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Calendar

The tables below include the topics covered in each class session as well as the topics of each of the talks students are required to attend.

SES # TOPICS KEY DATES
Week 1: Introduction
1 Introduction to the Course  
Week 2: Analyzing Japan / Analyzing Popular Culture
2 Film Segment: "The Japanese Version"  
3 The History of Popular Music in Japan  
Week 3: Racial Boundaries and Representation in Popular Culture
4 Film Segment: "Doubles"  
5 Race in Japanese Hip-Hop  
Week 4: Gender, Sexuality, and Popular Culture
6 Seminar on "Gender Roles and Anime."

If unable to attend the Seminar, then your Assignment is to Write a 2-page Commentary Contrasting Two of the Assigned Readings (Due by Ses #8). 		  
7 Special Event: "Comfort Women of Korea visit MIT."

If you cannot attend, an additional assignment can be done instead.		  
Week 5: Identity, Resistance, and Popular Culture: Borders and Crossings
8 Japanese Identity: Homogeneity or Difference? Discussion of Essay #1 Assignment
9 Methods and Approaches to the Study of Popular Culture Essay #1 Due (5 Pages, Double-Spaced)
Week 6: Manga and Cultural Production
10 Harvard Talk  
11 A Sociology of Cultural Production of Manga  
Week 7: Manga and Power
12 Metropolis: Fritz Lang to Tezuka to Otomo  
13 Manga and Social Commentary  
Week 8: Manga and Anime
14 Harvard Talk  
15 Who are the Otaku?  
Week 9: Assessing Manga as Cultural Form
16 In Class Discussion of Manga Issues Re: Essay 2  
17   Essay #2 Due (5 Pages, Double Spaced)
Week 10: Re-Imagining Japan
18 Tradition and Transnationalism  
19 Flow or Appropriation - Whose Culture is it? (2)  
Week 11: Japanese Television
20 Student Presentations 1  
21 Japanese Television  
Week 12: Japanese Popular Literature
22 Student Presentations 2  
23 Japanese Popular Literature  
Week 13: Crisis and Restructuring
Week 14: Popular Culture and Japan's Future
24   Final Paper is Due the Last Day of Class.
There is no Final Exam

Schedule of Talks

TALK # SPEAKER TOPICS
1 Anne Allison, Duke University (special Popular Culture Series: co-sponsored
with the Program in U.S.-Japan Relations)
 		 Japanese Monsters in the Era of Pokemon Capitalism
2 Sydney Brown, Emeritus, University of Oklahoma Jazz in Japan
3 Alisa Freedman, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Cornell University Daily Commutes and Evening Dates: Images of Modern Middle Class
Tokyo, 1925-1935
 
4 Gennifer Weisenfeld (Asian Cultural Studies series) Duke University From Baby's First Bath: Kao Soap and Japanese Commercial Design
5 Laura Miller (special Popular Culture Series) Loyola University of Chicago The Naughty Girls of Tokyo: Kogal Fashion, Language and Behavior
6 Theodore Bestor (special Popular Culture Series) Harvard University The Americanization of Sushi