# 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.

## 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 |
| 2012 | Ivan Brunetti | Cartooning: Philosophy & Practice | Yale University Press | Winner |
| 2012 | Charles Hatfield | Hand of Fire: The Comics Art of Jack Kirby | University Press of Mississippi | Winner |
| 2012 | Eric Berlatsky (ed.) | Alan Moore: Conversations | University Press of Mississippi | Nominee |
| 2012 | Jared Gardner | Projections: Comics and the History of 21st Century Storytelling | Stanford University Press | Nominee |
| 2012 | Matthew J. Smith and Randy Duncan (eds.) | Critical Approaches to Comics: Theories and Methods | Routledge | Nominee |
| 2013 | Susan E. Kirtley | Lynda Barry: Girlhood Through the Looking Glass | University Press of Mississippi | Winner |
| 2013 | Bart Beaty | Comics Versus Art | University of Toronto Press | Nominee |
| 2013 | Scott Bukatman | The Poetics of Slumberland | University of California Press | Nominee |
| 2013 | Elisabeth El Refaie | Autobiographical Comics: Life Writing in Pictures | University Press of Mississippi | Nominee |
| 2013 | 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 |
| 2014 | Sheena C. Howard and Ronald L. Jackson II (eds.) | Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation | Bloomsbury Publishing | Winner |
| 2014 | Charles Hatfield, Jeet Heer, and Kent Worcester (eds.) | The Superhero Reader | University Press of Mississippi | Nominee |
| 2014 | John A. Lent (ed.) | International Journal of Comic Art | | Nominee |
| 2014 | Nathan Vernon Madison | Anti-Foreign Imagery in American Pulps and Comic Books, 1920–1960 | McFarland & Company | Nominee |
| 2014 | Jane Tolmie (ed.) | Drawing from Life: Memory and Subjectivity in Comic Art | University Press of Mississippi | Nominee |
| 2015 | Sarah Lightman (ed.) | Graphic Details: Jewish Women’s Confessional Comics in Essays and Interviews | McFarland & Company | Winner |
| 2015 | Michael Barrier | Funnybooks: The Improbable Glories of the Best American Comic Books | University of California Press | Nominee |
| 2015 | Andrew Hoberek | Considering Watchmen: Poetics, Property, Politics | Rutgers University Press | Nominee |
| 2015 | A. David Lewis | American Comics, Literary Theory, and Religion: The Superhero Afterlife | Palgrave Macmillan | Nominee |
| 2015 | Katherine Roeder | Wide Awake in Slumberland: Fantasy, Mass Culture, and Modernism in the Art of Winsor McCay | University Press of Mississippi | Nominee |
| 2015 | Thierry Smolderen | The Origins of Comics: From William Hogarth to Winsor McCay | University Press of Mississippi | Nominee |
| 2016 | Frances Gateward and John Jennings (eds.) | The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art | Rutgers University Press | Winner |
| 2016 | 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 |
| 2016 | Rayna Denison and Rachel Mizsei-Ward (eds.) | Superheroes on World Screens | University Press of Mississippi | Nominee |
| 2016 | 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 |
| 2016 | Nick Sousanis | Unflattening | Harvard University Press | Nominee |
| 2017 | Carolyn Cocoa | Superwomen: Gender, Power, and Representation | Bloomsbury Publishing | Winner |
| 2017 | Tim Jackson | Pioneering Cartoonists of Color | University Press of Mississippi | Nominee |
| 2017 | Daniel Marrone | Forging the Past: Set and the Art of Memory | University Press of Mississippi | Nominee |
| 2017 | Marc Sobel | Brighter Than You Think: Ten Short Works by Alan Moore | Uncivilized Books | Nominee |
| 2017 | 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 |
| 2018 | Brannon Costello | Neon Visions: The Comics of Howard Chaykin | LSU Press | Nominee |
| 2018 | Jared Gardner and Ian Gordon (eds.) | The Comics of Charles Schulz: The Good Grief of Modern Life | University Press of Mississippi | Nominee |
| 2018 | Mark Heimermann and Brittany Tullis (eds.) | Picturing Childhood: Youth in Transnational Comics | University of Texas Press | Nominee |
