Jing Li, Associate Professor of Chinese Language and Culture

In this first Next Page column of the 2017-18 academic year, Jing Li, Associate Professor of Chinese Language and Culture, shares recommendations for Chinese folktales that will help readers “see China in plural forms,” her favorite book to give as a gift, how she got her hands on magazines and comic books to read for fun during her childhood in China, and much more

University for the Creative Arts staff research 2011

This publication brings together a selection of the University’s current research. The contributions foreground areas of research strength including still and moving image research, applied arts and crafts, as well as emerging fields of investigations such as design and architecture. It also maps thematic concerns across disciplinary areas that focus on models and processes of creative practice, value formations and processes of identification through art and artefacts as well as cross-cultural connectivity. Dr. Seymour Roworth-Stoke

Spartan Daily October 29, 2009

Volume 133, Issue 32https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/1299/thumbnail.jp

Twombly’s Anatomy of Melancholy

A wall-sized canvas by Twombly hanging in a purpose-built pavilion by Renzo Piano, commissioned by the Menil Collection in Houston, bears the scrawled inscription »Anatomy of Melancholy.« Untitled (Say Goodbye Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor) is the culminating statement of the artist’s maturity: begun in 1972, it was first exhibited in 1994. In this monumental cenotaph, Twombly’s painting displays phrases from Archilochos, Catullus, Keats and Rilke, as well as the title of Burton’s famous tome, worked into the fabric of the composition, integral to the iconic content. It is the aching heart of the select permanent exhibition of his oeuvre at the pavilion, known as the Twombly Gallery (www.menil.org/twombly.html). The austerity of Piano’s architectural setting, as well as the cunningly filtered Texas sunlight, makes this a site of cult, like the chapel containing the dark, final canvases of Mark Rothko, situated around the corner in the same urban grove of old oak. The setting is a modern Dodona, remote seat of the oaken oracle of Zeus, and it makes an evocative home for Twombly’s enigmatic constructions. These disarm conventional vocabularies of aesthetic response, drawing attention to words and snatches of verse as points of association and recognition. Looking at them involves siting a phrase such as »Anatomy of Melancholy« in other dimensions – in lines, patches, figures, colors

Inheritance and Innovation : A Study of the Animation Character Design Education Based on the Chinese Mythology

As the essential component of Chinese culture, Chinese mythology is the manifestation of ethnic heritage and epitome of 5000 years of history, which offers great resources and inspirations for animation creation and production. The design education is the base for the design of original animation. The educational model from traditional resources can not only exploit the innovative thinking but also dig deeply the core connotation of traditional culture aiming at aesthetic experience of the public, which can target the teaching practice integrating with art creation and market demand. Firstly, the study creates an animation mythological character design model according to the literature review to provide the operational theory for animation design education, which consists of three main parts: central idea, research method and conceptual model. Secondly, the research sums up the animation character creative process framework through the case of Shisa with the specific ideas of creative design. Four steps are used to design a mythological Character: set a scenario (Illustration), tell a story (Interpretation), write a script (Reaction), and design a character (Reflection). It has analyzed how to integrate the information about the mythology and stimulate the designers’ creative imagination in the animation character design in order to create the artworks with unique oriental charm.Theme II : Transnational Design in and around Asi

A coming of age in the anthropological study of anime? Introductory thoughts envisioning the Business Anthropology of Japanese Animation

This article highlights how Anglophone anthropological studies of Japanese animation (anime) have overlooked its businesspeople (such as producers, investors, merchandisers, and entrepreneurs) by formulaically advocating anime creators and fans as crusaders subverting the global dominance of Euro–American global entertainment capitalism. Contextualising such orientation as an example of what Gayatri Spivak calls “strategic essentialism”, the article further explores how to break out of this essentialist impasse of analysis in the anthropological approach to anime. The article suggests that a potential exit might exist through envisioning the business anthropology of anime, i.e. by casting an ethnographic focus on anime’s businesspeople as the legitimate interlocutors for anthropological inquiries into anime. The author further explores the preliminary theoretical implications of this analytical turn through his own business ethnography of an international start-up venture of anime merchandising

A Coming of Age in the Anthropological Study of Anime?

This article highlights how Anglophone anthropological studies of Japanese animation (anime) have overlooked its businesspeople (such as producers, investors, merchandisers, and entrepreneurs) by formulaically advocating anime creators and fans as crusaders subverting the global dominance of Euro–American global entertainment capitalism. Contextualising such orientation as an example of what Gayatri Spivak calls “strategic essentialism”, the article further explores how to break out of this essentialist impasse of analysis in the anthropological approach to anime. The article suggests that a potential exit might exist through envisioning the business anthropology of anime, i.e. by casting an ethnographic focus on anime’s businesspeople as the legitimate interlocutors for anthropological inquiries into anime. The author further explores the preliminary theoretical implications of this analytical turn through his own business ethnography of an international start-up venture of anime merchandising

Walk Feminine, Talk Feminine:A Critical Textual Analysis of Femininities,Performances, and Representations

In this study I examine the multiple ways in which femininity is performed and how those performances intersect with race/ethnicity, class, and sexuality in the anime Bleach and Samurai Champloo. I also interrogate the implications of these performances in relation to hegemonic discourses of Japanese femininity in the U.S. as submissive, deferent, incompetent, and domestic. As I explain in this document many performances of femininity reinforce this Orientalist ideology, however there are also performances that can alter viewers perception of femininity and offer performances of gender identity that do not conform to hegemonic norms. By doing so, anime can shape U.S. perceptions of Japanese/Asian Americans, which impacts intercultural relationships