Over any given year, scholars who are interested in presenting their work on comics (including manga) at academic conferences have several options available to them. The San Diego Comic-Con hosts its annual Comic Arts Conference. Mechademia: Conference on Asian Popular Culture (originally launched as Schoolgirls and Mobilesuits: Culture and Creation in Manga and Anime) is another well-known project. The University of Florida’s Comics Studies program also organizes an annual Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels, as does the Canadian Society for the Study of Comics. And the Popular Culture Association actively encourages scholars to submit papers on “all aspects of the medium” for presentation at its annual conference under the Comics and Comic Art area.

Recently, I found out about another academic conference that may be of interested to anyone working with Japanese comics. Starting in 2012, Inter-Disciplinary.net  has been organizing an annual The Graphic Novel conference, held every September on the campus of University of Oxford’s Mansfield College. (more…)