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unjapanologist) wrote2009-12-31 03:55 pm
[research] Conference wrap-up, and looking for good podcasts from Japanese universities
Originally published at Academic FFF. You can comment here or there.
Some final notes and observations following "Comics Worlds and the World of Comics" in Kyoto. I had a great time, learned a lot, and was quite impressed in general. The amount of fail was surprisingly small for an academic gathering (a few people excepted), and several presentations gave me some very helpful pointers and new ideas.
My personal favourites were CJ Suzuki and his insights on manga studies from an SF research perspective, Mizoguchi Akiko on yaoi readers, and Thomas Becker on the need to supplement semiotic analysis of manga/comics with considerations of social circumstances (abstracts).
Before I launch into a long-winded enumeration of vaguely connected impressions, a small request: please drop me a note if you know of a place to find good recordings of university lectures in Japanese, preferably humanities- or sociology-related. During the Q&A after my own presentation and the other Japanese lectures, I realized that my listening comprehension of Japanese in an academic context needs a lot of work. There were several presentations where I lost track of what was being said entirely after mere minutes. My interpretation from Japanese to English during the last session went surprisingly well, considering. I'm looking for ways to up my listening comprehension now but am not familiar enough with podcasts to be able to tell the useful stuff from the not so useful. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
Notes on the conference in general:
- Having all sessions in one room instead of running parallel sessions was a great decision. It eliminated all sorts of practical difficulties and ensured that all conference-goers stayed with the program and followed the same narrative from beginning to end.
- I do all my note-taking online these days, so the lack of reliable wifi in the conference space was a serious inconvenience. A lot of the time I could not tweet, look for background info on what was being said, or find info on speakers to put me back on track when I couldn't follow their Japanese. I do realize that I'm crying into the wilderness a bit here, but a lot of humanities people do like to do useful academic things with the interwebs, all the time :)
- There was an impressive effort to make the whole conference accessible to those who speak either no English or no Japanese, with translations of papers and consecutive interpreting being offered for all sessions except the first workshop (where I presented). Given how problematic language issues usually are for manga researchers and readers, this was a real breath of fresh air. However, presenters were obliged to stick closely to papers they'd handed in weeks before in order not to disrupt the interpreting, and several people felt this made for a very restrictive and traditional format. I was tremendously glad myself that I had no interpreter and could continue tweaking both the content and delivery of my presentation al the way through. Also, I have difficulty concentrating when all there is to focus on is one person sitting still and reading from a piece of paper, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one, certainly among the younger crowd. The translating and interpreting made this the only kind of delivery that presenters could choose, and that's problematic. Not that I have a good solution to the problem of marrying interpreting with ad-libbing by presenters. Using professional interpreters instead of relying on the young researchers would no doubt be prohibitively expensive, and dropping interpretation entirely would be a no-no for this kind of conference. Hmmm.
- Professor Jaqueline Berndt and other people from Seika University and the research center at the manga museum did a fantastic job of making everything run smoothly and tying all presentations together. Organization was truly superb, and although there were the kind of hitches that come with any big first-time conference (or indeed, any conference), they were generally overcome very quickly. Kudos.
- I had great fun mingling and ended up with a million cards, which made me wish there was more contact info for the participants given on the conference website. Someone from the museum research center assured me that an online mingling space would be created soon, in time for the next conference in Cologne later this year -"Intercultural Crossovers, Transcultural Flows: Manga/Comics". Looking forward to that.
Notes on my own presentation:
- Since I had only fifteen minutes, I cut a massive amount of stuff and ended up concentrating on how copyright laws influence the place of derivative works in comics/manga research in a way that is makes no academic sense whatsoever. Dropping all mention of how problems within academia itself reinforce this copyright-induced attitude towards derivative works was necessary in view of the time limit, but I wasn't happy cutting that part, and I'll definitely work it into the final paper that will be published in the conference proceedings. Another thing I will definitely add is more hard data about derivative works and studies devoted to them.
- Someone suggested that there are more accurate/better terms than nijisosakubutsu (二次創作物) for derivative works in Japanese. I'm not inclined to agree, since no source I've consulted up to now even hints that this word is inaccurate in the context I'm using it in, but I'm going to look further into legal terminology surrounding derivative works regardless (and add a bunch of relevant terms to my embryonic dojinshi terminology glossary).
- Prezi was obviously a big hit, given how many people came to inquire about the software, although someone correctly remarked that there were a lot of text blocks poking into some screens that made things look messy here and there. Better layout next time.
- There will be videos of the talks posted at some point in the near future. I'll analyze my delivery after I've seen the video (if I ever work up the nerve).
Congratulations to the organizers for a great conference, extra special thanks to the many people who gave me helpful feedback, and a very fruitful 2010 to all.
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Another one for the mile-long 'to read' list... Yey? I really need three months off from absolutely everything so I can just read some bloody books :)
no subject
I see quite a bit of discussion about it in the UK, perhaps because the average British person is for all intents and purposes as monolingual as the average American...except that multilingual Europe is only a couple of hours away from the UK. The problem that's often cited is that for "everybody else," the obvious second language is English...but if your first language is already English, there's no consensus about what the second language ought to be.
