ahorbinski | Entries tagged with appearances

Last fall I organized a vidshow at the Sirens Conference in Englewood, Colorado. I swore I'd post the playlist, and then I went to Belgium and Germany and when I came back reality blew up in our faces.

So, at long last, the vid playlist and panel description. The theme last year was Lovers, which informed my choice of vids.

Vidding comes to Sirens! This presentation and roundtable discussion will briefly introduce the practice of vidding (aka fanvids or songvids) by showing about a dozen vids, ranging from classics to book vids to vids related to this year’s Sirens theme. After watching the vids, we’ll have a short combined discussion and Q&A about the vids, vidding in general, and the fannish love that goes into them.

Playlist

Discord Days (My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic) by mmmandarinorange
Clear the Area (The X-Files) by astarte
Hurricane (Battlestar Galactica/Farscape) by laurashapiro
Blank Space (Doctor Who) by purplefringe and such_heights
Republic City (The Legend of Korra)by beccatoria
You & I Sail (Only Lovers Left Alive) by violace
Keep The Streets Empty For Me (Twilight) by chaila
All of Me (due South) by kuwdora
Carry Your Throne (Captive Prince) by Rhea314
Sky Is Open (Ms Marvel/Avengers) by Garrideb (garrideb)
When Brakes Get Wet (Code Name Verity) by thatfangirl
I'm Your Man (Multi) by Charmax (charmax)
Holding Out for a Hero (Wonder Woman) by chaila
Hold Me (Håll Om Mig) (Princess Tutu) by Marisa Panaccio

Somewhat belatedly: I'm giving a talk on a portion of my dissertation tomorrow afternoon in Doe Library on the Berkeley campus. The abstract is below; I hope to see you there!

Between 1905 and 1928 manga emerged as a separate artistic medium in Japan in reaction to ponchie, a populist hybrid art form that flourished in the early and mid-Meiji period (1868 – 1912). The pioneers of manga, self-consciously elitist in the vein of Fukuzawa Yukichi’s (1835 – 1901) philosophy of “civilization and enlightenment” (bunmei kaika), wished to create a higher-class art form that could, and did, depict exclusively political content. This early vision of manga as consisting of only political satire did not survive the economic fortunes of World War I, and its collapse, therefore, has profound implications for the history of Japanese comics as a whole. Only by expanding the scope of manga beyond political satire was the medium able to survive and flourish in the Taishō (1912 – 1926) and Shōwa (1926 – 1989) periods.

It's been a whirlwind six weeks of moving continents and coasts, and I'm very behind on updates.

My article "Record of Dying Days: The Alternate History of Ôoku" was published in Mechademia 10 in November, and the BCNM very kindly put out a short blurb about it. You can see a photo of yours truly with one of my author copies. On the topic of Mechademia, the tenth volume is the last of the original series, and the fifth one that I worked on as the editorial assistant/general citations dogsbody. I want to take the time now to publicly thank Frenchy Lunning, Wendy Goldberg, Christopher Bolton, and Tom Lamarre for their giving me the job, their advice and support, and their general friendship and camaraderie. I had the time of my life, and it was a true privilege.

Speaking of Mechademia, I'll be traveling to Tokyo next month to give a talk drawing on materials from the third chapter of my in-progress manuscript at the Mechademia Conference next month, "Women and Comics: Reconsidering the ‘Origins’ of Shojo Manga in the Postwar.” From there I'll go immediately to Seattle to give the same talk to a different crowd at the Popular Culture Association annual meeting, in the comics arts track. I had a wonderful time when I last presented at the PCA in 2009, and I'm very much looking forward to both conferences. See you there, I hope!

I have the privilege to be one of the people attending OpenCon 2015 in person in Brussels this weekend. It's been a very thought-provoking gathering so far, and I'm excited to share back what I learn in my various projects.

In the meantime, you can follow along with the conference events on the OpenCon livestream (subject to country by country copyright restrictions).

I'm very happy to say that I'll be presenting a paper called "Women in Comics: Reconsidering the Origins of Shojo Manga in the Postwar" at the 2016 national conference of the Popular Culture Association in Seattle next March. This presentation will draw on the in-progress third chapter of my dissertation and will be my first chance to take the material out for a spin.

