Mavericks and Zinesters: Comics Scholarship before ‘Comics Scholarship'

Paper focused on Mary Pennell, a Victorian critic; Denis Gifford, a comics collector; Martin Barker, a pioneering academic; and the crew of late-1980s era fanzine FA. My conclusions included comment on the current state of comics scholarship, and in particular: the question of separating fan culture from academia; the value of pre-1995 scholarship; and the necessity for the systematised preservation of fanzines and comics collections.

Roger Sabin's Research Interests:
Cultural history, cultural studies, subcultural studies, film and television studies. Specialisms: comics, graphic novels, manga; punk and counterculture; 19th century entertainment; television crime drama. Cultural theory, especially postmodernism in history.