Eisner Award for Best Academic/Scholarly Work

The Eisner Award for Best Academic/Scholarly Work is the Eisner Award for "creative achievement" in American comic books for academic publishing. Before the creation of the award academic works could be nominated for Best Comics-related Book.

Eisner Award for Best Academic/Scholarly Work
Awarded for	Best Academic/Scholarly Work on Comic Books
Country	United States
First award	2012
Most recent winner (2023)	The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader: Critical Openings, Future Directions edited by Alison Halsall and Jonathan Warren
Website	www.comic-con.org/awards/eisner-awards-current-info

Name changes

From 2012 to 2013 the award was named Best Educational/Academic Work. From 2014 to 2015 the award was named Best Scholarly/Academic Work. The award took on its current name in 2016.

Winners and nominees

Award winners and nominees

Year	Author	Title	Publisher	Result	Ref.
2012	Ivan Brunetti	Cartooning: Philosophy & Practice	Yale University Press	Winner	[1]
	Charles Hatfield	Hand of Fire: The Comics Art of Jack Kirby	University Press of Mississippi	Winner	[1]
	Eric Berlatsky (ed.)	Alan Moore: Conversations	University Press of Mississippi	Nominee	[2]
	Jared Gardner	Projections: Comics and the History of 21st Century Storytelling	Stanford University Press	Nominee	[2]
	Matthew J. Smith and Randy Duncan (eds.)	Critical Approaches to Comics: Theories and Methods	Routledge	Nominee	[2]
2013	Susan E. Kirtley	Lynda Barry: Girlhood Through the Looking Glass	University Press of Mississippi	Winner	[1]
	Bart Beaty	Comics Versus Art	University of Toronto Press	Nominee	[3]
	Scott Bukatman	The Poetics of Slumberland	University of California Press	Nominee	[3]
	Elisabeth El Refaie	Autobiographical Comics: Life Writing in Pictures	University Press of Mississippi	Nominee	[3]
	Philip Nel	Crockett Johnson & Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature	University Press of Mississippi	Nominee	[3]
2014	Sheena C. Howard and Ronald L. Jackson II (eds.)	Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation	Bloomsbury Publishing	Winner	[1][4]
	Charles Hatfield, Jeet Heer, and Kent Worcester (eds.)	The Superhero Reader	University Press of Mississippi	Nominee	[4]
	John A. Lent (ed.)	International Journal of Comic Art		Nominee	[4]
	Nathan Vernon Madison	Anti-Foreign Imagery in American Pulps and Comic Books, 1920–1960	McFarland & Company	Nominee	[4]
	Jane Tolmie (ed.)	Drawing from Life: Memory and Subjectivity in Comic Art	University Press of Mississippi	Nominee	[4]
2015	Sarah Lightman (ed.)	Graphic Details: Jewish Women’s Confessional Comics in Essays and Interviews	McFarland & Company	Winner	[1][5]
	Michael Barrier	Funnybooks: The Improbable Glories of the Best American Comic Books	University of California Press	Nominee	[5]
	Andrew Hoberek	Considering Watchmen: Poetics, Property, Politics	Rutgers University Press	Nominee	[5]
	A. David Lewis	American Comics, Literary Theory, and Religion: The Superhero Afterlife	Palgrave Macmillan	Nominee	[5]
	Katherine Roeder	Wide Awake in Slumberland: Fantasy, Mass Culture, and Modernism in the Art of Winsor McCay	University Press of Mississippi	Nominee	[5]
	Thierry Smolderen	The Origins of Comics: From William Hogarth to Winsor McCay	University Press of Mississippi	Nominee	[5]
2016	Frances Gateward and John Jennings (eds.)	The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art	Rutgers University Press	Winner	[1][6]
	M. K. Czerwiec, Ian Williams, Susan Merrill Squier, Michael J. Green, Kimberly R. Myers, and Scott T. Smith	Graphic Medicine Manifesto	Penn State University Press	Nominee	[6]
	Rayna Denison and Rachel Mizsei-Ward (eds.)	Superheroes on World Screens	University Press of Mississippi	Nominee	[6]
	Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker (eds.)	Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan	University Press of Mississippi	Nominee	[6]
	Nick Sousanis	Unflattening	Harvard University Press	Nominee	[6]
2017	Carolyn Cocoa	Superwomen: Gender, Power, and Representation	Bloomsbury Publishing	Winner	[1][7]
	Tim Jackson	Pioneering Cartoonists of Color	University Press of Mississippi	Nominee
	Daniel Marrone	Forging the Past: Set and the Art of Memory	University Press of Mississippi	Nominee
	Marc Sobel	Brighter Than You Think: Ten Short Works by Alan Moore	Uncivilized Books	Nominee
	Paul Young	Frank Miller's Daredevil and the Ends of Heroism	Rutgers University Press	Nominee
2018	Frederick Luis Aldama	Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics	University of Arizona Press	Winner	[1]
