When you consider that Japan actually produces more comics than all English-speaking countries put together, choosing English as the lingua franca for comics research seems particularly weird.
Not really--it goes back to what I was saying earlier about how there really is no such thing as "Comics Studies." For the most part, people who study comics are also allied with their own particular disciplines...and those disciplines have a lingua fraca that almost certainly isn't Japanese. You can't get power to roll uphill if it doesn't want to.
The STEM fields require a lot of resources, and the best resources and institutionalization of those resources are concentrated in the English speaking countries (especially, of course, the US). If you wanna work in a great lab, knowing English increases your chances of finding one that will take you. So even though most humanities scholars don't need research equipment anywhere near the level of a, say, bioengineer, the prestige accrued by STEM cousins in the same university is passed down to the humanities as well.
Besides, it goes back to the question of how big an audience you want. Even within the global academy, the size of the English-speaking academy is incredibly large. Even though I come from the US, I have trouble wrapping my brain around the numbers! In the relatively small field of Communication (ha ha), the US disciplinary association actually has more members and a bigger annual conference than the "international" disciplinary associations (one of which was founded by Americans, anyway). Maybe some scholars prefer to use English because it gives them prestigious outlets for their work, but I've met many, especially in Asian countries, who feel they must master English simply because they want to be able to share their findings with the rest of the world--and let's face it, the rest of the world isn't going to learn Japanese or Korean just to hear what they have to say. *sighs* (Maybe the Chinese will be more fortunate, but academic freedom in Mainland China still leaves much to be desired.)
Four years is the overall norm for a PhD program, but that's when you have a full-time scholarship, so people who research while doing other things to pay bills
So I guess it's similar to the UK model, then? Of course, my knowledge of what the UK PhD entails is based primarily upon my experience at Cambridge--and it's been suggested that this experience is not representative. *gulp*
EDIT: Just skimmed quickly over your paper and noticed that you don't really engage with the massive amount of literature on fans and fandom. Sandvoss's Fans has an excellent lit review (along with a presentation of his own ideas)--you might want to check it out. ^_^ I wrote a review of it here: http://kethylia.livejournal.com/605589.html
no subject
Not really--it goes back to what I was saying earlier about how there really is no such thing as "Comics Studies." For the most part, people who study comics are also allied with their own particular disciplines...and those disciplines have a lingua fraca that almost certainly isn't Japanese. You can't get power to roll uphill if it doesn't want to.
The STEM fields require a lot of resources, and the best resources and institutionalization of those resources are concentrated in the English speaking countries (especially, of course, the US). If you wanna work in a great lab, knowing English increases your chances of finding one that will take you. So even though most humanities scholars don't need research equipment anywhere near the level of a, say, bioengineer, the prestige accrued by STEM cousins in the same university is passed down to the humanities as well.
Besides, it goes back to the question of how big an audience you want. Even within the global academy, the size of the English-speaking academy is incredibly large. Even though I come from the US, I have trouble wrapping my brain around the numbers! In the relatively small field of Communication (ha ha), the US disciplinary association actually has more members and a bigger annual conference than the "international" disciplinary associations (one of which was founded by Americans, anyway). Maybe some scholars prefer to use English because it gives them prestigious outlets for their work, but I've met many, especially in Asian countries, who feel they must master English simply because they want to be able to share their findings with the rest of the world--and let's face it, the rest of the world isn't going to learn Japanese or Korean just to hear what they have to say. *sighs* (Maybe the Chinese will be more fortunate, but academic freedom in Mainland China still leaves much to be desired.)
Four years is the overall norm for a PhD program, but that's when you have a full-time scholarship, so people who research while doing other things to pay bills
So I guess it's similar to the UK model, then? Of course, my knowledge of what the UK PhD entails is based primarily upon my experience at Cambridge--and it's been suggested that this experience is not representative. *gulp*
EDIT: Just skimmed quickly over your paper and noticed that you don't really engage with the massive amount of literature on fans and fandom. Sandvoss's Fans has an excellent lit review (along with a presentation of his own ideas)--you might want to check it out. ^_^ I wrote a review of it here: http://kethylia.livejournal.com/605589.html