Material and information about Miyazaki, Nausicaa of the Valley
of Wind, and anime for the Spring 1999 A&H 3300 class "Natural Wonders"
at the University of Texas at Dallas
Pam Gossin and Marc
Hairston
In the spring of 1999, Dr. Pam Gossin taught a literature course
entitledNatural Wondershere at the
University of Texas at Dallas.The course looked at the writings of
naturalists, scientists, novelists, and poets to examine what we mean by
the term "the natural world" and howthese different writers viewed it.
Follow this link to see the full
syllabus for
the course. Because of this theme, Dr. Gossin decided that Miyazaki's epic
manga and film Nausicaa of theValley of Wind fit perfectly with her class, so she made itthe centerpiece of the semester-long study with Dr. Hairston functioning as aguest instructor for that portion of the class. Each section of the class met for 2 hours and 45 minutes once a week for 14 weeks and we devotedtwo and a half of the 14 classes just to Nausicaa. The first volume of the Nausicaa Perfect Collection was required reading,the class watched the film version, and about two-thirds of the studentsended up chosing Nausicaa as their topic for their final research paper in the class. As near as we have been able to determine,we were the first mainstream literature course in a US college (and the second US college course overall) to ever use Nausicaa as a required text for the course. (The first course to ever use the Nausicaa as a required text was a student ledcourse about anime in spring 1998 at Western Washington Universityled by Michael Arnold, one of the members of the Miyazaki mailing list.)(Nausicaa has been used frequently in college courses in Japan, of course.)
The Nausicaa section of the course went like this:
Week 1: Lecture by Dr. Hairston--Introduction to manga, anime, and Miyazaki;class discussion of the Nausicaa manga.
Week 2: Watched the film version of Nausicaa of the Valley ofWind in class; followed that with a short discussion and lectureabout how the manga ultimately ends in a very different fashion than the movie.
Week 3: A short coda of about 15 minutes at the beginning of classof the material we didn't have time for in week 2. We watched Miyazaki'sshort (7 minute) music video On Your Mark and discussed the themesin there and how it related to Nausicaa.
Click here for the student papers from the class. Related articles Interview Marc didfor the October 1999 issue of the webzine Anime Craze. Note that Anime Craze is now a defunctwebzine, but thanks for Mike Kang and Gemma Hiranuma of Anime Craze(and Planet Anime!) we nowhave the original webpage here on my site. Essay Marc wrote about the course that was published inthe December 1999 (Vol. 7, number 12) issue of Animerica If you have any questions or comments about this site or ourcourse, please feel free to send us email. Pam can be reached atpsgossin@zoom1.telepath.com and Marc can be reached athairston@utdallas.eduUpdate: Dr. Gossin and I will be reteaching this course duringthe spring 2000 semester, and this time we will be hosting Dr. Susan Napierfrom the Asian Studies Program at University of Texas at Austin for a guestlecture about anime. Go here for the course announcment and syllabus.March 2000: Dr. Susan Napier of UT-Austin will be givinga public talk about "the images of females in anime" and later speaking tothe AH 3300 classon Wednesday March 29th, 2000. For more information about times and locations, please see the invitation we preparedfor another UTD class. Guests from outside the UTD community are welcome to attend both talks and the showing of Nausicaa thefollowing week. For questions or further information, please contactMarc by email or at972-883-2826.Fall 2001 Dr. Gossin and I will be teaching AH 1301a freshman introduction to humanities course this coming springsemester here at UT Dallas. This will be a class of about 150freshmen and we will once again be reading and viewing Nausicaaas well as viewing Princess Mononokeand Grave of theFireflies.Click on Totoro for the story of the Totoro mugshot in the December1999 issue of Animerica.Marc Hairston--January 2000
