Higher seminar: Manga, Manhua, Comics: Media Regionality in East Asia

Seminar

Date: Wednesday 12 November 2025

Time: 15.00 – 16.45

Location: F6, Conference room

Speaker: Jaqueline Berndt (Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies).

While contemporary Chinese and Japanese use the same word for comics (漫画), this word invites cultural particularization when Romanized. Referring to Sinophone comics as manhua and Japanese comics as manga not only creates a certain distance from the broader domain of global comics and their studies but also risks obscuring historical intercultural exchanges within the East Asian region, as well as today’s diverging sociocultural positions (for example, between corporate, or mainstream, productions and “alternative,” often publicly funded ones). This talk surveys how the terms manhua and lianhuanhua are used in Anglophone Sinology, which equivalents have appeared in Japanese, and how the cultural bricolage that characterizes Taiwan’s comics is made invisible by the label manhua. It is based on my chapter in Sinophone Comics: Histories, Identities, Medialities (ed. Adina Zemanek, de Gruyter, Open Access, forthcoming in December 2025), the point of departure for a research project titled Comics Region East Asia: Traditions, Translations, and Transculturation.

The seminar will be held in a hybrid format. Zoom ID upon request.
To participants from outside the Department: Please pre-register with the seminar organizer, Jaqueline Berndt (jberndt@su.se), to allow access to the venue.

Theme

Research subject

Japanese Language and Culture

Last updated: October 27, 2025

Source: Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

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