Characters are key to the economic and artistic success of popular media productions—they interconnect the individual parts of a franchise, wield affective power over audiences, and drive fan-cultural engagement. But the legal status of characters remains vague: What is a character, and what constitutes the object for the originality assessment in copyright law? Characters are not copyrighted works per se and are not listed as examples, but they have economic value and creative significance and are closely linked to creators. New problems are posed by an increasingly global community of fan-cultural artists whose norms about ownership and authorship parallel copyright law. While the notion of character is new to copyright law, the humanities have worked on it for decades, related to authorship, originality, and conventionality. The humanities – from narratology and media theory to fan culture studies and research on licensing and franchising – may provide a coherent approach to what should be protected by law. Focusing on characters in manga and anime as global media associated with Japan, this workshop explores possibilities for an interdisciplinary, mutually beneficial conceptualization.

Organizer: Jaqueline Berndt (Stockholm University)

Keynote speakers:

Simone Schroff (University of Plymouth)
Gan Sheuo Hui (LASALLE University of the Arts, Singapore)

Presenters (in alphabetical order):

Joleen Blom (Tampere University)
Zoltan Kacsuk (Media University Stuttgart)
Dalma Kálovics (Kwansei Gakuin University, Nishinomiya)
Olga Kopylova (Tohoku University, Sendai)
Dario Lolli (Durham University)
Mathieu Mallard (University of Lorraine, Metz)
Nick Stember (National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen)
Susana Tosca (University of Southern Denmark, Odense)
Lukas R.A. Wilde (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim)

Program

This is an in-person event.
Registration deadline for attendants: 31 May 2024.
Please email the organizer (jberndt@su.se).