Comics studies
Continental comics studies can trace its roots back to the pioneering work of semioticians such as Roland Barthes (particularly his 1964 essay "Rhétorique de l'image", published in English as "Rhetoric of the Image" in the anthology Image—Music—Text)[11] and Umberto Eco (particularly his 1964 book Apocalittici e integrati [Apocalypse Postponed]).
[13] More recently, analysis of comics have begun to be undertaken by cognitive scientists, the most prominent being Neil Cohn, who has used tools from linguistics to detail the theoretical structure of comics' underlying "visual language", and has also used psychological experimentation from cognitive neuroscience to test these theories in actual comprehension.
[14] Cohn's theories are not universally accepted, with other scholars like Thierry Groensteen, Hannah Miodrag, and Barbara Postema offering alternative understandings.
[18] Theorists such as Rodolphe Töpffer,[19] R. C. Harvey, Will Eisner,[20] David Carrier,[21] Alain Rey,[17] and Lawrence Grove emphasize the combination of text and images,[22] though there are prominent examples of pantomime comics throughout its history.
[28] According to Jacobs, comics can help educators to move "toward attending to multimodal literacies" that "shift our focus from print only to multiple modalities".
)[35] The first attempts at comics historiography began in the United States in the 1940s with the work of Thomas Craven, Martin Sheridan, and Coulton Waugh.
Historiography became an accepted practice in the 1970s with the work of Maurice Horn, Jim Steranko, Ron Goulart, Bill Blackbeard, and Martin Williams.
The 1990s also saw a growth of scholarly work on comics with new books from academics such as Martin Barker, David Kunzle, Thomas Inge, Joseph "Rusty" Witek, and Ian Gordon.
[40] Beside formal programs and degrees, it is common to see individual courses dedicated to comics and graphic novels in many educational institutions.
[49] They have since appointed a team of renowned comics practitioners including Fionnuala Doran,[50] Julian Lawrence, Con Chrisoulis, Nigel Kitching and Tara McInerney.
It is a bilingual community of academics focused in discuss all aspects of comics as an art form and cultural phenomenon founded in October 2010 by University of Regina professor Sylvain Rheault.
[60][61] In addition to regular events, ASPAS also promotes various academic activities, such as the Meeting of Comic Artists with Trina Robbins, held in 2015 at Gibiteca Henfil, in São Paulo, and in 2017 at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
[73] Additionally, there is an annual Michigan State University Comics Forum, which brings together academics and professionals working in the industry.
[9] The German Gesellschaft für Comicforschung (ComFor, Society for Comics Studies) has organized yearly academic conferences since 2006.
