Who in the world is Dani Cavallaro?
by Jacqueline Ristola
Throughout my time in undergrad, I would often check out books with the express purpose of merely holding onto them, perpetually existing in a “to read someday” pile that grew and grew in my bedroom. A few of these texts were the work of Dani Cavallaro, who, from first appearance, looks like a studious author, with 13 books on the topic of anime.
By the end of undergrad, I had recognized that Cavallaro’s work wasn’t quite up to a rigorous academic caliber, but merely assumed that she was coming from a sophisticated fan perspective, and left it at that. Here as a student I once found her intimidating, for at a brief glance, she appeared to be a well published author in the field, leaving less room for me as a scholar. But it wasn’t until I started researching today that there was much more to the story of Dani Cavallaro that what appeared.
Today I finally took initiative to try and figure out who this Cavallaro figure was, only to find barely anything about her at all. Amazon and Goodreads led me to find her other work on subjects I couldn’t believe Cavallaro had expertise to cover, namely subjects such a French Feminist Theory. Of course, perhaps what should have tipped me off was that these texts were introductory or survey book. I could not believe this was the same person, and went further down the research rabbit hole.
As these posts demonstrated from the wonderful Anime and Manga Studies blog, not only is there nothing about this person, her work is, frankly, rudimentary. Her prose is fluffed with academic jargon, often rephrasing portions of wikipedia entries and the work of other scholars without citations. You actually can’t find any information about this person online, aside from very brief author bios on the publisher’s website. This is, in a word, sketchy.
The fact that many of her books are published from McFarland press says a lot about the quality of the press and its authors, as her work is basically plagiarism hidden under the shambles of academic jargon. From all appearances, Cavallaro at least illustrates to me that I could always have a job publishing tripe from a living.
In researching all this, I can’t help but feel I uncovered a conspiracy. A conspiracy~!
Critical Hit!! 
Dani Cavallaro first caught my eye when a certain anime blog’s author purported to have seen the K-On! movie after its initial screening in Japan, and on reading that post, I found it to completely misrepresent the K-On! movie. As a blogger’s opinion, that’s fine, but I later learnt that said blog post was later plagiarised into Cavallaro’s text.
Thus, what was an (incorrect) opinion became passed off as a fact, and that didn’t sit well with me. This lead to my own post in an attempt to prevent academic writers from falling under the delusion that the K-On! movie faced major artistic challenges during its production. I’m quite surprised that not more people are aware that Cavallaro is a fraudulent source; whoever this individual (or group) is, at the minimum, they are most certainly not qualified to write about Kyoto Animation.
Definitely. Your post on this subject is an excellent takedown.
The fact that many of her books are published from McFarland press says a lot about the quality of the press and its authors
What I’ve always found frustrating is that *otherwise*, McFarland is a completely legit publisher, and one I actually have a lot of respect for. I’ve had friends/colleagues publish with them no problem, as well as a professor I think very highly of. Yes, they’re not nearly in the same league as the big corporate publishers – or the big university presses – but they aren’t trying to be. Many of their books are extremely specialized, and meant for dozens – but that’s pretty much by design. Long tail, all that.