Asia Pop!

Allison Alexy, series editor

The world is awash in popular culture in a remarkable range of formats. It engages an enormous number of fans and not a few critics as it worms its way into our wallets and our psyches. As Asia has become a key location for both producing and consuming popular culture and as Asian governments continue to nation-brand through soft power by exporting tv dramas, pop stars, and game franchises, this series explores the tremendous energy—positive and negative, transnational and deeply personal—focused on the subject. Asia Pop! examines how popular culture, broadly defined, is created, consumed, critiqued, and subverted in the region and as it makes its way around the world.

The series is dedicated to analyzing Asian popular cultures and does so across historical periods, within local and global contexts, and from multiple disciplinary traditions. We welcome innovative approaches to analyzing a variety of media products and productions—from cell phone novels to eSports and video games, from art toys to idol groups. Submissions are encouraged from a range of disciplines, including anthropology, film studies, gender studies, history, information and media studies, literature, queer studies, and sociology. Translations of key texts relevant to the series’ central themes are also welcome.

Interested scholars may submit queries and proposals to:

Allison Alexy
Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
University of Michigan
Suite 6111
202 South Thayer Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1608
email: aalexy@umich.edu
http://www.allisonalexy.com

Allison Alexy is a cultural anthropologist working in contemporary Japan. She is an assistant professor of Japanese studies at the University of Michigan.