Professor’s research earns prize in international competition

Dr. Kimiko Akita, earned second prize for her co-authored research paper in the plenary interactive poster session at the International Communication Association convention in May in Phoenix, Arizona. The paper, “State and Shinto: Spanning the history of the secularized scripture,” was among 108 posters accepted to the competition and ranked first in ICA’s Communication History Division. 

Dr. Akita also presented two refereed research papers at last month’s National Communication annual convention in Kissimmee: “The rise and fall of a Japanese mangarobot superhero in America” and “ ‘We are Siamese if you don’t please’: Disney’s Orientalist villainous cats.” She served as respondent to the NCA research session “Films and messages about Confucianism, Oriental stereotypes, discrimination, and beauty: Application and impact.”

She presented research on the panel “Celebrating the COMMunity of Japan-U.S. Communication Scholarship: Past, present, and future of theory and practice” and, as the co-founder of NCA’s Japanese U.S. Communication Association, hosted a 10^thanniversary reception at Disney’s Boardwalk Inn for members who came from as far away as Tokyo. In addition, her co-authored lesson plan, “What do you see? Teaching awareness of cultural stereotyping through nonverbal or visual cues,” was accepted at NCA as a Great Ideas for Teaching Students entry.

This year, Dr. Akita has also published a chapter, “Tales from the ooku: The Shogun’s inner palace and the outer (mediated) world,” in a scholarly book and co-authored “The epistemology of retweeting and the ethics of trust” in the Journal of Mass Media Ethics.