Mingling with the media mix masters
This year’s President’s Conference Series, titled Experiencing the Media Mix: Manga, Anime, Video Games, offered a day-long master class to graduate students on February 6.
On this occasion, students working on Japanese popular culture were given the opportunity to present their research and discuss specific and general issues with professors well-versed on the subject, all of whom had presented papers at the conference the previous day.
I had the pleasure of being among the participating students, and it turned out to be one of the most useful, invigorating experiences since I started my PhD.
Participating professors were: Ian Condry (MIT), Mia Consalvo (Concordia), Thomas Lamarre (McGill), Margherita Long (UC Riverside), Thomas Looser (NYU), Toshiya Ueno (Wako University) and conference organizers Matthew Penney and Marc Steinberg (both from Concordia).
Hailing from a variety of fields, from cultural anthropology to film studies, they ensured we addressed a similar variety of topics. The professors were paired up and the 17 students — first-year MA and fifth-year PhD students — were divided into two sections. Each section spent over an hour with each pair of professors.
We were all researching very different objects, from the development of video game theory to contemporary war memory in Japan, and this could potentially have led to a scattered, superficial experience. But discussions were animated and flowing, with people showing genuine interest in each other’s work.
It is a credit to the professors that they were able to give personalized comments to each of us on our own research, while also giving more general advice on academic life. It was also a chance for us students to openly address our doubts and concerns:
How do we address criticism of our methodology? How does one balance being a fan of an object and researching that object? How do we adequately characterize ever-evolving notions such as culture, media, and fandom?
And, in the context of the media mix, how do we sort out and assemble theories that operate across platforms and disciplines?
It was incredibly refreshing to be able to address questions at the heart of our research without worrying that they wouldn’t be of collective interest.
Graduate studies can be lonely, especially for those of us who are finished with classes and are writing our thesis. Not only do we tend to work alone, but we are often working on such specific topics that we can feel intellectually isolated, even more so outside the university walls.
Studying non-traditional objects, such as popular culture, is much more accepted than it was in the past, but it can still raise eyebrows in some circles, both academic and not. So it was a pleasure to spend the day with people who not only shared interests, but also faced similar problems, taking advantage of coffee breaks to trade anecdotes about how we are sometimes misperceived.
But lest you should think we spent the day whining and complaining, let me reassure you: what most struck me about this master class is how passionate people were about their research, and how, despite everything, they loved what they were doing.
The advice I received from the professors was of course invaluable. But knowing that these people, students and professors alike, are in my field, having gotten to know them, and looking forward to exchanging with them again, is one of the best things I will be taking away from this experience.
Related links:
• “President's Conference Series” – NOW, February 8, 2012
• "Modern manga's wartime roots" – NOW, February 8, 2012
• President's Conference Series