Course Description:
Hello Kitty is arguably the most recognizable icon in the world and was made Ambassador to Asia in 2008. Japanese fashions, games, manga, anime, music, toys, foods, and sports have spread worldwide and have created a new form of national superpower. How are characters like Hello Kitty changing global politics and the ways people construct their own identities? Are there any negative effects of regarding Japan as the “capital of cool”? Through study of a wide range of media, explore how popular culture reveals the values of societies that produce and consume it, and the ways Japan impacts our lives in Oregon. Taught in English.
Course Details:
- 3 Credits
- CRN 16477
- TR 12-1:20
- 151 STB
Alisa Freedman is an Associate professor of Japanese Literature and Film. Alisa teaches and researches modern Japanese literature, popular culture, youth culture, visual media, and how digital culture is changing notions of books and university education. Her major publications include Tokyo in Transit: Japanese Culture on the Rails and Road (Stanford University Press, 2011), an annotated translation of Nobel Prizewinner Kawabata Yasunari’s 1930 novel The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa(University of California Press, 2008), and a co-edited volume on Modern Girls on the Go: Gender, Mobility, and Labor in Japan (Stanford University Press, forthcoming in 2012). She has published articles on Japanese modernism, youth fashions, humor as critique, media discourses on new social groups, and intersections of literature and digital media, along with translations of Japanese fiction. Her current projects include a book on changing images of working women on Japanese television, a journal issue on Japanese versions of global children’s culture, a study of Sesame Street around the world, and translations of Japanese short stories.