Slashdot Mirror
More Anime College and University Courses Being Offered
Ninja Master Gara writes "Anime News Network reports New York University is offering a new courses on the anime industry and culture. Anime is slowly expanding from University Clubs into mainstream college courses, many of which begin at the 'What is anime?' level. Several Universities and Community Colleges already offer similar courses, or incorporate anime into existing studies." If any school decides to offer a course on the Gundam series, I'd be happy to teach a class.
Imagine what an effective work force we would have if people promptly said "Hai!" and could cheer with "Yatta! Yatta!" :)
what about hentai class?
"I still gotta take Tentacle Rape 203 next term"
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
For the advanced course, I would recommend a mix of Evangelion and Memories (especially Magnetic Rose and Cannon Fodder).
For the Phd degree, submit a one page dissertation explaining the reason for the plot developments in the Excel Saga.
/.'s 10 Millionth
This reminds me of the Star Trek courses that several colleges have had over the years. What a laugh riot. One syllabus I saw was basically watching 3 select star trek episodes a week, discussing them in class, and writing 5 papers analyzing them over the course of the semester. But still, that would be a great way to fulfill a GenEd humanities requirement or whatnot.
Repeal the DMCA!
I go to Western Washington University in Washington state and the Art History 270 course (India, Japan, China) taught by Momi Naughton takes an entire lecture period to talk about anime with a self-professed anime maniac, whose name I forget. He goes way back to influences such as Hokusai and brings basically the entire span of what we learned in the class and how if affected the development of anime. Quite interesting...
sig.
...in the Netherlands, that would be part of what they call a "pretpakket": basically something like a university degree in macrame. It's stupidly silly.
I heard education in the US sucked, but it's another thing to see it confirmed.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Understanding anime should be an advanced course for writers and artists. The stylistic conventions are different from Western practice, but not incomprehensible. They can be studied and taught. Read Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics". (Skip his later Internet book.)
Course Description:
Anime (V33.0709) This course introduces students to the rich world of Japanese animation or anime, its form and style, history, popular genres and themes, major authors, and fan culture. We will explore the popularity of anime in relation to the cultural conditions of contemporary Japan and to the context of cultural globalization which is radically transforming the way audio-visual images are produced and consumed.
It's kind of nice to see that Anime is finally being recognize, after so many years, for it's massive cultural influences all over the world. It's gone from being a somewhat-maligned form of geek|children's entertainment to a full-fledged industry/art form. I think it would be interesting to see what's up next on the platter? Maybe the entire geek world can be examined for it's influences on modern culture. Think about it this way: someday your kids could be reading literature in school that includes archived Slashdot posts your doing now! Well.. considering how many "hentai tentacle rape" posts are bound to pop up here... maybe not.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Hell, the prospect of getting a B.A. in anime arts gives me a warm fuzzy feeling, that will probably contrast nicely to the bitter cold of sleeping in a gutter if I get that degree.
At the University of Texas at *Austin* last fall was a full course focusing on just anime taught by Dr. Susan Napier of the Asian Studies Center there. (Dr. Napier did a guest lecture at Dr. Gossin's course last spring when we taught "Nausicaa" for the second time.) Dr. Napier has been invited as a guest lecturer at Harvard this spring and will be reteaching the anime course there. Yes, they're actually officially studying anime at *Harvard*! (Prepare for hell to free over after classes start there in a few weeks..... )
As for the complaint about the lack of college level books about anime (in English, that is) that's true. But Dr. Napier has completed her book "Anime from 'Akira' to 'Princess Mononoke'" and it will be out sometime this spring or summer. This will be the first college level analysis/literary criticism of anime available in English.
Anyway, it would be a fun paper to write. Although, if I were teaching the course, I would open it up to a transformation sequence from any magical girl anime (Hime-chan's Ribbon, Card Captor Sakura, Saint Tail, Devil Hunter Yohko, etc). It might also be interesting to speculate about why animators decide to use the transformations with such repetition. Is it simply to reduce the amount of new animation per episode or do they think it provides continuity between episodes?
we have had courses in Star Trek, Star Wars, Wine Appreciation and whatever.. but the point is here.. what will this mean for your future..
.. i am a big fan of anime.. its just that i think that a college course on it, while cool, would be a waste of money (yours/your parents/your state's) and time that could be better spent (on girls/brews/parties)...
i am not arguing that people need not be given a grounding in the arts, far from it.. but lets face it folks, this is POP ART.. i doubt that other than the history of anime, this "course" can teach you anything that you and your friends can't learn by just sitting in front of the tube for a few brews and talking about it..
the point i am trying to make is that there is a LOT of art history out there.. stuff that people take for granted.. stuff that people don't BOTHER to learn...
Colleges are offering this kind of course to make you pay for a course that will not mean anything on your transcript (unless you are going into the anime field) and is nothing but grade padding.. in the same vein you may as well take a course in Britney Spears
don't get me wrong
Suchetha
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
Anyway, I wonder how much they will be teaching what they think anime should be, versus what it really is? I ask as I've read this book on Takarazuka Revue which describes it basically as a hot-bed of azn lezbo tranny pr0n, whereas everyone Japanese who I've spoken to (including my wife, who studied at the associated drama school and college) says it's just fantasy escapism, especially because the average real-life Japanese man is so crap, the otokoyaku[*] provide an idealised view of what men could be.
