Fwd: Japanese Fandom and Consumer Culture Conference

[Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow]

Not really about film and TV, but perhaps of interest to KineJapanners:

---------------- Begin Forwarded Message ----------------
From: Alicia Volk <alicia.volk at yale.edu>

*Please note that the program below reflects revisions in the conference
schedule.  The  reception will now be held on Saturday, September 19 from
5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

"Fanning the Flames:  Fandom and Consumer Culture in Contemporary Japan"
Conference
Yale University
Council on East Asian Studies, Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Avenue, New Haven,
Connecticut
September 18th-19th, 1998

The Council on East Asian Studies of Yale University will hold the 
"Fanning
the Flames: Fandom and Consumer Culture in Contemporary Japan" conference
on September 18 and 19, 1998. The conference will bring together
anthropologists from the United States, Australia and Japan who have done
fieldwork with a wide variety of fans and fan organizations in 
contemporary
Japan to address such topics in Japanese fandom as as baseball, enka 
music,
rock groups, rap music and manga fanzines.

Fandom is a crucial window into the forms and forces of consumption and
popular culture in modern Japan as elsewhere.  Fans emerge out of mass
culture audiences everywhere, seeking intensified meanings and pleasures 
in
the personalities, products, and productions of consumer society.  The
presentations of this conference profile a wide range of Japanese fans,
including enthusiasts of traditional rakugo storytelling, a club of
middle-aged women fans of a popular music star, youthful followers of
Japan's longest-running rock band, denizens of all-night rap clubs,
passionate fans clubs of a professional baseball team, and a thriving
community of girls and women who produce and devour amateur comics.  What
is distinctive of all the presentations is their grounding in close, often
extended fieldwork with the fans themselves.  What is common to the 
studies
is an effort to understand both the personal pleasures and the political
economies of fandoms.  The conference explores the many ways that fans in
and of Japanese mass culture actively search for intimacy and identity 
amid
the powerful corporate structures producing the leisure and entertainment
of late twentieth-century Japan.

Schedule:

Friday, September 18
7:30-9:30 p.m., Film Screening,  "Otaku no Video" ("The Fanatics"), Luce
Hall Auditorium

Saturday, September 19
9:00 a.m. to 5:15 p.m., Presentations, Luce Hall Auditorium

9:00-9:30   Welcome and Introduction of Conference Themes (William Kelly),
Luce Hall Auditorium

9:30-12:00  Session One, Luce Hall Auditorium

 Christine R. Yano, Department of Anthropology, University of Hawaii
"Letters from the Heart: Negotiating Fan-Star Relationships in Japanese
Popular Music"

 Ian Condry, Department of Anthropology, Yale University
"Little Birds and Thumpin' Campers:  A Spectrum of Japanese Rap Music 
Fans"

Carolyn S. Stevens,  Melbourne Institute of Asian Languages and Societies,
University of Melbourne
"Buying Intimacy: Proximity and Exchange in a Japanese Rock Concert"

Commentator: Merry White, Department of Anthropology, Boston
University

12:00-1:30 Lunch Break

1:30-3:00  Session Two, Luce Hall Auditorium

William W. Kelly,  Department of Anthropology, Yale University
"Sense and Sensibility at the Ballpark: What Fans Make of Professional
Baseball in Modern Japan"

Kenji Tierney, Department of Anthropology, University of California, 
Berkeley
"From TV Sets to the Sand-Covered Seats:  Spaces of Fans and Patrons in 
Sumo"

Commentator: Jennifer Robertson, Department of Anthropology,
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

3:00-3:30  Break, coffee and beverages will be served, Luce Common Room

3:30-5:15  Session Three, Luce Hall Auditorium

Lorie Brau,Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of
New Mexico
"Rakugo Fans at Play: Promoting the Art, Creating Community, Inventing 
Selves"

 Matthew Thorn, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University
"Girls and Women Getting Out of Hand: The Pleasure and Politics of Japan's
Amateur Comics Community"

Commentator: Theodore C. Bestor, Department of Anthropology, Cornell 
University

5:30-7:30  Open Reception, Luce Common Room

9:00-, Japanese music and dancing, Location to be announced

The conference is free and open to the public and brochures are available
upon request.  For further information, please consult the conference web
site at http://www.yale.edu/ceas/fandom.html, or contact Alicia Volk at 
the
Yale University Council on East Asian Studies, (203) 432-3426,
alicia.volk at yale.edu.