Alum Andrea Horbinski at Mechademia 2018
Alum Andrea Horbinski presented "A Children's Empire: The Prewar ‘Media Mix’ of the Kodansha Club Magazines” at the Mechademia Kyoto conference as part of the Narratives of War Across Media panel on Saturday, May 26th.
The internationally recognized Mechademia conferences explore the global innovations and the creative and cultural implications of Asian popular cultures, especially Japanese anime, manga, and gaming. The sessions combine the vibrancy of fan practices, a fashion show, and anime screenings with the presentations and dynamic discussions of keynote speakers, plenary speakers, academic papers and presentations from both established and emerging scholars.
The Kyoto conference was themed "Manga Nexus: Movement, Stillness, Media," and focused on manga in the context of other media, on manga as its own media, and on manga’s form and the forms of the other media it engages with.
From the website:
Manga has long been discussed as static images that are felt to move. We see this in the intricate chemistry between panels and page, the play of line, employment of words in multiple registers, the use of narrative, arranged in varying types of sequences, where still images possess movement. From a different perspective, manga has moved globally, from Japan to the world; now even The New York Times has a “Manga Bestsellers List.” But in this media-filled world, manga does not move alone. Manga has often been considered in comparison to cinema, and not because of the many adaptations manga has spawned, but for the cinematic devices in the panels of manga. But in the world of the traditionally considered moving-image, no media is closer than anime, whose close relation has produced mutual exchange.
You can find out more about this great conference, here.