The School of Art, Media and American Studies (AMA) has a thriving interdisciplinary research environment in the growing field of Comics Studies.
Faculty members from both AMA and other Schools have published widely on many different aspects of Comics Studies, and we have special research strengths in autobiographical comics, superheroes, comics and politics, formalist comics studies, horror comics, censorship, gender and sexuality in comics, and transmedia adaptations including superhero movies.
In addition, the School also hosts a regular series of Comics Studies research talks by invited external speakers, which connect us to the wider academic community in the field.
Members of the faculty also frequently attend major Comics Studies conferences, including those put on by the Comics Studies Society, the International Graphic Novel and Comics Conference, Comics Forum, the International Bande Dessinée Society, the German Society for Comics Studies, and the Canadian Society for the Study of Comics.
Recent Comics Studies scholarship published by our faculty members includes:
This innovative books series edited by Frederik Byrn Køhlert publishes original short-form research in the areas of gender and sexuality studies as they relate to comics cultures past and present. Topics in the series cover printed as well as digital media, mainstream and alternative comics industries, transmedia adaptions, comics consumption, and various comics-associated cultural fields and forms of expression. Gendered and sexual identities are considered as intersectional and always in conversation with issues concerning race, ethnicity, ability, class, age, nationality, and religion. Longer books are published in the companion series Studies in Gender, Sexuality, and Comics.
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