[*] Obligatory Japanese word inserted to pretend I know what I'm talking about.
Come on...this series needs a course devoted to it. I mean mechs, spirituality, politics, culture? I'm sure everyone else here will probably either say Lain or Neon Genisis Evangelion.
of course...the anime art form is something that should be studied. for one, it offers some great content and social/political messages that wouldn't be accepted in "mainstream" media. second, artwork and story telling go hand in hand. after all, isn't that what artwork (of any form) is supposed to do, to speak to the viewer and convey some message/story?
anyone who flames me saying that hollywierd puts out decent artwork hasn't been to the theaters lately. most of it is tripe. it's entertaining yes, but it's still tripe in an artistic sense. of course there is the rare gem out there, but it's not often that people can (or care to) recognize the difference. for this reason film classes in general (including anime classes) are a way to help people gain some perspective and recognize art for art, and not just art for the sake of entertainment.
after my first film class i couldn't watch any movie in "pan and scan" anymore. it helped me understand composition, writing, story telling, and substance...something which is lacking in most of the "modern" world.
-frozen
I'm not always the brightest pixel in the stream
I just wonder how many people realize where the word "anime" really comes from. For those who never knew, `anime' is really just the Japanese-truncated pronunciation of the American word `Animation'. So it amuses me that "anime" now essentially signifies "Japanese cartoons", when in truth everything from Batman to Donald Duck are "anime" as well.
gotta love how cultures mix and bounce things around.
-Q
they have a trial course that you can try if you got a graphics pad.
I got the link when I was browsing around studio Ghibli
My life in the land of the rising sun.
The fact that it is art is what makes it logical to teach a class on. Early philosophy teachers used popular poetry, and film schools today use feature films as point of example and discussion.
Why is anime any different. There is a wealth of ways one could approach the class. First you could look at the original artwork, in it's native culture. Then you can look at the citizen's response to it. Or you could examen foriegn audiences and their interest in the genre.
There is probably a great deal to learn, the best way to become wise is to teach yourself how to think, not what to think.
"Only when you are looking for them will the Red spades and Black Diamonds appear" - Ray (Christopher Lloyd, Interstate 60)
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
Just kidding, calm down all you anime fanatics. If I can watch Star Trek then you can watch cartoons featuring scatily clad Japanese chicks of questionable age. :-)
Essay question (90 minutes, no open books):
Explain FLCL.
zing
Go and get the whole series of NEON GENISIS: EVANGELION , watch it with the 2 movies afterwards and then come back and say anime sucks...
Considering that it can be called a valid art form as any other form of hand-drawn animation is then it's hard to see why there is anything wrong with this at all. In fact, I find it interesting that something like this wasn't already in place.
Sure, anime hasn't been very mainstream up until recently, but I have seen some absurd art classes in my life. I'm not lying, but I have seen classes advertised as being "Studies of Hungarian Art from the 13th Century". Well, a class on anime can't do much worse, can it?
I just want to make a point that I think many people may not be aware of. I'm currently a student at UC Berkeley and we have all kinds of classes like this, from history of video games, stock market course, male/female sexuality, simpsons to 80's pop-culture. BUT, they are all taught by STUDENTS. And the students can teach anything here at UCB as long as they get a faculty adviser. The adviser doesn't really play a part in the course though.
DeCal stands for Democratic education, it is students teaching students. Don't be confused and thing NYU highered a new Anime history. They didn't, and UCB didn't high LoTR profs or Simpsons ones either, students are teaching these classes...
I can fulfill my dream of writting my thesis on why Goku would win in a deathmatch against Superman.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
I could see them offering a course that uses anime as a sort of 'case study' for some real academic field, the way art majors examine a particular period or movement and fit it into their overall study of art.
Unfortunately, that's not what seems to be happening here. This looks like another pop-culture cop-out course.
I know people will get upset and point out that entertainment and pop-culture are worthy of study. That's true, but it should be serious study. If you want to teach a 100-level course on pop-culture, keep it broad and stress the basic themes and concepts of pop-culture with a variety of examples. If you want to focus on a specific medium/time-period/region combination, make an upper-level class that takes a specific academic perspective and targets a particular major.
In other words:
bad: Sociology 110 -- Sit-coms
good: Sociology 428 -- Sit-coms and wartime escapism in America
-- . . ramblin' . . .
1) The professor's just hoping one of the students will figure it out so he can steal the answer and publish it.
2) See the black hole into which everything I learned in Intro to Neurosci went the minuite after the final. All I know is playing the Gundam Wing SNES game made my cousin's kid puke all over the floor.
3) Will accept: brief history of CLAMP studios, rant about roomate's inability to appreciate Ranma, questioning the sexual orientation of the Inital D character designs without coming off as homophobic, "What the fuck's with Utena?"
4) Find some orphans, some scientists, Russian or German, some unobtainium, and either harness the power of a minor diety or drug a creepy psychic kid. If nothing happens, draw more Kabalistic symbols on the walls.
5) Up the budget for the Tokyo Police Cataclysm Division.
Just pretend I came up with something funny in there somewhere.