げんしけん (Genshiken)

The title is the name of an Anime about a club called 現代視覚文化研究会 (Gendai Shikaku Bunka Kenkyūkai). The English translation usually used is Society for Study of Modern Visual Culture.
However, the Modern era was the 1980s-90s, and hence I prefer the translation Society for Study of Contemporary Visual Culture instead. This opinion is, of course, not entirely my own (hah, almost had you fooled into thinking I was an expert on this stuff), but was brought around by two separate pieces of information I gathered from two completely different sources.

The story is long, so please bear with me.

It started off in September of 2007- oh, wait. I think I can make this shorter. There you go.

Hmmm, that link isn't very descriptive. Oh well, I'll just explain it.

Well, it started off sometime in Sept '07 (ah, the past gives me such nostalgia.. though since it's such a recent past, this probably isn't a good sign O_O), nareshov and I simultaneously had a sudden burst of energy, and decided to form an Anime cum Manga Club. There were several examples of precedence, so we knew it could be done. Plus, the Films and Media Council was undergoing a restructuring, so it was the best time for a new club to bloom.
So, we went to Prof. Suchitra Mathur for advice on how to proceed. Why? Simply because she was only person related to non-technical stuff that we both knew well enough to approach, and who we knew would actually be interested in it too :)

We talked to her, she told us that although she cannot back us officially (since she was already into the Book Club, Meander, and countless other things), but that we were welcome to come anytime for advice, and that we had her "blessings" so to speak ;) For official backing (which is good/required while forming a club), she advised us to meet Prof. Satyaki Roy who was (and is) the Faculty advisor for the FMC. Coincidentally, Naresh knew him quite well, having done a course under him. We then discussed (at length) the aims of the club with Ma'am, and she convinced us (to cut a long story short) to broaden our scope to include several kinds of Visual Culture; not just Anime and Manga, and as a consequence, forming a bridge between all the clubs under the FMC (since it covers all forms of contemporary culture), and other clubs as well, such as the Book Club (manga/comics).

We then proceeded to meet Prof. Roy with a renewed sense of purpose, and with a grand design in mind. A design with a purpose, and a design. Wait, I already used those two words didn't I? Crap, too tired to change them too.

Damn, I should hurry up and finish this post before I collapse on this keyboard.

Right, so he extended it even further to include things like the artwork on the back of trucks, and accepted it with open arms :P

And, then the FMC Secy got über-excited about the whole thing, and we talked about various stuff, and then put a preliminary writeup about the Club infront of the Students' Senate at the next meeting. Happy Ending: We'll be an official club starting next sem :)

Oh, I almost forgot to mention the whole point of this post; the name of the club is SSCVC, pronounced Genshiken :}

Oh, and the Modern/Contemporary thing I mentioned before was revealed to us by Prof. Satyaki Roy.
The second piece of information (that I found out about in passing), was that the translation was not "official", and was merely the one that the fansubbers had used. So, the proper meaning was probably "contemporary".

EOF