In case some of you missed Marc Steinberg’s email this week, applications are open for the Media Mix 2014 Summer Program. The following was taken from Marc’s invitation to apply:

“Media Mix Summer Program 2014” organized by and held at the University of Tokyo, and supported by the Kadokawa Culture Promotion Foundation.

This two-week summer program will be held at the University of Tokyo this summer, from July 14-26, 2014. The topic is the media mix and media convergence, and the program will examine this transmedia movement between film, anime, manga, games music and other media forms from both theoretical and practical perspectives.

Ian Condry, Otsuka Eiji, Yoshimi Shunya and Marc Steinberg will be giving presentations, and plan to invite practitioners and industry actors to develop a better sense of the way the media mix works. Theoretical sessions to develop methodologies for studying the media mix are also planned, as are field trips to Tokyo archives, studios and site of media mix practice. For anyone interested in an aspect of media convergence or the media mix, this should be a fantastic opportunity. Historical and transnational approaches to the media mix are also very welcome.

Given how the media mix and media convergence are themselves such expansive phenomena, this will provide the opportunity to think collectively about approaches, methods, and materials for the study of the media mix. Or, perhaps more accurately, media mixes in their diversity. The aim is for this to be a collective research project in the widest sense, and the format of the two-week summer seminar will reflect this goal. The summer program is aimed towards upper level undergraduate students and graduate students who work on Japanese “pop culture” widely defined, though junior professors, and anyone in the workforce (academic, festivals, etc) are also invited to apply. There is an application process, and the applications are due by April 4, 2014. It doesn’t give much time, but there application process does not seem arduous.

Those chosen to participate in the program will be given up to 100,000 yen to subsidize their travel to Japan, and will be provided with accommodations for the duration of the summer program. There is no tuition. It’s a pretty sweet deal, I think.

For more information please see the website:  http://kadokawa.iii.u-tokyo.ac.jp/summer2014/