We are pleased to announce a call for reviews for a new publication, The Rising Dragon, a journal of Pacific Rim culture and media studies. The theme for our first edition is “Pacific Rim as Frontier and Heartland.” During his presidential nomination acceptance speech in 1960, President John F. Kennedy first posited the idea of the Pacific Rim as a definite community that was both frontier and heartland, combining the two central ideas of the American mythos. For him, it was a contiguous, ever more integrated community of interest, experience, and humanness. It revolves as a single unit in that sense, transcending the merely Trans-Pacific by being Circum-Pacific, including all the cultures on the edges and within it. This is what informs our idea of the Pacific Rim and thus provides the impetus for our first theme, “Pacific Rim as Frontier and Heartland.”

We are seeking reviews of books, games and films that engage with Pacific Rim culture. Please contact us if you have a question about the suitability of a review subject.

The Rising Dragon is principally an English-language journal and reviews are to be in that language. Authors may use American or British English as the author prefers, provided they are consistent. Author-provided translations of all materials in other Pacific Rim languages (e.g. Cebuano, Chinese, French, Hawai’ian, Japanese, Javanese, Korean, Laotian, Malay, Maori, Pama-Nyungan, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, Thai, Vietnamese) will be published alongside the official English versions.

Questions, inquiries, and reviews of up to 2000 words and a CV/résumé should be submitted to RisingDragonJournal@gmail.com in Word format. Academics at all stages of their careers, industry professionals, government and religious officials, and other interested parties are all eligible to submit reviews to The Rising Dragon for consideration. Reviews submitted to The Rising Dragon must not have been published or posted elsewhere before submission to the journal. Please see our Style Sheet before submitting a review.

Our journal is an open access publication, as are our video presentations, and will never charge fees to authors or readers. The Rising Dragon is a publication of the International College of Liberal Arts at Yamanashi Gakuin University.

Editorial Board:

Editor-in-Chief: Dr. Darren Jon Ashmore, Professor of Anthropology and Head of Japan Studies, Yamanashi Gakuin University, Kofu, Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan

Assistant Editor: J. Holder Bennett, Associate Professor of History, Collin College, McKinney, Texas, USA

Associate Editors:

Dr. Eunju Bährisch, Postdoctoral Researcher and Project Coordinator, Institute of Korean Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Dr. Elizabeth Birmingham, Associate Dean of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences and Professor of English, North Dakota State University, Fargo, North Dakota, USA

Dr. Darryl E. Brock, Adjunct Assistant Professor of History, University of Bridgeport, Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA

Dr. Rick Hudson, Visiting Research Fellow, Manchester Metropolitan University – Cheshire, Crewe, England, UK

Dr. Frank Jacob, Assistant Professor of World History, Queensborough Community College, City University of New York, Bayside, New York, USA

Dr. Christopher B. Patterson, Assistant Professor of English, New York Institute of Technology, Nanjing, Nanjing, Jiangsu, People’s Republic of China

Dr. George T. Sipos, Executive Director of Administration, Yamanashi Gakuin University, Kofu, Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan

Dr. Bruno Starrs, Senior Lecturer in Cinematology, Institut Teknologi Brunei, Bandar Seri Begawan, Negara Brunei Darussalam

Daniel Fandino, Member, H-Net Executive Council, East Lansing, Michigan, USA

Peter Schuelke, Visiting Fellow, Polinsky Language Science Lab, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Video Curator: William R. Clark, Jr.