MIT Professor Ian Condry and “Cool Japan”

MIT Professor, Ian Condry, who is lecturing to a FGLP group in January, has been organizing the MIT “Cool Japan: Media, Culture, Technology Research Project” since January 2006. Together with the Harvard community, This project hosts activities including international conferences, live music events, lectures, academic discussions and movie screenings. Members of Cool Japan examine popular culture and work to encourage debate and research between people interested in media and modern Japan. The project is sponsored by the MIT Japan Program, the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University, MIT Foreign Languages & Literatures, and MIT Comparative Media Studies.

Professor Condry is a cultural anthropologist who specializes in media, popular culture, and globalization with a focus on contemporary Japan and the US. His most recent book is The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan’s Media Success Story. In it explores the emergence of anime, Japanese animated film and television, as a global cultural phenomenon. Professor Condry’s lecture in January will discuss the subject of his book.