April 2013 Author Events

Whether you’re in or near New York, Carlsbad, D.C., or Kaunakakai, please join UHP authors at their events!

Thursday, April 11
6:30 to 8 p.m.
Bianca Bosker will be at the China Institute, NYC, to speak on her intriguing new book, Original Copies: Architectural Mimicry in Contemporary China, and the phenomenon of “duplitecture.” Click here for event details and to purchase tickets ($10 member / $15 non-member).

For more on this fascinating topic:
Read the Atlantic article Duplitectural Marvels: Exploring China’s Replica Western Cities
Listen to an interview of Bianca Bosker by Chris Gondek of Heronandcrane on Portland State’s KPSU.

Saturday, April 13
2:00 p.m.
Head over to the Museum of Making Music in Carlsbad, California for “Sincerely, Ukulele,” featuring Jim Tranquada’s book talk on The ‘Ukulele: A History, followed by a performance by ‘ukulele artist Brittni Paiva. For details and to purchase tickets, click here.

Sunday, April 14
In a mash-up of sorts, two UH Press authors will present short lectures as part of the National Cherry Blossom Festivals two-day anime marathon, which will feature all 26 episodes of Shinichiro Watanabe’s Samurai Champloo. Both talks are free and will be held in the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art.

11:00 a.m.
“Ukiyo-e Pictures and the World of the Pleasure Quarters”
Julie Nelson Davis, associate professor in the Department of the History of Art, University of Pennsylvania, and author of Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty.

3:00 p.m.
“Picaresque Tales, Travelers and Lawbreakers”
Constantine Vaporis, professor and director of Asian studies, University of Maryland Baltimore Campus; author of Tour of Duty: Samurai, Military Service in Edo, and the Culture of Early Modern Japan.

Wednesday, April 24
5:30 p.m.
Anwei Law will sign her monumental work, Kalaupapa: A Collective Memory, at Kalele Bookstore & Divine Expressions in the heart of Kaunakakai, Moloka‘i. Currently a resident of Seneca Falls, NY, where she works as the international coordinator of IDEA, she will be visiting Hawai‘i during most of May–watch for a post on next month’s events.

Manga, Anime, and Religion in Contemporary Japan

Drawing on Tradition
Manga and anime (illustrated serial novels and animated films) are highly influential Japanese entertainment media that boast tremendous domestic consumption as well as worldwide distribution and an international audience. Drawing on Tradition: Manga, Anime, and Religion in Contemporary Japan, by Jolyon Baraka Thomas, examines religious aspects of the culture of manga and anime production and consumption through a methodological synthesis of narrative and visual analysis, history, and ethnography.

“Studies of religion in popular culture often treat contemporary artifacts as if they are created ex nihilo, objects unmoored from any previous media or cultural conditions. Jolyon Baraka Thomas here charts a new course for engaging religion and the media of popular culture by demonstrating the myriad ways manga and anime matter. Such popular media matter to the creation of culture, to religion and the study thereof, as well as to the sometimes violent expressions of the extremities of faith. Thomas’ suggestive book ably proves that these comics are not the ‘funny papers,’ but deeply serious, just as they can be seriously playful.” —S. Brent Plate, author of Religion and Film: Cinema and the Re-Creation of the World, and managing editor of Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art, and Belief

September 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3654-2 / $25.00 (PAPER)