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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Patrick Schreiner, "The Ascension of Christ: Recovering a Neglected Doctrine" (Lexham Press, 2020)

The good news of Jesus includes his life, death, resurrection, and future return—but what about his ascension? Though often neglected or misunderstood, the ascension is integral to the gospel.

In The Ascension of Christ: Recovering a Neglected Doctrine (Lexham Press), Patrick Schreiner argues that Jesus’ work would be incomplete without his ascent to God’s right hand. Not only a key moment in the gospel story, Jesus’ ascension was necessary for his present ministry in and through the church.

Schreiner argues that Jesus’ residence in heaven marks a turning point in his three-fold offices of prophet, priest, and king. As prophet, Jesus builds the church and its witness. As priest, he intercedes before the Father. As king, he rules over all.

A full appreciation of the ascension is essential for understanding the Bible, Christian doctrine, and Christ’s ongoing work in the world.

Dr. Patrick Schreiner is Associate Professor of New Testament and Biblical Theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of The Kingdom of God and the Glory of the Cross and Matthew, Disciple and Scribe. Twitter: @pj_schreiner

Jonathan Wright is a PhD student in New Testament at Midwestern Baptist theological seminary. He holds an MDiv from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a ThM from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and can be reached at [email protected], on Twitter @jonrichwright, or jonathanrichardwright.com.

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Philip J. Stern, "Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism" (Harvard UP, 2023)

Welcome to the Global Corporations Special Series on the Law Channel on the New Books Network. This Special Series is dedicated to interviews with scholars about recent books engaging with different aspects of global corporations – with a focus on the role of law and legal forms.

Our guest today is Professor Philip J. Stern, Professor of History at the History Department at Duke University. Philip is a historian of the British Empire, with an interest in the role of companies and corporations in colonial enterprise, overseas exploration and cartography, the historiography of British India, early modern economic thought, and digital and data visualization approaches to the problem of colonial sovereignty.

We spoke with Philip in a live event as part of a workshop in Hong Kong on the history of companies in Asia about his most recent book, Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism (Harvard University Press, 2023).

The book places corporations at the centre of the story of the British Empire. It is both a masterful synthesis of a vast body of existing historiographical literature and an incredibly original contribution describing the various corporations engaged in the interrelated and competing projects of what it terms as “corporate or venture colonialism” and their long afterlives of entangled sovereign and commercial powers.

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