Eike Exner, "Comics and the Origins of Manga: A Revisionist History" (Rutgers UP, 2021)

04/23/25 • 46 min

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Japanese comics, commonly known as manga, are a global sensation. Critics, scholars, and everyday readers have often viewed this artform through an Orientalist framework, treating manga as the exotic antithesis to American and European comics. In reality, the history of manga is deeply intertwined with Japan’s avid importation of Western technology and popular culture in the early twentieth century.

Comics and the Origins of Manga: A Revisionist History (Rutgers UP, 2021) reveals how popular U.S. comics characters like Jiggs and Maggie, the Katzenjammer Kids, Felix the Cat, and Popeye achieved immense fame in Japan during the 1920s and 1930s. Modern comics had earlier developed in the United States in response to new technologies like motion pictures and sound recording, which revolutionized visual storytelling by prompting the invention of devices like speed lines and speech balloons. As audiovisual entertainment like movies and record players spread through Japan, comics followed suit. Their immediate popularity quickly encouraged Japanese editors and cartoonists to enthusiastically embrace the foreign medium and make it their own, paving the way for manga as we know it today.

By challenging the conventional wisdom that manga evolved from centuries of prior Japanese art and explaining why manga and other comics around the world share the same origin story, Comics and the Origins of Manga offers a new understanding of this increasingly influential artform.

Jingyi Li is a PhD Candidate in Japanese History at the University of Arizona. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing.

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Jingyi Li is a PhD Candidate in Japanese History at the University of Arizona. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing.

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Mike Ganino, "Make a Scene: Storytelling, Stage Presence, and the Art of Being Unforgettable in Every Spotlight" (Authors & Co., 2025)

Today I spoke with Mike Ganino about his new book Make a Scene, Storytelling, Stage Presence, and the Art of being Unforgettable in every Spotlight (Authors & Co., 2025)

“The most powerful asset whether you want to lead a team, whether you want to pitch a deal, whether you want to close business, whether you want to interview for a new job, your most powerful asset is the way you communicate. So I would say if you're out there and you're someone who is working in the business world and you're looking at numbers and crutching things and you're under this stress, don't let your most powerful asset atrophy.”

-Elite speaking coach and Former TEDx Executive Producer Mike Ganino.

With his Five Stage Languages and Rapid Prototyping Protocol, Ganino reveals the exact framework he's used to train over 5,000 speakers-from bestselling authors and TED stars to Fortune 500 executives. With equal parts attitude and expertise, he teaches you to: Master the art of authentic storytelling that captivates any audience; Transform nervous energy into magnetic stage presence; Own virtual presentations with more impact than a viral TED talk; Turn everyday moments into opportunities to shine; Craft messages so compelling, people forget to check their phones. Make a Scene is for anyone tired of playing it safe and ready to own the spotlight. Whether you're a professional speaker crafting your next keynote or a leader delivering a crucial presentation, this book will help you stop shrinking and start shining. It's time to make a scene-and make it count.

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Next Episode

Steven Hahn, "Illiberal America: A History" (Norton, 2024)

If your reaction to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol was to think, 'That’s not us,' think again. In Illiberal America: A History (Norton, 2024), a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian uncovers a powerful illiberalism as deep-seated in the American past as the founding ideals.

A storm of illiberalism, building in the United States for years, unleashed its destructive force in the Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021. The attack on American democracy and images of mob violence led many to recoil, thinking “That’s not us.” But now we must think again, for Steven Hahn shows in his startling new history that illiberalism has deep roots in our past. To those who believe that the ideals announced in the Declaration of Independence set us apart as a nation, Hahn shows that Americans have long been animated by competing values, equally deep-seated, in which the illiberal will of the community overrides individual rights, and often protects itself by excluding perceived threats, whether on grounds of race, religion, gender, economic status, or ideology.

Driven by popular movements and implemented through courts and legislation, illiberalism is part of the American bedrock. The United States was born a republic of loosely connected states and localities that demanded control of their domestic institutions, including slavery. As white settlement expanded west and immigration exploded in eastern cities, the democracy of the 1830s fueled expulsions of Blacks, Native Americans, Catholics, Mormons, and abolitionists. After the Civil War, southern states denied new constitutional guarantees of civil rights and enforced racial exclusions in everyday life. Illiberalism was modernized during the Progressive movement through advocates of eugenics who aimed to reduce the numbers of racial and ethnic minorities as well as the poor. The turmoil of the 1960s enabled George Wallace to tap local fears of unrest and build support outside the South, a politics adopted by Richard Nixon in 1968. Today, with illiberalism shaping elections and policy debates over guns, education, and abortion, it is urgent to understand its long history, and how that history bears on the present crisis.

Steven Hahn is an acclaimed historian whose works include A Nation Under Our Feet, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize, and A Nation Without Borders. He is professor of history at New York University.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.

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