Please note that Kofi Bazzell-Smith is a Future Faculty Fellow at the Rochester Institute of Technology College of Art and Design.
Kofi Bazzell-Smith is an artist with a passion for manga, a style of Japanese comics, and a professional boxer. He has participated in the 2023 Future Faculty Career Exploration Program held at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. Examples of his artwork can be found on the front cover of this newsletter: https://igi.illinois.edu/sites/default/files/2024-10/IGI%20Fall%202024%…
Bazzell-Smith provided the following concerning his education and career.
Regarding my development as a scholar that works in a Japanese Japanese form,, my CEAPS-sponsored FLAS fellowship allowed me to take courses in advanced Japanese language and Japanese film, both of which were instrumental in my development as a scholar.
In 2017, I went to Japan as a college dropout. I saved up $5,000 while working overtime in temporary employment, quit my job, and went to Fukuoka for a month to study at a private language school and train at a professional boxing gym. At this school, I took my first course on manga storytelling. I already had intermediate command of the language from studying at Parkland College and learning on my own.
My experience in Japan led me to return to school. Two years later in 2019, I studied abroad at Kansai Gaidai where I took a manga production course, advanced Japanese language, and a course on translation from English to Japanese. During this time, I also audited a course at Kyoto Seika University and studied privately under Story Manga department professor Akira Sasou.
Meanwhile, I trained at several boxing gyms. I met the director of Japanese professional boxing, Shosei Nitta, and he organized an exhibition match for me in Kawasaki, where I defeated a Japanese professional fighter. I learned most of my speaking Japanese from training in boxing gyms, since usually nobody spoke English.
In the summer of 2022, after my first year of graduate school at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, I received research funding from a Mellon-sponsored interdisciplinary fellowship to spend one month in Tokyo. My trip was sponsored by my guarantor, professional mangaka Kazuo Maekawa, who drew the popular manga 逆転裁判 (“Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney”).
In 2023, I created a two-week artist residency for Maekawa at the U. of I. via a $15,000 grant I won from the Center for Advanced Study. This marked the first time I felt like I could build practical bridges between the US and Japan through manga. I served as host, event organizer, and Japanese-English interpreter for the two-week residency, and we held events at the U. of I., Franklin Steam Academy, Northwestern University, and C2E2 in Chicago.
Later that year, I returned to Japan for a month of independent research. This time I gave lectures at Musashi University and Aoyama Gakuin University, and presented my work to donors at the US-Japan Bridging Foundation’s 25th anniversary Gala at the Tokyo American Club.
Last June I joined Middlebury College’s summer intensive language program as the only non-Japanese faculty in the Japanese department. I taught manga and boxing lessons in Japanese to students and faculty. This was my first time giving formal lectures in Japanese.
As a study abroad student, I gained most of my memorable experiences and made my most important connections off campus. Now, I am returning to Japan to meet my connections at schools and with artists and formalize my plans for a study abroad course I will lead. For the course, my plan is to bring my students with me in summer 2025 to a couple of different universities, two manga vocational schools, a few museums, and to meet with artists and publishers.
I think popular media and culture are underutilized resources for promoting cultural exchange and deeper understanding. Things we enjoy like art, music, dance, movies, and games, etc. can be entry points into a deeper conversation.
East Asian art and culture have been popular in Black American communities since the 1970s, and the Japanese anime and video game booms in the early-mid 90s impacted a lot of kids my age. There are a lot of Black people who are deeply interested in Japan and Japanese studies though we aren’t well-represented in those classrooms. There is also a burgeoning movement of Black artists like me working in Japanese visual styles.
Similarly, Black musical styles like jazz, blues, R&B, and hip-hop have become global sensations and thrive in Japan. Japanese jazz is unique and Japanese Hip-Hop is unique. And both are derived from Black cultures and practices. I am interested in how we can leverage these sorts of popular interests to build cultures and create opportunities to engage.
For more about Kofi Bazzell-Smith, visit https://www. kofimanga.com/bio