Academic Guests

Thomas Lamarre is a tenured professor of East Asian Studies and Communications at McGill University. He is the author of three books dealing with the history of media in Japan: Shadows on the Screen: Tanizaki Jun'ichirô on Cinema and Oriental Aesthetics (2005), Uncovering Heian Japan: An Archaeology of Sensation and Inscription (2000) and The Anime Machine : A Media Theory of Animation (2009). He is also the editor of several volumes such as Impacts of Modernities (with Kang Nae-hui, 2003), Against Preemptive War (with Tani Barlow, Yukiko Hanawa and Donald Lowe, 2004), and in Mechademia (with Christopher Bolton and Frenchy Lunning): Circuits of Desire (2007), The Limits of the Human (2008), War/Time (2009), Fanthropologies (2010), User Enhancement (2011), Lines of Sight (2012), and Tezuka's Manga Life (2013).

Marc Steinberg teaches Film Studies at Concordia University, Montreal. He is the author of Anime's Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan (University of Minnesota Press, 2012).

Martin Picard is a lecturer and postdoctoral researcher. He returned from a one year stay in Japan as part of a research project on the culture of Japanese video games at Wako University in Tokyo. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University and received his Ph.D. in literature and film from the University of Montreal. His teaching and research focuses on Japanese film and popular culture, history and aesthetics of video games, and digital cinema. He has published several articles and book chapters in scientific journals and books dedicated to the study of video games and Japanese pop culture.