CFP: Schoolgirls and Mobilesuits 2011: Culture and Direction (Jun 1; Sept 29-Oct 2)

The 11th Annual Schoolgirls and Mobilesuits (SGMS) Workshop Presents:

The 1st Annual Mechademia Conference

SGMS 2011: Culture and Direction

September 29th-October 2nd, 2011

Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD)

Submission Information:

Abstracts of no more than 200 words for presentations of 20 minutes are due by 1 June 2011 via email to <sgms@mcad.edu>. Please include institutional affiliation, if applicable. Authors will be notified by 15 July 2011. Presentations may be selected for publication in the Mechademia book series.

2011 Featured Speakers:

Dr. Marc Hairston

Research Scientist, William B. Hanson Center for Space Science

The University of Texas at Dallas

Dr. Thomas LaMarre

Professor of East Asian Studies

Associate in Art History and Communications Studies

McGill University

Dr. Sharalyn Orbaugh

Professor of Asian Studies and Women’s Studies, University of British Columbia Former Visiting Professor, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto

Schoolgirls and Mobilesuits (SGMS) is an internationally-recognized, three-day workshop that explores and celebrates anime and manga. Through its unique merger of academic and fan audiences, SGMS engages both anime’s and manga’s creative and cultural implications and practices.

The 11th Annual SGMS Workshop marks the beginning of our second decade with a combination of festivities, including the Otaku bazaar, the Full Fashion Panic fashion show (i.e., part of Minnesota Fashion Week), as well as anime and J-drama screenings. Since its inception in 2001, the annual SGMS Workshop has emerged as the cutting-age venue for discussions about and presentations on the global proliferation of Japanese manga and anime. Workshop topics have included foci on a wide-array of issues in manga and anime production and reception, from creative processes, cultural formations, and aesthetic implications, to fan fascination with and audience wonder at the remarkably broad range of objects and practices.

As the SGMS Workshop evolved, it spawned the critically acclaimed Mechademia book series, published by the University of Minnesota Press. The heart and soul of Mechademia is found in the work of SGMS: Its invited speakers as well as the growing wave of young scholars and creators.

This year, the SGMS Workshop announces its first annual Mechademia Conference focused on scholarly work on manga and anime. Institutionally-affiliated as well as independent scholars are encouraged to submit individual or panel proposals related to the conference theme of “Creation and Direction.” Scholars at any level, including graduate students and undergraduates, are encouraged to apply. Authors of selected proposals will be invited to present at SGMS’s Mechademia Conference, potentially as part of the popular “Mechademia Emerging Scholars” panels. Presentations may be selected for publication in the Mechademia book series.

The theme, “Culture and Direction,” provides for a play of ambiguous “directions,” and the Mechademia Conference organizers welcome paper or panel submissions on any of the following themes, as well as on related themes not directly indicated:

• Analyses of specific artifacts, creators, or directors

• Future directions of manga and anime

• New technologies and influences, such as keitai novels

• Historical directions of mange and anime

• Cultural implications of manga and anime

• New directions in fan cultures

• Structural directions in historical and contemporary work

• Old and new narrative and visual directions in manga and anime

• Emerging topics in manga and anime

Submissions: Abstracts of no more than 200 words for presentations of 20 minutes are due by 1 June 2011 via email to <liberal_arts@mcad.edu>. Abstracts can be for individual speakers or for prearranged panels of 3-4 speakers (i.e., if proposing a prearranged panel, include a 200 word abstract for each paper as well as a 200 word abstract for the panel in its entirety). Please indicate “Mechademia Conference Submission” in the email subject line. Accepted authors will be notified by 15 July 2011. Panelists accepted for the conference must confirm and pay the conference registration fee by 15 August 2011.

Conference Registration: Conference registration is available online at <http://mcad.edu/sgms>. Conference registration includes entrance to all SGMS events, festivities, and refreshments. The conference registration fee of $85 for presenters, and $100 in advance or on site for non-presenters. The student registration fee is $50 (i.e., MCAD students pay a reduced registration fee of $25). A valid student identification is required for the reduced student rate. Panelists accepted for the conference must confirm their intent to present, and pay the conference registration fee, by 15 August 2011. Non-presenters can register online in advance, or on-site during the conference.

Accommodations: The conference organizers have reserved rooms at a reduced rate at the Millennium Hotel in downtown Minneapolis and in close proximity to the campus of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

Confirmed SGMS 2011 Invited Speakers:

Dr. Thomas LaMarre is Professor of East Asian Studies and Associate in Art History and Communications Studies at McGill University. His books include Shadows on the Screen: Tanizaki Jun’ichirô on Cinema and Oriental Aesthetics (2005); Uncovering Heian Japan: An Archaeology of Sensation and Inscription (2000); Impacts of Modernity (co-edited with Kang Nae-hui, 2003), a book on anime and media entitled Difference in Motion. LaMarre works on the editorial boards of positions, Traces, transtextes/transcultures, and is an Associate Editor for Mechademia. His latest book is The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation (University of Minnesota Press, 2009).

Dr. Marc Hairston is a Research Scientist at the University of Texas at Dallas, where he investigates space weather and the study of the Earth’s upper atmosphere, its magnetic field, and the aurora using satellite data from NASA and the Air Force. He has written numerous articles for Animerica, and is a long time favorite speaker at SGMS. As part of the public outreach to middle and high school science students, Hairston developed the comic character “Cindi,” an android space girl. Cindi has starred in two manga-styled comic books, and is part of the only manga series paid for by NASA. In 1999, Hairston and Dr. Pamela Gossin co-taught the first mainstream literature course at a U.S. college that included anime and manga as part of its required texts. Hairston serves currently as editorial board member and reviewer for Mechademia.

Dr. Sharalyn Orbaugh is Professor with appointments in both Asian Studies and Women’s Studies at the University of British Columbia. She is former Visiting Professor at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. Her publications include among many others “Sex and the Single Cyborg: Japanese Popular Culture Experiments in Subjectivity," currently under review at the University of Minnesota Press; guest editing a special issue on manga for the U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal; and “Creativity and Constraint in Amateur Manga Production” and “Busty Battlin’ Babes: the Evolution of the Shôjo in 1990s Visual Culture” in Gender and Power in the Japanese Visual Field (Hawai’i University Press, 2003) .

Past SGMS Workshop participants have inclued ABe Yoshitoshi, Tomoko Taniguchi, Sean Michael Wilson, Paul Benjamin, Helen McCarthy, Maki Isaka, Susan Napier, Patrick Drazen, Christopher Bolton, Thomas LaMarre, Sharon Kinsella, Masami Toku, Antonia Levi, Gilles Poitras, Brent Allison, Brian Ruh, Marc Hairston, Udon, Tania del Rio, Theresa Winge, Trina Robbins, Peter Paik, Crispin Freeman, C.B. Cebulski, Jeremy Ross, Wendy Siuyi Wong, Tim Lehman, Dennis Lo, Christopher Schons, Robert Ten Pas, Phil Anderson, Ke Jiang, Erik Lervold, Jeana Jorgensen, Lea Hernandez, Frenchy Lunning, Samantha Rei, and Verssen Werks.