	Brannon Costello	Neon Visions: The Comics of Howard Chaykin	LSU Press	Nominee	[8]
	Jared Gardner and Ian Gordon (eds.)	The Comics of Charles Schulz: The Good Grief of Modern Life	University Press of Mississippi	Nominee	[8]
	Mark Heimermann and Brittany Tullis (eds.)	Picturing Childhood: Youth in Transnational Comics	University of Texas Press	Nominee	[8]
	Kate Polak	Ethics in the Gutter: Empathy and Historical Fiction in Comics	Ohio State University Press	Nominee	[8]
2019	Anne Elizabeth Moore	Sweet Little Cunt: The Graphic Work of Julie Doucet	Uncivilized Books	Winner	[9][10]
	Eddie Campbell	The Goat-Getters: Jack Johnson, the Fight of the Century, and How a Bunch of Raucous Cartoonists Reinvented Comics	Library of American Comics/IDW Publishing/Ohio State University Press	Nominee	[11]
	Aaron Kashtan	Between Pen and Pixel: Comics, Materiality, and the Book of the Future	Ohio State University Press	Nominee	[11]
	Lara Saguisag	Incorrigibles and Innocents, Constructing Childhood and Citizenship in Progressive Era Comics	Rutgers University Press	Nominee	[11]
	Marc Singer	Breaking the Frames: Populism and Prestige in Comics Studies	University of Texas Press	Nominee	[11]
2020	Qiana Whitted	EC Comics: Race, Shock, and Social Protest	Rutgers University Press	Winner	[12][13][14]
	Andrew Blauner (ed.)	The Peanuts Papers: Writers and Cartoonists on Charlie Brown, Snoopy & the Gang, and the Meaning of Life	Library of America	Nominee	[15]
	Benjamin Fraser	The Art of Pere Joan: Space, Landscape, and Comics Form	University of Texas Press	Nominee	[15]
	Kevin Haworth	The Comics of Rutu Modan: War, Love, and Secrets	University Press of Mississippi	Nominee	[15]
	Christina Meyer	Producing Mass Entertainment: The Serial Life of the Yellow Kid	Ohio State University Press	Nominee	[15]
	Fusami Ogi, Rebecca Suter, Kazumi Nagaike, and John A. Lent (eds.)	Women's Manga in Asia and Beyond: Uniting Different Cultures and Identities	Palgrave Macmillan	Nominee	[15]
2021	Rebecca Wanzo	The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging	New York University Press	Winner	[16]
	Neil Cohn	Who Understands Comics: Questioning the Universality of Visual Language Comprehension	Bloomsbury Publishing	Nominee	[17]
	Charles Hatfield and Bart Beaty (eds.)	Comic Studies: A Guidebook	Rutgers University Press	Nominee	[17]
	Sean Kleefeld	Webcomics	Bloomsbury Publishing	Nominee	[17]
	Kim A. Munson (ed.)	Comic Art in Museums	University Press of Mississippi	Nominee	[17]
2022	Eike Exner	Comics and the Origins of Manga: A Revisionist History	Rutgers University Press	Winner	[18][19]
	Andrew J. Kunka	The Life and Comics of Howard Cruse: Taking Risks in the Service of Truth	Rutgers University Press	Nominee	[18][19]
	Zack Kruse	Mysterious Travelers: Steve Ditko and the Search for a New Liberal Identity	University Press of Mississippi	Nominee	[18][19]
	Paul S. Hirsch	Pulp Empire: The Secret History of Comics Imperialism	University of Chicago Press	Nominee	[18][19]
	David  Kunzle	Rebirth of the English Comic Strip: A Kaleidoscope, 1847–1870	University Press of Mississippi	Nominee	[18][19]
2023	Josef Benson and Doug Singsen	Bandits, Misfits, and Superheroes: Whiteness and Its Borderlands in American Comics and Graphic Novels	University Press of Mississippi	Nominee	[20]
	Erin La Cour and Anna Poletti (eds.)	Graphic Medicine	University of Hawaiʻi Press	Nominee	[20]
	Katherine Kelp-Stebbins	How Comics Travel: Publication, Translation, Radical Literacies	Ohio State University Press	Nominee	[20]
	Alison Halsall and Jonathan Warren (eds.)	The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader: Critical Openings, Future Directions	University Press of Mississippi	Winner	[20]
Tim Smyth	Teaching with Comics and Graphic Novels	Routledge	Nominee	[20]
2024	John A. Lent	Asian Political Cartoons	University Press of Mississippi	Nominee	[21]
	J. Andrew Deman	The Claremont Run: Subverting Gender in the X- Men	University of Texas Press	Nominee	[21]
	edited by Qiana Whitted	Desegregating Comics: Debating Blackness in the Golden Age of American Comics	Rutgers University Press	Nominee	[21]
	George Khoury-Jad	If Shehrazad Drew: Critical Writings on Arab Comics	Sawaf Center for Arab Comics Studies and American University of Beirut Press	Nominee	[21]
	Margaret Galvan	In Visible Archives: Queer and Feminist Visual Culture in the 1980s	University of Minnesota Press	Nominee	[21]
	Jeffrey A. Brown	Super Bodies: Comic Book Illustration, Artistic Styles, and Narrative Impact	University of Texas Press	Nominee	[21]

See also

• List of Eisner Award winners