Comic, children and education research before 1954: a systematic review

ABSTRACT

It is often argued that 1954 was a very important year for comics in the United States because of the consequences of Fredric Wertham’s major work appearance. However, long before that, there was already a multitude of academic publications about comics, children and education. Apart from sensationalist and apocalyptic publications, there are several academic references previous to 1954 focusing on topics related to education, language and comics as an object of learning. Most of these references develop very important empirical work in terms of the size of the samples studied, while others incorporate innovative methodologies for the time, such as factor analysis or qualitative interviews. In part, these advances can be explained by the conjunction of two factors: firstly, the dynamics of the social sciences in the United States, where quantitative fieldwork became commonplace from the 1930s onwards. Secondly, the popularisation of comics with the arrival of comic books, first, and the appearance of Superman, later. This article attempts to develop a systematic review of academic publications published before 1954 in the United States. 35 empirical publications are identified and analysed attending to the author’s gender, sample size and number of citations, among other variables.

KEYWORDS:

• Comic studies
• education
• children
• comics code
• empirical research

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Details on Spiegelman are on the Online Archive of California: https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c83x8c9c/; idem on Fearing: http://texts.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb0580022s;NAAN=13030&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=div00005&toc.depth=1&toc.id=&brand=oac4; Details on Terwilliger are on WikiTree: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Terwilliger-247