More Anime College and University Courses Being Offered

Ninja Master Gara writes "Anime News Network reports New York University is offering a new courses on the anime industry and culture. Anime is slowly expanding from University Clubs into mainstream college courses, many of which begin at the 'What is anime?' level. Several Universities and Community Colleges already offer similar courses, or incorporate anime into existing studies." If any school decides to offer a course on the Gundam series, I'd be happy to teach a class.

Anime Course

[Anonymous Coward]

The college I attended, Earlham College (www.earlham.edu), offered a course in anime for some years. Unfortunately they stopped offering it a year or two ago. I'm glad to see that course such as this are appearing at other Universities.

Re:My initial reaction

[NitroPye]

Hey Gundam is a very indepth and creative series, there are so many ways to anaylize the gundam universes. Every gundam series has its own message, so good, plus giant fighting mobile suits.. cant get much better then that

Here's something for the Survey level class

[Cyclopedian]

For all you people that want to see the funny part of anime: Dare to be Stupid [smoonstore.com].

For the advanced course, I would recommend a mix of Evangelion and Memories (especially Magnetic Rose and Cannon Fodder).

For the Phd degree, submit a one page dissertation explaining the reason for the plot developments in the Excel Saga [animefu.com].

fantasy

[adamruck]

I would have thought anime would have already been part of college, under art somewhere. Kinda like cartoon sketching or drawing, only with a particular style.

Reminds me of...

[Tuxinatorium]

This reminds me of the Star Trek courses [csuchico.edu] that several colleges have had over the years. What a laugh riot. One syllabus I saw was basically watching 3 select star trek episodes a week, discussing them in class, and writing 5 papers analyzing them over the course of the semester. But still, that would be a great way to fulfill a GenEd humanities requirement or whatnot.

At my school...

[httpamphibio.us]

I go to Western Washington University [wwu.edu] in Washington state and the Art History 270 course (India, Japan, China) taught by Momi Naughton takes an entire lecture period to talk about anime with a self-professed anime maniac, whose name I forget. He goes way back to influences such as Hokusai and brings basically the entire span of what we learned in the class and how if affected the development of anime. Quite interesting...

Re:Anime Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's BOTH Informative and Insightful.

Yup, see in it Austin...

[Anonymous Coward]

At the University of Texas at *Austin* last fall was a full course focusing on just anime taught by Dr. Susan Napier of the Asian Studies Center there. (Dr. Napier did a guest lecture at Dr. Gossin's course last spring when we taught "Nausicaa" for the second time.) Dr. Napier has been invited as a guest lecturer at Harvard this spring and will be reteaching the anime course there. Yes, they're actually officially studying anime at *Harvard*! (Prepare for hell to free over after classes start there in a few weeks..... )

As for the complaint about the lack of college level books about anime (in English, that is) that's true. But Dr. Napier has completed her book "Anime from 'Akira' to 'Princess Mononoke'" and it will be out sometime this spring or summer. This will be the first college level analysis/literary criticism of anime available in English.

I'll give you one guess . . .

[White Shadow]

From the course at umich [umich.edu]:

A key feature of any episode of Sailor Moon is transformation. Choose one morphing scene from any episode or film version of Sailor Moon. Describe in concrete terms how the animators render this transformation in time and space. ... We want to emphasize that there is no necessarily correct answer for this topic; the success of your paper will lie in its specificity in analyzing the work of the animators, and the argument you mount---no matter how speculative---concerning the relationship of the animation and its probable viewers. ...

Hmm, let me guess what the teenage boy viewers are thinking when they watch these transformation . . .

Anyway, it would be a fun paper to write. Although, if I were teaching the course, I would open it up to a transformation sequence from any magical girl anime (Hime-chan's Ribbon, Card Captor Sakura, Saint Tail, Devil Hunter Yohko, etc). It might also be interesting to speculate about why animators decide to use the transformations with such repetition. Is it simply to reduce the amount of new animation per episode or do they think it provides continuity between episodes?

Re:Bachelor of Arts in Anime coming soon

[pragma_x]

When I was in college (www.vt.edu) a few years back, I attended some of the local anime clubs from time to time.

I say some because there were three total university recgonized, bona-fide, clubs at that school. They each had separate meetings, which mostly comprised of 6-hour long screenings of non-stop anime. That's 18-hours a week, of nothing but the best in Japanese sci-fi, drama, comedy, fantasy and the occasional kids show.

Now was was really interesting about all this interest in Anime, was not the shows themselves, but rather the interest in Japanese culture they fostered. The clubs featured regular weekend clinics for language and culture courses and interest groups. A few club members even took trips to Japan regularily.

