Adam L. Kern, Associate Professor of Japanese Literature and Visual Culture, will be offering a new course this fall on manga or Japanese comics, in English translation, titled “East Asian 376: Manga.”
Accounting for nearly one third of all printed matter sold in Japan, according to Kern, mangaalso represents the fastest growing segment of the book market in the United States—and elsewhere around the world.
Kern, who left a faculty position at Harvard University to come to UW for a joint appointment in East Asian Languages and Literature and in Visual Culture Studies, has worked as an editorial assistant for the manga weekly Young Magazine in Tokyo.
His first book, "Manga from the Floating World: Comicbook Culture and the Kibyoshi of Edo Japan"(Harvard University Asia Center, 2006), explored the distant roots of modernmanga in a little-known woodblock-printed comicbook known as thekibyoshi popular at the end of the eighteenth century.
Covering a millennium of manga, from its prehistory in illustrated picture scrolls to bestselling works of the present day, Kern’s course provides a unique window on the culture, literature, and art history of Japan.