(Narrative Biography)

Andrea Horbinski began studying Japanese in college after she started watching anime in high school, and went on to research hypernationalist manga in Kyoto on a Fulbright Fellowship. While pursuing her PhD in history and new media at the University of California, Berkeley, she harnessed her love of manga and pop culture, writing a general history of manga in its historical and global contexts for her dissertation. Along the way, she uncovered the role that fans of manga have played in the medium’s development since its earliest decades, mirroring her own experience in sci-fi and online fandoms since childhood.

Manga’s First Century: How Creators and Fans Made Japanese Comics, 1905-1989 is the result of ten years spent researching, reading, and thinking about manga on three continents, including research stints in Belgium and Japan.

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(Standard Biography)

Andrea Horbinski holds a PhD in modern Japanese history with a designated emphasis in new media from the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Manga’s First Century: How Creators and Fans Made Japanese Comics, 1905-1989 (2025, University of California Press). She has discussed anime, manga, fandom, and Japanese history at conventions and conferences on five continents, and her articles have appeared in Transformative Works and Cultures, Convergence, Internet Histories, and Mechademia. She currently serves as the submissions editor for Mechademia: Second Arc and on the board of The Journal of Anime and Manga Studies. She lives in the Bay Area.

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