I am teaching in English (and Japanese--although not at SU).

HT2024:
JKA111/JA18_Introduction to Japanese Studies (not freestanding; 1st period, 5 hp)
JKA918_Manga Studies (freestanding course via Zoom; 2nd period, 7.5 hp) -- intensive course during weeks 45-48

VT2025:
JKA935_Queer Asia (freestanding, via Zoom; 2nd period, 7.5 hp)

JKA223/delkurs JA26 “Japanese culture” (not freestanding; 2nd period, 5 hp)
JKA663_Bachelor course (Kandidatkurs) (not freestanding)

To Foreign Students Seeking PhD Supervision:
Unfortunately, I am not allowed to accept PhD students outside of the specifically Swedish framework of contracted positions (here, PhD student is an employment, and openings are rare; a program with entrance exams doesn’t exist).
But if you are enrolled in another university’s PhD program, you are welcome to receive my supervision as an academic intern or guest for one or two semesters (provided that you are able to cover your living expenses).

 

What? — Visual arts/aesthetic culture in Asia (19th – 21st centuries: graphic arts, filmic media), manga/comics, anime and animation

How? — Media Studies (new formalism and materialism applied to manga and anime); Art Theory/Aesthetics; Museum/Exhibition Studies

Current Projects:

edited vol. Cambridge Companion to Manga and Anime (in production), forthcoming in September 2024.

guest-editor for Mechademia 17.2: “Methodologies” (forthcoming in 2025)

Upcoming Talks:

12 September 2024_Singapore, LASALLE University of the Arts, keynote at animation studies conference organized by GAN Sheuo Hui
https://www.lasalle.edu.sg/research/making-anime-between-art-and-cinema

25 September 2024_Pontevedra, University of Vigo, keynote at annual conference of the Spanish Association of Japanese Studies (AEJE)

4 October 2024_Cologne, Japan Culture Institute, lecture at the opening of the exhibition “Manga Hokusai Manga: Approaching the Master’s Compendium from the Perspective of Contemporary Comics”

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• Kusazōshi as Comic Books? Reading Early Modern Graphic Narratives from a Manga Studies Perspective

  2024. Jaqueline Berndt. Graphic Narratives from Early Modern Japan, 530-559

  Chapter

  This chapter puts conceptualizations of kuzazōshi as “comic books” to the test by subjecting two early modern graphic narratives to a mangaesque reading, that is to say, a reading that treats them as if they were contemporary story-manga. However, this reading does not foreground character types, narrative tropes, visual motifs, or parodic intertextuality, which normally are the subject of investigation by literary scholars; preference is given to embodied reading, to the perceptual rather than cognitive effects of the forms at hand. This includes intermedial considerations, in particular regarding the argument that the storytelling of modern comics is fundamentally informed by cinema. The manga-informed readings foreground two central issues: on the one hand, the perceptual movement of the gaze which connects to page-turns as movements of the hand, and the narrative’s visual flow forward; on the other hand, the representation of characters’ feelings, which in turn may move the reader and lead to empathetic engagement. In conclusion, the contingency of the notion of “manga” comes to the fore, and the conceptualization of kusazōshi as “comic books” appears as a matter of degree, depending on the considered historical periods, genres, and works of manga, and also the aesthetic aspects that are highlighted. Rendered in still, mute, and monochrome fragmented drawings, both kusazōshi and (print-based) story-manga afford an agency to their readers, that differs from both classic live-action film and recent (vertical-scroll) webtoons. To trace this agency, it is vital to consider the perceptual, sensory, and cognitive effects of the material forms at hand, and their embodied reading.

