Marc Hairston, a very popular guest of SGMS, has been an invited speaker at every Schoolgirls and Mobilesuits workshop since its start in 2001, which is either definite proof of the popularity of his talks or that the Force has great power over weak minds. In his alter ego as a real boy, he is a professional space physicist at the University of Texas at Dallas. There he investigates space weather which is the study of the Earth’s upper atmosphere, magnetic field, and the aurora using satellite data from NASA and the Air Force. As part of the public outreach to middle and high school science students, he developed the comic character “Cindi,” an android space girl, who has starred in two manga-styled comic books with artwork and character design by MCAD alum, Erik Lervold. Thus he is the only person ever to con NASA into paying for the production of a manga series under the guise of it being an “educational product,” and headquarters has not caught on yet. In 1999, he and Dr. Pamela Gossin co-taught the first mainstream literature course at a U.S. college that included anime and manga as part of its required texts. Since then they have taught several classes that included anime and manga as well as three course exclusively on anime and manga. He wrote numerous articles for “Animerica” back when it was a real magazine, has given talks about anime at several academic conferences, and currently write reviews and essays for “Mechademia.”
Hairston has watched anime since he saw “Speed Racer” in black and white back in the 60s, but it was not until the late 80s and early 90s that he first became a serious fan. In honor of SGMS’ tenth anniversary, he will take you on a personal trip back to those early days to introduce you to the cute shojo who first seduced him into his life as an otaku in his talk, “Nadia: The Secret of Old School Anime.”
