News

Date Posted: 03/21/2007

 

 

Frenchy Lunning

Professor Frenchy Lunning has been awarded a fellowship from the Fulbright Program, the federal government's premier scholarship program, to study manga in Japan. She will spend three months there in 2008 tracing the transnational nature of the comic form, which has become increasingly popular in the United States.

Earlier this year Lunning launched the first edition of an academic journal on manga and anime called Mechademia. The inaugural volume looks at the rise of Japanese popular culture through game design, fashion, graphic design, commercial packaging, character creation and fan culture.

Together with its animated version, anime, manga represents nearly a billion-dollar industry in the United States, and it is extremely popular in such countries as France and Italy. Lunning, a professor in MCAD's Liberal Arts Department who has specialized in the history of comics, will look at the artistic and cultural underpinnings of these Japanese art forms.

Lunning says it is both impressive and surprising to witness the enduring impact of manga. "Though initially manga was considered a trend that would peak and be replaced, this movement has steadily expanded since it emerged in the late 1980s in the United States and has established itself as a substantial and sustaining aesthetic," she says. "The work and its persistent and unique appeal for global markets has compelled me to search for the origins of its aesthetic and to unravel the complex web of desire it both produces and provokes."

MCAD Vice President of Academic Affairs Vince Leo added his congratulations: "Frenchy has distinguished herself and MCAD in one of the most competitive and vital academic programs in the world, and she has done this by way of her dedication, hard work and innovative vision."

The Fulbright Program, America's flagship international educational exchange activity, is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. The program, named after former U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright, was established in 1946 to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries, through the exchange of persons, knowledge and skills. Recipients of the grants are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement and because they have demonstrated extraordinary leadership potential in their fields, according to the Fulbright Program.