A NEW study into comics and graphic novels has been set up by the Oxford Centre for Research in the Humanities.

Called Comics and Graphic Novels: The Politics of Form, it will look at questions such as why the popular publications are not deemed academic and whether traditional critical approaches to literature can be applied to them.

Dr Dominic Davies, a British academic postdoctoral fellow in the English faculty who founded the network, said: "Comics definitely have been overlooked by many academics.

"This is in part because, by their very nature, they don’t fit easily into the disciplinary structures that we have today.

"Are they art? Of course, they certainly are, but because they’re usually collected together in strip or book form, circulated in newspapers or sold in bookshops, rather than hung in museums or galleries, it means they’ve often don’t get the attention of art historians and art theorists."

Dr Davies added: "Probably the real reason for the slow uptake of comics by academia is that they have traditionally been seen as a ‘low’ cultural form – one that is filled with coarse language, silly jokes and subversive sentiments and thus not worthy of critical attention.

"This is especially the case when they are contrasted with the notion of literature."

The network is building up a network of people who would be interested in attending events and seminars.

Mr Davies can be contacted at dominic.davies@ell.ox.ac.uk or comics@torch.ox.ac.uk