The fact that universities are starting to recognize this kind of love for culture (not just entertainment) seems like a perfect way to diversify the curriculum. It's about time!

Gasaraki and film in general

[frozencesium]

Come on...this series needs a course devoted to it. I mean mechs, spirituality, politics, culture? I'm sure everyone else here will probably either say Lain or Neon Genisis Evangelion.

of course...the anime art form is something that should be studied. for one, it offers some great content and social/political messages that wouldn't be accepted in "mainstream" media. second, artwork and story telling go hand in hand. after all, isn't that what artwork (of any form) is supposed to do, to speak to the viewer and convey some message/story?

anyone who flames me saying that hollywierd puts out decent artwork hasn't been to the theaters lately. most of it is tripe. it's entertaining yes, but it's still tripe in an artistic sense. of course there is the rare gem out there, but it's not often that people can (or care to) recognize the difference. for this reason film classes in general (including anime classes) are a way to help people gain some perspective and recognize art for art, and not just art for the sake of entertainment.

after my first film class i couldn't watch any movie in "pan and scan" anymore. it helped me understand composition, writing, story telling, and substance...something which is lacking in most of the "modern" world.

-frozen

Great article about the importance of Anime

[cdf12345]

remember this? It was posted on /. a while back

http://www.kampo.co.jp/kyoto-journal/media/anima te d.html

Education need not be boring!

[Kethinov]

A lot of people see this sort of thing as a huge joke but I don't. Studying something in-depth that revolves around entertainment is really no different than a kind of community service. By being well educated about a specific form of entertainment, you become a better creator of that form of entertainment, improving the quality of life of those who indulge in this entertainment. As such, you help the industry evolve and improve faster. The concept of taking an Anime college course will prove to be quite beneficial to the Anime industry itself, I think.

DeCal

[vandel405]

I just want to make a point that I think many people may not be aware of. I'm currently a student at UC Berkeley and we have all kinds of classes like this, from history of video games, stock market course, male/female sexuality, simpsons to 80's pop-culture. BUT, they are all taught by STUDENTS. And the students can teach anything here at UCB as long as they get a faculty adviser. The adviser doesn't really play a part in the course though.

DeCal stands for Democratic education, it is students teaching students. Don't be confused and thing NYU highered a new Anime history. They didn't, and UCB didn't high LoTR profs or Simpsons ones either, students are teaching these classes...

Re:Here's something for the Survey level class

[Anonymous Hack]

You know, anime is... mixed. I remember watching some and finding it wonderful. I enjoyed Ghost in the Shell [imdb.com] (Kokaku kidotai). Battle Angel Alita [imdb.com] (Gunnm) totally blew my mind. But then i watched the ones everyone recommends - Akira, Cowboy Bebop, Evangelion, Ninja Scroll etc... And was seriously underwhelmed. I think the key thing to remember is that anime is a medium, not a genre. There are some that are quite obviously aimed at a younger audience, and some that are obviously aimed at an adult audience, but feel very much like geek porn... It seems like these are the ones that are most popular in the West, which is a bit of a shame.

For people who see the rapid-fire, rapid-speech, Nintendo-y animes and get turned off, i'd definitely recommend watching a few other things (again, Battle Angel Alita is fantastic). For people who don't like the sci-fi or GIANT ROBOTS themes, there are fantasy ones... It's an interesting scene, though i have to admit i can't understand the people who will eat up just about anything the Japanese animators churn out. It's like music... books. All different.

Re:what about

[0x0d0a]

I submit that any reference to hentai or tentacles in an anime thread has now reached the redundancy level of hot grits, beowulf clusters, et al. It is not now, nor has it ever been funny.

I'd say that one of the primary reasons grits and beowulf *are* funny is because of redundancy.

There is a phenomenal amount of anime that is not only prescient, but superior, in a literary sense, to just about any mainstream entertainment this sorry-ass culture can muster.

Yes, and there's also hentai -- the US has very few adult cartoons, so it's at least as unusual and conversation-worthy. No one claimed that all anime was hentai -- they just felt like mentioning that rather than whatever lofty Shakespearean anime you wanted them to talk about.

Oh, and for you capitalist types, ...from a communist type?

there are anime franchises that have financially beaten domestic animation beyond recognition so many times, accurate records were rendered impossible decades ago. Think ELEVEN FIGURES. Think fan bases in the HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS.

Yes, Rei and Shinji certainly have quite a bit of brand recognition relative to Mickey. [rolls eyes]