Manga artist Kofi Bazzell-Smith visits Auburn to support skill building, cultural awareness through art

International scholar and manga artist Kofi Bazzell-Smith visited Auburn University art students this spring to blend culture and educational development through manga production workshops.

Manga is a technically unique, culturally significant illustrated art form originating from East Asia that has steadily gained popularity in the U.S. As a new media graduate student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, a Mellon Foundation Interseminars Initiative Fellow and US-Japan Bridging Scholar, Bazzell-Smith travels the country to teach manga production and hopes to become the nation’s first studio manga professor.

“One of the main points of international engagement in Japan is through popular culture, anime, manga and video games. And I think popular culture is a good entryway to get ourselves interested in another place, so when we get there, we realize we’re all the same,” Bazzell-Smith said. “You can’t take a course on studio manga anywhere in the country right now. To truly learn something, it’s important to actually engage with it, and you learn more about manga when you make it.”

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