Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture Lecture Series 2015

Manga Empire: Comics and Companion Species http://icc.fla.sophia.ac.jp/html/events/2015-2016/150427_Lamarre.pdf

Thomas LAMARRE (McGill University)

April 27th, 2015 (Monday), 6:30 pm-8pm
Room 301, Building 10, Sophia University Yotsuya Campus

Lecture in English / No RSVP required

The 1930s saw the emergence of new possibilities for expanding serialization across media. Cartoon animals played a key role in establishing multimedia series. The serialization of “Norakuro” across the pages of Shōnen kurabu and into manga films, recordings, and radio is a prime example. Cartoon animals also brought to the fore contradictory visions of society and community: racial legacies of differentiating peoples on the basis of species, and utopian claims for integrating peoples on the same basis. What is it about the expanded multimedia manga field that allowed it to assemble these contradictory stances?

Thomas LAMARRE teaches in East Asian Studies and Communications Studies at McGill University. He is author of books dealing with the history of media, thought, and material culture, with projects ranging from the communication networks of 9th century Japan (Uncovering Heian Japan: An Archaeology of Sensation and Inscription, 2000), to silent cinema and the global imaginary (Shadows on the Screen: Tanizaki Jun’ichirô on Cinema and Oriental Aesthetics, 2005) and animation technologies (The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation, 2009). He has also edited volumes on cinema and animation, on the impact of modernity in East Asia, on pre-emptive war, and, as Associate Editor of Mechademia: An Annual Forum for Anime, Manga, and the Fan Arts, a number of volumes on manga, anime, and fan cultures: Circuits of Desire (2007), The Limits of the Human (2008), War/Time (2009), Fanthropologies (2010), User Enhancement (2011), Lines of Sight (2012), and Tezuka’s Manga Life (2013). He has recently completed two translations, Kawamata Chiaki’s SF novel Death Sentences and Muriel Combes’s Gilbert Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transindividual. He is a participant in a Canadian Foundation Innovation grant to construct at Moving Image Research Laboratory. See Website: web.me.com/lamarre_mediaken

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