112 COMICS SCHOLARSHIP
the appearance of symposia or special issues on comics in peer-reviewed journals,
from Modern Fiction Studies and American Periodicals, to SCAN: Journal of Media Arts
Culture and PS: Political Science and Politics. Th e growing visibility and legitimacy of
the comics medium among publishers, curators, and cultural journalists, as well as
deans, chairs, and provosts, helps explain why undergraduate and graduate courses
increasingly incorporate comics texts as assigned readings or course topics. Th e fact
that a 2009 thread on the Comics Scholars Listserv addresses the question of putting
together a Comics Studies minor speaks to the expanding institutional capacity and
reach of an inherently interdisciplinary fi eld.
From its inception, comics studies has been an international phenomenon. As in
the United States, postwar scholarship in Britain, France, Japan, West Germany, and
elsewhere drew on themes and insights from fi lm studies, literary studies, and sociol-
ogy. Meanwhile, the more recent turn to a more formalist approach that emphasizes the
distinctive characteristics of the comics medium is by no means confi ned to the United
States. Th e International Journal of Comic Art has published several special sections
on early comics scholarship across the globe, from Brazil to Italy, and its coverage has
provided a useful counterbalance to the inevitable Anglophone tilt of U.S.-based schol-
arly discourse. In addition, many writers have noted the exceptional sophistication and
intellectual richness of comics studies in France and Belgium, as exemplifi ed by such
writers as Th ierry Groensteen, Pascal Lef èvre, and Jan Baetens. Several North American
theorists, including Bart Beaty, Charles Hatfi eld, Jeet Heer, and Gene Kannenberg, Jr.,
openly acknowledge their debt to the Francophone literature. Th e newfound interest
that scholarly presses have shown in publishing works in comics studies may hopefully
result in the long overdue translation of key European texts.
While the emergence of a community of comics scholars dates to the postwar years,
behavioral researchers in education and psychology were publishing empirical stud-
ies on young readers and comics from the 1920s onwards. Th e bibliography to David
White and Robert Abel’s Th e Funnies: An American Idiom (1963) cites several dozen
articles that appeared in specialist journals such as the Review of Education Research,
the Journal of Pediatrics, School Management, and the Wilson Library Bulletin in the
1940s and 1950s. While some mid-century researchers disdained comics, and used
their research to confi rm the anxieties of parents and public authorities, not all peer-
reviewed scholarship hoisted the anti-comics banner. Titles listed in Th e Funnies in-
clude “Comic Books are Serious Aids to Community Education” (1953), “Case for the
Comics” (1944), and “Use Comic Magazines as a Learning Tool” (1947). Th e bibli-
ography’s earliest entry, “Th e Compensatory Function of the Sunday Funny Paper,”
appeared in the Journal of Applied Psychology in 1927. Prior to the 1960s and 1970s,
scholars tended to treat comics as otherworldly objects that infl uenced and perhaps
distorted the development of the young mind. Postwar comics studies took a greater
interest in the objects themselves.
From the vantage point of contemporary scholarship, comics is an infi nite canvas.
Given the global reach of cartooning, the variety of cartoon formats, the unexplored
