Kinema Club Workshop Schedule

[Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto]

JAPANESE CINEMA STUDIES IN THE REAR VIEW MIRROR: RE-VIEWING THE DISCIPLINE

The 1999 Workshop of the Kinema Club

March 27-28, 1999

PLACE: School of Social Work, Room 1644
            University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Organizers: 
        Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto (The University of Iowa)
        Abe' Mark Nornes (The University of Michigan)


The purpose of this workshop is to enable participants to engage in
collaborative reflection on a series of papers on the subject of Japanese
cinema studies. It will use the occasion to prepare this work for a
publication in the form of a journal issue or edited book.

The idea of a workshop with a publication as the final objective took shape
over the last year, however, it has been the culmination of several years
of discussion about the state of Japanese cinema studies in the United
States. It is evident to all researchers and teachers in the field that we
are in a state of flux. While the scholars who established the field came
from film studies proper or from without academia, there are now people
approaching Japanese cinema from a variety of disciplines including
history, literature, area studies, anthropology, and comparative
literature. It is apparent that the study of Japanese cinema now has no
"home"----this may be a unique strength, but it also has serious implications
for anyone seriously interested in Japanese cinema as a research topic. At
this moment of blurring disciplinary boundaries, many have come to feel the
need to take stock of the situation: ask where we have come from and where
we are going. What is the shape of our field, and what are the most pressing
issues for future work?

Unlike film conferences where papers present research projects or analyze
films, this workshop will deal specifically with meta-critical and
methodological issues concerning the disciplinary and institutional
problems of Japanese film scholarship. 

This workshop will feature five papers, which will be distributed and read
beforehand. The papers are available online in html and Adobe Acrobat
versions. To read them, please go to the Kinema Club website
(http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/Markus/Workshop.html).

On Saturday, the workshop consists of five 70 minute sessions. Each session
starts with the presenter's 5 minute opening remark, followed by the
discussants' 10 minute commentary, 50 minute group discussion and debate,
and a few minute summation by one of the discussants. The workshop concludes
on Sunday morning with an informal session on the current state of cinema
studies in Japan and an open discussion on various issues and topics which
go beyond the scope of any individual paper.

All sessions are free and open to the public.

Friday, March 26:

4:00-6:00:  Participants who arrive early are invited to
                The Center for Japanese Studies reception 
                for Professor Mikiro Kato, Toyota Visiting Professor 
                (Social Work Building, Suite 3603, 1080 S. University).

Saturday, March 27:

9:00-9:30: Breakfast

9:30-10:00: Welcome and Introduction
                Abe' Mark Nornes

10:00-11:10: "Is There a Discipline Called Japanese Cinema Studies?"
                Joseph Murphy (University of Florida)

                Discussants: 
                Edward Fowler (University of California, Irvine)
                Joanne Izbicki (Wake Forest University)

11:15-12:25: "Japanese Cinema Studies Here and There: The Academic Subject in
Global Culture"
                Aaron Gerow (Yokohama National University)

12:25-1:30: Lunch

1:30-2:40: "Film Historiography's Other: Nation, Narrative and Capital in Japan"
                Eric Cazdyn (University of Oregon)

2:45-3:55: "Re-igniting Japanse Tradition with Hana-Bi"
                Darrell William Davis (University of Hong Kong)

4:00-5:10: "Cramping: Sexual Fields in the National Body, the
        Dilemma of Psychoanalytic Criticism, and the Stakes of Theory"

                Jonathan M. Hall (University of California, Santa Cruz)

6:30: Dinner, Home of Leslie Pincus (1131 W. Washington; 332-0270)


Sunday, March 28:

8:30-9:00: Breakfast

9:00-9:45: Presentation on the State of Cinema Studies in Japan
                Kato Mikiro, University of Kyoto

9:45-11:30: Open Discussion


The 1999 Kinema Club workshop was made possible by generous support from The
University of Michigan:

Center for Japanese Studies
Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
International Institute
Program in Film and Video Studies
Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies
Office of the Vice President for Research