CLA Conable Lecture Series

RIT's College of Liberal ArtsConable Distinguished Lecture Series inInternational StudiespresentsWilliam Ashbaugh SUNY OneontaProfessor & Chair, Department of HistoryTuesday, April 18th3:30 – 4:45 pmSAU, 1829 RoomA Brief History of Japanese Anime Fandom andMobile Suit Gundam’s First Thirty-Eight YearsAnime in Japan started out as a way to translate manga (comics) on to the television screen. Science fiction programing, difficult to do realistically or cheaply in live-action, was also tailor-made for low-cost anime, with or without origins of the stories in manga. A renewed popularity of Mobile Suit Gundam—one of these anime-first SF productions--during its reruns on television led to sequel after sequel, eventually providing Japanese viewers for the next four decades a group of television programs, original video animation series, and films that focus in part on environmental and anti-war themes.William Ashbaugh is Professor and Chair of the History Department at SUNY Oneonta, where he received the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Susan Sutton Smith Award for Scholarship. He was a Fulbright Lecturer at Doshisha University (Kyoto) and Kwansei Gakuin University (Nishinomiya) in Japan in the fall of 2010. His teaching and publications vary greatly and include medieval China and Japan, the coming of the Second World War, and anime.Interpreters provided upon request subject to availability.Please make your request today by going to Access.rit.edu