How can historians write about media and popular culture in a way that captures both the production and reception sides of the relationship? Decades or centuries after their initial publication, library and archive collections of media offer an incomplete picture of both the people involved in production and the ways in which audiences reacted to and interpreted them.
This talk examines the history of manga (Japanese comics) in the twentieth century, paying attention to the triangular relationship between creators, production or publication staff, and audiences or fans. Drawing on my research process and detailing the sources I used to recover both the material reality of old media ranging from newspapers and magazines to radio, film and television, and zines, and the ways in which audiences responded to them, this talk introduces various unconventional sources for historians to explore and argues that we must seek to understand popular media in context to fully understand their impact.
Speaker
Dr. Andrea HORBINSKI
Independent Writer and Historian
ZOOM Meeting ID: 990 8868 4183;
Meeting link: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/99088684183
