I hear through the grapevine that the organizers of Otakon, the huge anime/manga/pop culture convention held every in August in Baltimore, are looking for academic papers and panels on East Asian art, history, and culture to round out their offerings. Interested parties should contact Omar Jenkins, Head of Programming.
Otakon: Desperately Seeking Academics
Tempting, but not this year. If it’s really annual, though, I could always use an excuse to get to Baltimore next year!
Yes, it’s an annual event — this is our 15th con, the 10th to be held at the BCC, and the 12th to be held in the Baltimore area. We’re the second largest anime-related convention in the US, with over 60k “turnstile” attendance (about 23k per day).
I’m sure Omar appreciates the help getting the word out, but posting Omar’s email address on the web is going to expose it to spammers. I know *I* get an obscene amount of spam though my con account (about 500 per day that get past the ISP filters), and it’s becoming a real problem.
http://www.otakon.com/events_panels.asp is where you should go to recommend or volunteer to run a panel; if you have another sort of event, use our web-based contact form here:
http://www.otakon.com/contacts.asp — select Programming or Panels.
What we’re really aiming for is panels on asian culture (customs, history, etc.) that are informative but still pitched at a fairly general audience.