Andrew McKevitt is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History.  He graduated from St. Joseph’s University in 2002 with a major in history and a minor in Russian and East-Central European studies.  Drew has been at Temple since the fall 2002 semester.  He has served as a research assistant for the Center for Public Policy, as the Thomas Davis Fellow in the Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy, and as a teaching and research assistant in the history department.  He served as an adjunct instructor during the 2006-2007 at both Temple and Philadelphia University.  Drew’s field of interest is the history of U.S. foreign relations with an emphasis on cultural relations.  His dissertation examines the consumption of Japanese products in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. 

As a 2007-2008 Graduate Teaching Fellow in the Center for the Humanities at Temple, Drew will teach a course titled “Anime and the Globalization of Culture.”  This interdisciplinary course will use the global phenomenon of Japanese animation, or anime, to explore the origins and processes of cultural globalization since the 1970s.  The course will begin by examining contemporary globalization from a historical perspective, focusing on its roots in post-World War II international political and economic transformations.  After surveying a variety of theoretical and empirical frameworks for understanding cultural globalization, students will examine the history of anime in Japan by viewing several representative anime texts.  The course will culminate in an exploration of the ways that anime and globalization have transformed local and national cultures in the United States.  The course is cross-listed in the fall 2007 semester with the Department of History, the American Studies program, the Asian Studies program, and the department of Broadcasting, Telecommunications, and Mass Media in the School of Communications and Theater. 

Contact: mckevitt@temple.edu