  Read more about Kusazōshi as Comic Books? Reading Early Modern Graphic Narratives from a Manga Studies Perspective

• Manga: an affective form of comics

  2023. Jaqueline Berndt. The Cambridge Companion to Comics, 82-101

  Chapter

  Taking the narrow notion of manga outside of Japan as its starting point, this chapter refrains from introducing the diversity of comics in Japan in favor of a transculturally open approach. From a form-conscious perspective, it conceptualizes manga as a highly affective type of comics that share characteristics with non-Japanese comics far beyond the “manga” label. Following a brief historical survey of what “manga” has meant in English since the 1980s, the device of affective eyes takes center stage. Graphic narratives by Osamu Tezuka, Keiji Nakazawa, Keiko Takemiya, and Jirō Taniguchi serve as examples for how extreme close-ups of eyes have operated across periods and genres, namely, not only as representations of interiority or ethnicity, but also as material signposts and guides of visual perception: eyes draw attention, get readers involved prior to critical interpretation, establish intimacy with characters, provide a node for a page’s visual fragments, help to obscure the divide between inside and outside, subject and object, self and other. Moving gingerly into an ocular history of manga as an affective form of comics, the chapter seeks to turn away from essentialist, as well as culturalist, definitions of what manga is in favor of how it operates.

  Read more about Manga

• Geschichte der Animation: Anime in Japan

  2022. Jaqueline Berndt. Handbuch Animation Studies, 1-15

  Chapter

  Ausgehend vom japanischen und englischsprachigen Forschungsstand interessieren Genealogie und diskursive Positionierung von Anime als einer Form mit Japan assoziierter Zeichentrickfilme und -serien, die sich in den späten 1970er Jahren als eigenständiges ästhetisch-kommunikatives Medium institutionalisierte. Statt Kulturindustrie, Fankultur und Franchising stehen medienspezifische Kennzeichnungen wie limitierte Folienanimation, Manga-Nähe, serielle Erzählung und fernsehtypisches Umschalten im Zentrum sowie Differenzierungen zwischen Anime, (Art) Animation und Mangafilm.

  Read more about Geschichte der Animation

• Collapsing Boundaries

  2021. Jaqueline Berndt. Beyond MAUS, 169-192

  Chapter

  Taking the investigation of comics and the Holocaust beyond MAUS implies a twofold difference in the case of Japan, where Spiegelman’s work has been available in translation since the early 1990s. First, Japan appears to be a historically detached site with regards to the Holocaust and its memory, and precisely this distance has facilitated the linkage of the Jewish genocide to discourses of national self-victimization. Second, a manga equivalent to MAUS, the epitome of the individually authored, “socially aspirational” graphic novel, is difficult to find. In the main, manga is (gendered) genre fiction and as such abundant in tropes, giving preference to performative fabrications over realist representation, and, in recent years, to connective over collective memory. Depending on situation and context (and effective beyond Japan and manga), tropes hold the potential to involve readers who regard themselves as socio-politically uninvolved. This is demonstrated on the example of the fictionalized parts of the “Anne Frank” issue in the weekly-manga series Great Persons, rendered in overcute moe style by artist TNSK (2015); and Machiko Kyo’s 2-volume Anne-Frank fantasy “ANoNE” (serialized in the women’s manga magazine Elegance Eve, 2011–2013). The focus is on entertaining commercial fiction, leaving aside non-fiction comics productions of the educational kind.

  Read more about Collapsing Boundaries

• Deviating from “Art”

  2020. Jaqueline Berndt. Comic Art in Museums, 180-193

  Chapter

  Read more about Deviating from “Art”

• Introduction: Shōjo Mediations

  2019. Jaqueline Berndt. Shōjo Across Media, 1-21

  Chapter

  In order to provide a framework for the whole volume, this introductory chapter promotes a shift of methodological focus from shōjo (girl) as a category of social representation to shōjo mediations, considering not only media for and by actual girls, but also shōjo as character type, code, and taste category. Firstly, shōjo research inside and outside of Japan is recapitulated with due regard to changes in both mediascape and critical orientation. Secondly, it is demonstrated that the word shōjo assumes its specific meaning in relation to other, historically changing Japanese names for “girl” and the employed media. Finally, the volume’s individual chapters are introduced with particular regard to the conception of shōjo they apply, relating to Japanese and gender studies, genre theory, transcultural research on popular media, and performativity respectively.

  Read more about Introduction: Shōjo Mediations

Show all publications by Jaqueline Berndt at Stockholm University