PCA is one of the most enjoyable academic conferences I've been to, and after a seven-year absence I'm looking forward to going back. Even better, my paper is part of panels on manga organized by my colleague James Welker and staffed with some pretty awesome people including Patrick Galbraith and Sharalyn Orbaugh. I hope to see you there!

I sent a short report back to the Berkley Center for New Media talking about how I used their generous funding to go to Kyoto for research. Taking selfies with the Manga Museum's mascot was entirely a bonus, I assure you--though it's practically par for the course in my research, I have to say. I've certainly been having a lot of fun while doing it, anyway.

I'm really looking forward to returning to the Sirens Conference this year. Sirens has been one of my favorite cons since I first attended in 2010, and I'm very happy to say that I'll be on a panel at this one, the theme of which (Revolutionaries) is very close to my heart:

The Iconoclastic Revolutionary
Rae Carson, Kate Elliott, Andrea J. Horbinski, Jennifer Michaels, s.e. smith, Jennifer Udden
In the midst of “strong female characters” going it on their own, what happens to cooperative fellowship, shared labor, and the femme side of being revolutionary? How do female villains play a role in revolutionary narratives? The revolution often begins at home, and the lone heroine approach devalues many female experiences and forms of labor. Hermione, Katniss, Maleficent, and Sansa all have their place—let’s talk about what real heroines and villains look like and why only some are celebrated.

I'll also be hosting a Books & Breakfast discussion on Laurie J. Marks' novel Fire Logic, which I read and loved earlier this year. You can still register to join us in Denver!

And in the meantime, I have a booklist up on the Sirens blog, Five Fantasies of the Roaring Twenties from the New Gilded Age. (See, I did pay attention when I was a reader for American history!)

I went back to California two weeks ago for the Media & Transmission graduate conference hosted by the Center for Japanese Studies, Berkeley. Many thanks to the organizers for all their hard work, and for funding my travel so that I could participate in a conference geared towards a theme that is close to my dissertation. The abstract for my talk, "A Children’s Empire: The Club Magazines and the Prewar 'Media Mix',” is also available on the website, and is drawn from what will eventually be chapter two of my dissertation. I greatly appreciated the opportunity to discuss my research amongst a Japan-knowledable but animanga-context-light audience, and also really enjoyed my fellow panelists' talks. It was a very productive week back, all in all, though I have to admit I'm still jet-lagged.

Well, the cat's out of the bag; my friend s.e. smith and I are co-chairing Wiscon 40 in 2016, the 40th iteration of the world's leading science fiction convention held in Madison, WI every Memorial Day weekend.

We'd love to see you there, but in the meantime, we're looking for your nominations for Guests of Honor, as well as general ideas and suggestions, before 5 January 2015.

I've had quite a year for travel, and I wanted to take the time to share two write-ups of events I attended this year that, I thought, did a good job of discussing the events in question from a balanced perspective.

In July I participated in the Media Mix Workshop funded by the Kadokawa Foundation at the University of Tokyo. My friend Samantha Close wrote a piece at Ethos Review about all the transnational, transdisciplinary practices the program situated itself in. It was frustrating at times, but the program overall was great, and I just ran into one of my fellow participants at the Genron Cafe in Gotanda here in Tokyo on Friday night and we sat down like old friends. So none of it was wasted, probably, and all in all, the workshop was an invaluable experience for which I am very grateful.

Last month I went to Australia for the sixth Manga Futures conference, held at the University of Wollongong. Khursten Santos, who also organized much of the event, somehow found the time to write up a very thorough blog post about the conference which, incidentally, says very kind things about my paper: Lessons from Manga Futures. I had a great time at the conference, and I was thrilled to be able to participate.

Cognitive Resonance

the ironic imagination

Belated post: Sirens Vidshow 2016

Talk: The Origins of Japanese Comics, 1905-28

Mechademia 10! Conference talks!

OpenCon 2015

PCA/ACA 2016

BCNM Summer Fellowship Dispatches

Sirens 2015: Revolutionaries

Only now am I kicking myself for not getting bubble tea

Planning Wiscon 40

Notes from the road

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August 2017

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