Announcements

5/14/07: Thanks to California Lutheran University's ISS staff, the Yaoi Research Wiki is back online again. You will need to create an account and log in to edit now, to help provide a little more security against April's level of vandalism and hacking.

4/24/07: Some loser or another was taking advantage of the wiki's accessibility to try to get into my university's server, so we all get to suffer as a result. Either the university will find a safer place to host it, or  I'll find a commercial server where I can transfer the files. If you have any suggestions re: hosting, please email me to let me know.

8/29/06: I'm adding a wiki board that will be open to all yaoi, slash, and boy's love researchers and fans to use as a resource; ideally, I'd like to see it become a storage house for a master bibliography and various papers, essays, and articles people have written on the subject. The board isn't very pretty yet, but it's up.

Mark McHarry has submitted the panel proposal to Yaoi-Con, so now we're waiting to see whether it's accepted or not....

8/21/06: Yaoi University? Mark McHarry has suggested an academically oriented session on yaoi at Yaoi-Con, so I may be there, presenting with him and Dr. Levi. Drop me a line if you've ever done any resarch on boy's love; I could put a page up on this site that would host your yaoi/slash research papers and links to other relevant reseach....

8/17/06: I'M BACK: I apologize for this site going down temporarily; it's up on my university's server now, instead of on a commercial server.  Note that MangaResearch.Com is now the best way to reach it.

Research update: I have sent one manuscript off to a journal and am awaiting a response (it usually takes a few months for the reviewers and editor to read and respond to a submission).  It addressed what academics have had to say about boy's love fans and compared their theories to what you fans say about yourselves. 

I've just about finished a second paper from the data and am looking for a good place to submit it. It'll be about the survey respondants' attitudes toward gay rights. A third paper will be developed later this year, most likely for conference presentation in 2007, and it will address boy's love fans' reading habits.

I've been thinking that a paper on U.S. law and yaoi might be relevant  given the  recent Dwight Whorley case (which involved lolicon, but the idea of comics/cartoons being classified as child porn still sets an uneasy legal precedent....)

In the  near future I'm planning to begin a paper about slash and yaoi fan videos, and I'll eventually want to email with some of the people who make them. I'll welcome any links or email contacts you'd like to send me as I do my background research. More info later!

ANALYSIS PROCEEDING!: After a brief lull caused by the end of the semester and holiday break, I'm now coding data; I hope to have all the data crunched by the end of January. I'll be taking a sabbatical in Italy for 4-5 months starting February 10, and part of my work there will be writing up this research and, I hope, comparing my findings with researchers there for a cross-cultural analysis of yaoi fandom. Please be patient if you email me while I'm overseas, as I may not be able to check my email on a daily basis.

ONLINE SURVEY COMPLETE: Thank you to the 478 people who participated in this survey. I am currently starting the statistical analysis of your answers.

I am now looking for volunteers to fill out a written survey of about 13 questions that probes more deeply into some of the areas of this research. This is meant to obtain in-depth, thoughtful answers to provide detail to the surface information provided by the online survey. Some controversial issues will be asked about, such as the role of scanlations to BL fans and the use of rape and sexual violence in BL manga. If you're interested in participating in this component of the research, please email me at paglia[at]clunet.edu.

SURVEY END DATE: I expect to close this survey on NOVEMBER 11, 2005.

YAOI-CON: I'm staying at the Westin and will be getting in Thursday afternoon. I hope to see some of you there! I will be collecting email addresses of anybody who might be interested in participating in an interview follow-up to my survey.

AGE: A few survey takers have reported that they've taken the survey but are afraid their answers weren't recorded because they got to a page saying, "you may have reached this page because you said you were under 18." Don't worry! If the survey didn't kick you out at once, your answers were recorded. There were two messages on that page: One thanking those who took the survey, and one for those who were immediately kicked out after answering "Under 18" on the age question. As long as you didn't answer "Under 18," and you reached the questions, you're an official research contributor!

Thanks to those of you who've pointed out small errors and pressed for more clarification of terms (manga vs. tankoubon, etc.). I'll address these matters when I'm reporting results, and I appreciate your attentiveness and advice.