| 2018 | Kate Polak | Ethics in the Gutter: Empathy and Historical Fiction in Comics | Ohio State University Press | Nominee |
| 2019 | Anne Elizabeth Moore | Sweet Little Cunt: The Graphic Work of Julie Doucet | Uncivilized Books | Winner |
| 2019 | 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 |
| 2019 | Aaron Kashtan | Between Pen and Pixel: Comics, Materiality, and the Book of the Future | Ohio State University Press | Nominee |
| 2019 | Lara Saguisag | Incorrigibles and Innocents, Constructing Childhood and Citizenship in Progressive Era Comics | Rutgers University Press | Nominee |
| 2019 | Marc Singer | Breaking the Frames: Populism and Prestige in Comics Studies | University of Texas Press | Nominee |
| 2020 | Qiana Whitted | EC Comics: Race, Shock, and Social Protest | Rutgers University Press | Winner |
| 2020 | Andrew Blauner (ed.) | The Peanuts Papers: Writers and Cartoonists on Charlie Brown, Snoopy & the Gang, and the Meaning of Life | Library of America | Nominee |
| 2020 | Benjamin Fraser | The Art of Pere Joan: Space, Landscape, and Comics Form | University of Texas Press | Nominee |
| 2020 | Kevin Haworth | The Comics of Rutu Modan: War, Love, and Secrets | University Press of Mississippi | Nominee |
| 2020 | Christina Meyer | Producing Mass Entertainment: The Serial Life of the Yellow Kid | Ohio State University Press | Nominee |
| 2020 | 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 |
| 2021 | Rebecca Wanzo | The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging | New York University Press | Winner |
| 2021 | Neil Cohn | Who Understands Comics: Questioning the Universality of Visual Language Comprehension | Bloomsbury Publishing | Nominee |
| 2021 | Charles Hatfield and Bart Beaty (eds.) | Comic Studies: A Guidebook | Rutgers University Press | Nominee |
| 2021 | Sean Kleefeld | Webcomics | Bloomsbury Publishing | Nominee |
| 2021 | Kim A. Munson (ed.) | Comic Art in Museums | University Press of Mississippi | Nominee |
| 2022 | Eike Exner | Comics and the Origins of Manga: A Revisionist History | Rutgers University Press | Winner |
| 2022 | Andrew J. Kunka | The Life and Comics of Howard Cruse: Taking Risks in the Service of Truth | Rutgers University Press | Nominee |
| 2022 | Zack Kruse | Mysterious Travelers: Steve Ditko and the Search for a New Liberal Identity | University Press of Mississippi | Nominee |
| 2022 | Paul S. Hirsch | Pulp Empire: The Secret History of Comics Imperialism | University of Chicago Press | Nominee |
| 2022 | David  Kunzle | Rebirth of the English Comic Strip: A Kaleidoscope, 1847–1870 | University Press of Mississippi | Nominee |
| 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 |
| 2023 | Erin La Cour and Anna Poletti (eds.) | Graphic Medicine | University of Hawaiʻi Press | Nominee |
| 2023 | Katherine Kelp-Stebbins | How Comics Travel: Publication, Translation, Radical Literacies | Ohio State University Press | Nominee |
| 2023 | Alison Halsall and Jonathan Warren (eds.) | The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader: Critical Openings, Future Directions | University Press of Mississippi | Winner |
| 2023 | Tim Smyth | Teaching with Comics and Graphic Novels | Routledge | Nominee |
| 2024 | John A. Lent | Asian Political Cartoons | University Press of Mississippi | Nominee |
| 2024 | J. Andrew Deman | The Claremont Run: Subverting Gender in the X- Men | University of Texas Press | Nominee |
| 2024 | edited by Qiana Whitted | Desegregating Comics: Debating Blackness in the Golden Age of American Comics | Rutgers University Press | Nominee |
| 2024 | George Khoury-Jad | If Shehrazad Drew: Critical Writings on Arab Comics | Sawaf Center for Arab Comics Studies and American University of Beirut Press | Nominee |
| 2024 | Margaret Galvan | In Visible Archives: Queer and Feminist Visual Culture in the 1980s | University of Minnesota Press | Nominee |
| 2024 | Jeffrey A. Brown | Super Bodies: Comic Book Illustration, Artistic Styles, and Narrative Impact | University of Texas Press | Nominee |