Videoconference lecture series on Japanese popular culture begins Feb. 24 at UD

11:40 a.m., Feb. 20, 2015--The University of Delaware will host a two-part lecture series for teachers on Japanese popular culture, on Tuesday, Feb. 24, and Tuesday, March 17, with an audience that will include six other schools participating via videoconferencing.

Each lecture will take place from 6-7:30 p.m. in Room 302 Pearson Hall on the UD campus. Sponsored by the National Consortium for Teaching About Asia (NCTA) and the Freeman Foundation, the series is free and open to the public, but registration is required because space is limited. To attend at UD, contact Chika Inoue at cinoue@udel.edu to register.

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The speaker for the first lecture, William Tsutsui, president of Hendrix College, will discuss “Japanese Popular Culture and Globalization.” He will address the rapid spread of Japanese cultural products through Asia and the West, some reasons behind the model of globalization that emerged in Japan, and the effects of that process at home and abroad.

On March 17, UD faculty member Rachael Hutchinson will present the talk, “Teaching Japanese Videogames: Why, How and an Example of What.” Hutchinson, associate professor of Japanese in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures and an affiliated faculty member in the Asian Studies Program, is also a member of the Game Studies Research Group.

She will discuss the significance of games for today’s students and give concrete examples of classroom activities and how to plan the logistics of teaching games in a semester-long module. Her lecture also will take an in-depth look at the critique of nuclear power in some games and at how videogames provide interactive learning opportunities for students in foreign language and culture classes.

NCTA alumni who attend either lecture will receive a complimentary copy of Tsutsui’s 2010 book, Japanese Popular Culture and Globalization.

Both sessions will conclude with a question-and-answer session from the audience at UD and those attending through videoconference from Bucknell and Slippery Rock universities, Elizabethtown College, the University of Pittsburgh and two high schools, in Pittsburgh and in Baltimore.

Photograph by Ambre Alexander Payne