about cool japan
Since January 2006, Professor Ian Condry has organized the Cool Japan: Media, Culture, Technology Research Project at MIT and Harvard. The project presents colloquia, international conferences, and arts events to examine the cultural connections, dangerous distortions, and critical potential of popular culture. The goal is to encourage scholarly debate, research, and networking in the Boston area for faculty and students interested in media and globalization related to Japan. The project is sponsored by the MIT Japan Program, the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University, and MIT Foreign Languages & Literatures.
organizer:
Ian Condry, MIT Foreign Languages & Literatures
condry@mit.edu
theme 2009-2010:
virtual worlds, real bodies
The MIT/Harvard Cool Japan research project is planning several events for the current academic year. This year’s theme is “Virtual Worlds, Real Bodies,” in which we explore various ways in which popular culture and media related to Japan are intertwined with issues concerning the body, gender, and sexuality. Too often the scholarship that examines popular culture reinforces the impression that media representations exist on screen, in earbud headphones, or are associated primarily with the technologies of conveyance rather than in their points of contact with material bodies, with ideological and practical relations of gendered and transgendered people, and permeating the intimate spaces of desire.