What You Watch Is What You Are?: Early Anime and Manga Fandom in the United States
Andrea Horbinski (University of California, Berkeley)
- How did anime and manga first enter U.S. fandom, and why were people watching “Japanimation"? Using materials from the Fred Patten collection, this paper explores early anime and manga fandom in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. The problems that early fans faced were similar to those faced by Japanese audiences encountering English-language movies in the 1910s and 1920s, and the fans who watched anime in these years did so for similar reasons: anime offered them content they wanted mixed with appealing foreign-ness. The practices these fans pioneered eventually gave rise to the U.S. anime and manga industry.
Anime in the US in the 1990's and 2000's: Unauthorized distribution as a catalyst for evolution
Allison Hawkins
- Whether it was a copied VHS tape or a fansubbed video, chances are that you or someone you know has viewed anime through unauthorized means of distribution. With a consumer base formed partially by fans acting as creators and distributors, how has the anime market continued to grow? How do these fan distributors coexist with corporate distributors in an expanding market? This talk explores the way in which unauthorized distribution played a role in creating the current market of anime fandom and what that history means for the market today.
Persuasion or Pleasure: Cosplayers' Use of Social Media as a Rhetorical Tool
Caitlin Postal (California State University, Northridge)
- This talk focuses on the fan practice of cosplay through a rhetorical analysis of cosplayers' use of social media when building their online persona. Through personal interviews conducted with cosplayers and a textual analysis of their social media posts, we can see how Cicero's three offices of rhetoric (instruction, pleasure, persuasion) work in the minds and pages of well-known cosplayers. From there, let's consider how social media affects the performative nature of cosplay.
