Free Public Events

Conversation With Frenchy Lunning
7:00 PM
Wednesday, October 19
Renaissance Hall 5th Floor
Free and open to the public.

Public Lecture
Under the Ruffles: Shôjo and the Morphology of Power
9:45-11:00 AM
Thursday, October 20
Renaissance Hall 5th Floor
Free and open to the public.

Under the Ruffles: Shôjo and the Morphology of Power
The cult of the shôjo -- or ‘young girl’ character type – is manifested in Japanese popular culture, but has recently expanded globally through the various works of manga, anime, cosplay, gaming and merchandise. Marginalized and abjected in mainstream culture, this paper explores how the history and articulation of what is actually a shôjo family of forms, created a space of abjection and a stage on which the fetishized imaginary identities supplanted her seemingly insignificant value, to form a global power formation that secures for the shôjo character, a symbolic control and agency over the ambiguities and fears that threaten. 

About Frenchy Lunning

Frenchy Lunning, Ph.D. is a Professor of Liberal Arts at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, there she has focused on design, popular culture and cultural theory throughout her work. She has written magazine, journal articles, and book chapters and is currently working on two books, one on fetish and fashion, and the other on cosplay for Berg Publishers in Britain. She is also working on a book she began on a Fulbright to Japan in 2008 on the shôjo as a global character. She is the director of SGMS: Schoolgirls and Mobilesuits: Culture and Creation in Manga and Anime, an annual workshop at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the annual Mechademia Conference, the only academic conference currently in the US focusing on Asian popular culture (http://schoolgirlsandmobilesuits.com). She is the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Mechademia, a book series published by the University of Minnesota dedicated to Asian popular culture, but primarily on manga and anime. Mechademia 7: Lines of Sight, will appear in fall of 2012, Mechademia 6: User Enhanced, will be out his fall of 2011(http://www.mechademia.org).  She has a film production business with some colleagues called Moving Walkway Productions, which although now works primarily on music videos, has a script for an adult animation feature which they hope to eventually produce.