Study Japanese Popular Culture in College

Temple University in Japan is the largest and oldest international University in Japan. They recently anounced a new summer program called Studies in Japanese Popular Culture. Now students can study anime, manga, culture, history and other things related to one of Japans wide exported subcultures.

This is a summer program I would serious consider doing if I was in Japan and could afford it. So if you in Japan and have a couple hundred thousand yen lying around with nothing much to do this summer you can register for the program, the deadline is April 1st. Students overseas at US based universities that are headed to Japan can also apply by February 15th. Remember the Otaku Encyclopedia that I reviewed in December? The author Patrick Galbraith who is a Ph.D. candidate will be one of your tutors, I wonder if he’ll come to class in his Goku outfit?

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  • Manga in Japanese Popular Culture
    This course will provide a basis for understanding Japanese manga in social, historic and cross-cultural context, reviewing the emergence of manga and the conditions of its development as an art form, commercial industry and cultural commodity. Topics include the art historical origins of manga; the variety of manga characters, genres and their relation to social and technological development; the relation of manga to computer games; and their adaptation in contemporary Japanese TV and cinema.
  • Anime in Japanese Popular Culture
    This course critically examines the themes and representations in anime works in relation to the historical and socio-cultural contexts of postwar Japan, in order to gain insights into how and why it has gained global significance as a subculture.
  • Japanese Youth and Popular Culture
    This seminar addresses the convergence of youth and popular culture, highlighting the performative aspects of youth subcultures in contemporary Japanese society. The course looks at the impact of mass media (music, film, television) on Japanese society and youth culture in particular; the intensive communities of on-line cyberculture and digital media networks; racial and political representation in Japanese hip hop and punk music; the style subcultures of Goth[Lolita], Cos-play and their subcultural networks; and examines how youth culture embodies and creates new forms of cultural innovation in these various realms.
  • Problems in Sociocultural Anthropology
    The focus of this course is to develop a nuanced understanding of contemporary Japanese society, by incorporating substantial fieldwork and collaborative research projects addressing social problems facing youth today. Youth issues are of global concern, as they reflect the structural dislocations of late modernity, but, in Japanese society, they are often conceived to reflect ‘uniquely Japanese’ particularities of the local culture.
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Temple Tniversity Summer Institute: Studies in Japanese Popular Culture – Full Details

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7 thoughts on “Study Japanese Popular Culture in College

  1. That sounds like something I’d be really interested in studying. Hopefully it’ll still be going a few years from now when I’ll be in a better position to take advantage of it.

  2. Sorry this may not relate to the post. Just stumbled across your blog and read the ‘about’. I love it!
    I too have an interest in Japan (and other parts of asia) luckily I’ve been able to travel there hope you get to go there too one day! [japan]

  3. That would be very interesting to take indeed, wish I was there now to have these kinds of opportunities! Hopefully this will still be around in another year or so haha

  4. I wonder what the field trips would be like lol. Go out to the different areas in Tokyo they’re studying like Shinjuku for fashion, Akiba for otaku, Harajuku for lolita, and more xD. I would attend it, though I want to know what kind of credit I would be able to get for this class lol.

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