CFP: Contemporary Japanese Media Cultures: Industry, Society and Audiences

From: Mark Jancovich (FTV) <[email protected]>

CALL FOR PAPERS:
Contemporary Japanese Media Cultures: Industry, Society and Audiences
Symposium: 5th September 2012.
This one-day Symposium on Japanese popular media investigates the
significance of contemporary Japanese media to the wider industries and
cultures that they serve. Although access to Japanese media cultures has
never been better for those living outside Japan, there remains a dearth of
analytical engagement with how the Japanese media industries function, and
only patchy coverage exists of the media texts produced within Japan.
 Therefore, this Symposium seeks to unpack some of the complexities within
the Japanese media landscape, by considering how differing media industries
work in collaboration as well as in competition with one another. In doings
so, the aim is to bring together speakers utilising a wide range of
approaches and specialist knowledge to discuss the interconnectivity of
Japan’s media industries, visible in phenomena such as cross-media
adaptations, franchising practices, remakes of texts and international
distribution. We also aim to complicate the notion of Japanese media
industries as “national” by investigating the regional, transnational and
global reach of their texts.
We seek papers examining how Japanese media, including (but not limited to)
manga, anime, video games, television, magazine publishing and film operate
within and beyond Japanese borders.  The aim is to bring together experts
able to discuss how Japanese media products get made, and why, who gets to
see them (legally or otherwise) and what it is that academic explorations
of Japan’s media might be able to offer the industries and cultures they
study.
Topics might include (but are in no way limited to):
•       Japanese media franchising
•       National, regional, transnational and/or global distribution of
Japanese media
•       Japanese media industries
•       Cross-media adaptation
•       Transmedia storytelling
•       Media production techniques and systems
•       Cross-media genres
•       New media texts
•       Ancillary industries (e.g. Japanese special effects houses,
animation outsourcing, voice acting, stars and their agents)
•       Translation of media from Japanese to other languages
•       Invisible media (e.g. texts or genres popular in Japan, but not
often exported or studied)
•       Popular cross-media franchises (e.g. Naruto, Bleach, One Piece,
Atom Boy, Bayside Shakedown)
•       Reception of Japanese media texts
•       Audiences, fans and subcultures

Symposium to be held in Norwich, in conjunction with the University of East
Anglia, the British Association of Japanese Studies and the Arts and
Humanities Research Council

Papers proposals of no more than 300 words should be sent to
[email protected] by, Monday 30th April 2012. If you would
like more information, please contact [email protected].

Professor Mark Jancovich
Film and Television Studies
University of East Anglia
Norwich NR4 7TJ
Tel: 01603 592787