When I was in high school, I put a lot of work into becoming fluent in Spanish--thinking, given number of Spanish speakers in the US, that it would be a useful language to master. Well, guess what? I never kept the language up because I never *had* to use it, and now all that's left of all those years of work is pretty high level reading comprehension in Spanish. Which I don't need, either. T_T
What *is* rarely talked about, though, is how the American academy is so supremely insular and self-supplying. Almost certainly moreso in that sense than the UK. I know this intellectually, but I admit it's hard for me to *really* understand that because my linguistic and cultural competency makes it "native terrain." I was warned back home, in not so many words, that while a year of two of experience abroad is viewed as a plus, actually getting your PhD abroad is just too damn much experience abroad from the American academy's perspective! (It sounds like a joke...but it isn't.)
Learning a language that is totally unrelated to your own and that's of no use to you in daily life is difficult and time-consuming, and learning to express yourself in that language on an academic level is fiendishly hard.
Yup.
Anyone who has to jump through all those hoops before being 'allowed' onto the international academic scene in any field is at huge disadvantage compared to native English speakers.
Alas. More evidence that it's not a meritocracy out there, that's for sure.
You're nearing the end of your program, right? Four years?
WHUT?! Where did you get that idea?! >_< I did a master's degree at NYU, which might be what you're thinking of. Nope, I just started the PhD program in Cambridge this past October. It's supposed to be three years long (Year One: Research Design, Year Two: Research Execution, Year Three: Writeup), and that's what I've got funding for, but new rule instituted just a couple of years ago says that I'm allowed up to a maximum of four years. Needless to say, I'm in a race against time with my funding, not with the four year maximum, which is why I'm starting to write *now*. >_<
Another one for the mile-long 'to read' list... Yey? I really need three months off from absolutely everything so I can just read some bloody books :)
*laughs* I know how you feel! One of the other PhD students in my department calls it "The Good Student Would Read This" list.
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I think I get your meaning. It's pretty hard for me to imagine growing up surrounded by only one language in daily life, media, education, etc. I've never spent long periods of time in the UK -are languages other than English actually used in the mainstream media so people have some exposure to them? Or is the foreign language education discussion more about the job market, where mainlanders who know more languages may (in theory) pose a threat?
Actually, schools in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium start teaching French and sometimes German before they teach English, but right now French and German are to me what Spanish is to you. The only languages I'm still more or less fluent in are the ones I started to learn for fun, because I wanted to read comics and manga in their original languages.
I was warned back home, in not so many words, that while a year of two of experience abroad is viewed as a plus, actually getting your PhD abroad is just too damn much experience abroad from the American academy's perspective!
That's quite... wow. What exactly would be problematic about getting a PhD abroad?
Nope, I just started the PhD program in Cambridge this past October.
Oops, yes, I did take mentions of starting writing to mean you were nearing the end of a program. Probably because I'm too disorganized myself to start writing anything at its proper beginning right from the start. Ganbare!
no subject
Not sure about television, but certainly not in books, magazines, or newspapers. Probably not.
Or is the foreign language education discussion more about the job market, where mainlanders who know more languages may (in theory) pose a threat?
Isn't *everything* about the job market these days? >_< Yeah, the whole "must teach the children more languages usually gets articulated according to some losing battle for global competitiveness.
What exactly would be problematic about getting a PhD abroad?
Well, it's proof that you're not "one of them." From a pragmatic standpoint, you don't know the U.S. system. From an ethnocentric one, Americans think their higher education system is the best in the world, so if nothing on your CV rings a bell with them, they'll assume your credentials aren't worth their time of day. (I've even seen studies which show that American academics rate research publish in languages other than English as prima facie of lesser quality significantly more often than do non-American academics.)
Besides, it's gotten to the point now that if you're an American who wants an academic job post-PhD, the dissertation is only a *tiny* part of what you need to have accomplished. This applies to your field's job prospects in the US, and it is increasingly applying to mine: http://chronicle.com/article/Dodging-the-Anvil/63274/
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(When I was a student, there was quite a bit of rivalry between Japanese and Chinese studies. I joined the staff as a fresh-faced TA while still convinced that the teachers of both departments were surely above the students' petty squabbling and I would now be joining the ranks of very intelligent and rational adults. Heh. It's funny now, but the Awakening was quite traumatic at the time.)
This applies to your field's job prospects in the US, and it is increasingly applying to mine: http://chronicle.com/article/Dodging-the-Anvil/63274/
Thanks for the link. Every couple of months I go read some of Mr. Pannapacker's articles, to remind myself why I'm sticking to my non-uni-related translation job and incorporating as much practical tech and language study into my research as possible. I'm immensely glad I came across him before starting grad school. This piece (http://chronicle.com/article/Building-a-Secondary-Career/45587/) is still my favourite, especially the last two paragraphs. Are you aiming for a position in the US later on?
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I want a good job somewhere. If I have options, then we can discuss location. >_< Being in a PhD program is like playing a game of Chutes and Ladders, except I don't yet know whether I've landed on a chute or a ladder!
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