I’m thrilled to announce at long last that I have signed a book contract and MANGA’S GLOBAL CENTURY: A HISTORY OF JAPANESE COMICS, 1905-1989 is now officially under contract to the University of California Press. At present it’s planned to be released in 2025. Stay tuned for more about it as release gets nearer!
Talking about Toriyama Akira on The World
I spoke to The World in Boston about Toriyama Akira’s legacy yesterday, after his tragically young death a week ago, at the age of 68, was announced. You can listen to the interview online.
Beyond Academia 2024
I’m happy to say that I’ll be speaking at the Beyond Academia conference once again! I’ll be on the “Careers for Regional Experts” panel this Friday, February 23, at 2:45pm Pacific. You can find out more info about the conference and register at the Beyond Academia page. Hope to see you there, virtually!
Hey, are you the Andrea Horbinski in the hbomberguy plagiarism video?
Yup, that’s me. A few years back I was quoted in Gita Jackson’s article on Attack on Titan, and apparently the article and my quote in it were plagiarized by a YouTuber. Thanks to hbomberguy for doing all the legwork to figure out what was going on and lay out all the ways creators had their work stolen! If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ve embedded the video below.
Casa Con 2023!
I do talk about queer topics in manga in my forthcoming book, Manga’s Global Century. In the meantime, I’m appearing at Casa Con 2023 this Friday, December 15! I’ll be speaking at 4pm PST on “Connections Between Japanese Woodblock Prints, Anime, and Manga, and the Stories We Tell About Them.” You can join the con now at the website (it’s free!), and I hope to see you there!
Talk at the CUHK World History Seminar
I gave a talk over Zoom to the World History Seminar of the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s History Department earlier this week. Thanks to James Morton and the organizers for the opportunity; the students asked some great questions and I really enjoyed it. More details on “Manga’s Global Century: Writing Media History Beyond the Archive” are available on the CUHK History Department website.
Mechademia 2023
I’ll be giving a talk at the Mechademia conference in Kyoto at the end of this month, hosted by Kyoto Seika and the Kyoto International Manga Museum. My talk, “Applauding the DJ: Historicizing the Postmodern in 1970s and 1980s Anime and Manga Fan Cultures,” is a very preliminary sketch of where I think I’m going with my next book project. One way you can think of the postmodern is as the aftermath of modernity.
Full conference details can be found on the Manga Museum website. I hope to see you there!
Talk at the Ulrich Museum in Wichita this month
I’m delighted to say that my talk at the Ulrich Museum of Art in Wichita, KS has been rescheduled for Thursday, April 27. The title (too long as usual) is “Yes, No, Maybe So: Connections Between Japanese Prints, Anime, and Manga and the Stories We Tell About Them.” You can read the full talk description on the event page. I hope to see you there!
Thanks CasaCon!
Thanks to everyone who came to my panel at CasaCon 2022 today! The con continues on Discord tomorrow and Sunday, and you can still register for free via Eventbrite.
I wanted to share the two videos that I played in my talk: the first, the dubbed opening of Astro Boy (the first comment is from someone who sang in the chorus for the song!); and the second, the footage from the 1982 meeting of the C/FO Los Angeles chapter. You can also read the article I wrote about early anime and manga fandom (in which I mistook Sandy, the Orange County C/FO chapter mascot, for Fanta, the LA C/FO chapter mascot. Whoops).
Now live from Mastodon
At this festive season of the year, I should be thinking about what kind of cookies to make next. Instead, I’ve been watching Elon Musk destroy Twitter in real time. I joined Twitter in 2012 with my legal name account, and even earlier with a private one; it sucks being driven off a real digital home by a redpilled billionaire who, to add insult to injury, isn’t even a good poster.
But so it goes, until and unless we raise the top marginal tax rate to 70% again, anyway. I’ve joined Mastodon, and I’m now @horbinski@zirk.us. Eventually I’ll get around to deactivating my Twitter, and installing the social media widget for this site, but I figured I’d announce it here right away.
Wishing all of us a happier and better 2023.
CasaCon 2022
I’m thrilled to say that I’ll be a panelist at CasaCon 2022 next Friday, December 16! My talk will be on “Early Anime and Manga Fandom in the United States” at 5pm Pacific/8pm Eastern (yes, I went with the longer title in the official schedule but clearly the shorter one is better).
You can see the full schedule for the event at the con website and register for free via Eventbrite. Hope to see you there!
Andrea Horbinski 
