Mangix

Project directors

Project Associate Members

  • Olga Kopylova (Tohoku, Japan)
  • Adriana Habens (Lorraine, France)
  • Matthew Strecher (Sophia, Japan)

Project Partners

            

Project Sponsors

LUE (Lorraine Université d’Excellence) and Global Engagement Division (Tohoku University)

 

  

 

Description

Along with documentary manga, comics journalism, a subgenre of literary journalism that has gained influence both as a practice and an object of scientific inquiry, fuses traditional textual reportage with visual narrativity. Evoking an intimate narrative voice entices readers’ emotions while awakening them to a truth about a given topic, and graphic literary journalism and documentary manga capture that emotion through the writer’s reimagined visual recollection of a textually recorded event. Therein lies its promise, and potential for problems. Operating on multiple semiotic levels not present in the textual version alone, graphic nonfiction requires a stronger implied contract to journalistic integrity because the text and the image can be at odds with that truth’s representation. Mangix – a blend of the terms manga, comics and comix, with a nod to the ubiquitous French linguistic puns in Asterix – seeks to examine the role, assessment, and representation of memory – as much for the journalist–artist as for the eyewitness – in comics journalism and documentary manga, as well as the history of and current trends in the illustrated literary journalism of various countries, from the rise of illustrated newspapers and satirical periodicals in the 19th century to investigative and immersive comics journalism and documentary manga of the 20th and 21st centuries. One of its many goals will be to identify the strands of a transnational migration of literary journalistic techniques, visual and textual alike, from France (and the U.S. and Europe in general) to and back from Japan over the years.

Program

Program 2024-25

The academic year started off with some very good news. The Mangix project, "Comics/Manga Journalism: Reportage Traditions and Illustration Praxes in Graphic Literary Journalism," was granted two-year seed funding by the Univ. of Lorraine (France) and Tohoku (Japan). The project, which can be found here, will officially begin on 10 Dec. 2024 with an introductory seminar (the program to be announced later). 

Click here to read more about the Mangix project.

On 10 December, John, Christopher Craig and Sara Izzo held the inaugural seminar for the Mangix project. John introduced the project publicly for the first time, and then each of them present a mini-talk on their comics/manga journalism works in progress.
 

 

Program 2025-26

The academic