World crisis is a common theme in recent anime, and often a gendered one. Gaia theory postulates a self-regulating Earth figured as feminine and maternal, but the notion of mother nature as a force of equilibrium looks naive in the context of the Anthropocene. Is it possible to see in magical girls an anime ecofeminism that complicates the idealism of a maternal Nature? This talk explores how the magical girl may bridge the media ecology of anime and "dark ecology," or ecological thought without Nature.

Ryan Cook is an Assistant Professor in Film and Media Studies at Emory University. He teaches courses in world film history and on topics related to his own research areas in Japanese film and cultural history—these include postwar film and art movements, genres, and criticism, as well as contemporary narrative film, adaptation and the “media mix.” Before coming to Emory, he taught film and Japanese culture courses at Yale and Harvard. He is currently writing a book manuscript tracing the cultural and intellectual contexts of cinema in postwar Japan, examining films in relation to their reception by audience organizations and critics, as well as their material exhibition environments.