores and soundtracks create the affective atmospheres that shape worldbuilding practices in film, anime and gaming?

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