Associate Professor Hartzheim’s article, “Makers in the Mix: A Production Studies Approach to Studying the Media Mix,” has been published in volume 16, issue 1 of Mechademia: Second Arc (University of Minnesota Press) as part of a special issue on “media mix” edited by Marc Steinberg.
The article appears as part of a round table of writing on the media mix, what is commonly referred to as Japan’s marketing and cultural system of media convergence. The article presents a case for studying the media mix not as its things, but as its people, or more specifically, the producers of its commodities. It outlines five areas of inquiry for media mix scholarship going forward, prodding scholars to consider how anime form, style, or fandom are not mutually exclusive from studies of history, industry, and technology.
