Chapel Hill Comics

Here's a link to a PDF flyer for an event at UNC tonight! Chapel Hill Comics is not officially involved in this event, but we wanted to pass it along:

Manga for Girls: girls’ culture, girls’ sexuality, and shōjo manga

Lecture by Jennifer Prough, Valparaiso University



... Date: Thursday, October 29

Time: 5:30 PM

Place: FedEx Global Education Center — Nelson Mandela Auditorium
Shōjo manga
are comics for girls. This definition reverberated throughout Dr.
Prough's two year's in Japan researching the production of mainstream
girls’ manga. It was broadcast through the proliferation of
pastel and glitter, hearts and stars, and doe-eyed cuties which
populate the pages of most Shōjo manga magazines; and it
peppered conversations with editors, artists, and scholars about the
history, aesthetics, and production of girls’ comics in millennial
Japan. In this talk Dr. Prough will examine the construction of gender
in mainstream Shōjo manga. She will familiarize the audience with the scope and content of girls’ manga
in Japan, a category all but missing in our own comic book tradition.
Then she will turn to an analysis of the relationship between Shōjo manga and representations of girls’ sexuality through a case study of the ways that the enjo kōsai (assisted dating) phenomenon and kogyaru fashion trends were reflected and refracted in the pages of shōjo manga in the late nineties. Thus, this talk will examine the relationship between Shōjo manga and wider representations of girls’ in contemporary Japan.
Dr. Jennifer Prough
is Assistant Professor of Humanities and East Asian Studies, in Christ
College (the Honors College) at Valparaiso University. She received her
B.A from Valparaiso University in Psychology and East Asian Studies, a
M.A. from the New School for Social Research in Gender Studies and
Feminist Theory, and her Ph.D. from Duke University in Cultural
Anthropology. Her dissertation research focused on the production of
shōjo manga in contemporary Japan. Prough’s book on the same topic is
forthcoming from University of Hawaii Press.Read More