by Benjamin Woo

About Benjamin Woo

Benjamin Woo is Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada). He is the director of the Comic Cons Research Project, the author of Getting a Life: The Social Worlds of Geek Culture, co-author (with Bart Beaty) of The Greatest Comic Book of All Time: Symbolic Capital and the Field of American Comic Books, and a co-editor (with Stuart R. Poyntz and Jamie Rennie) of Scene Thinking: Cultural Studies from the Scenes Perspective.

Circulation

To be in circulation is to be in motion, to flow along or through some course or circuit. Circulation may refer to any movement between people or places, but the term has special meanings for print media such as comic books. In the strictest sense, a periodical’s circulation refers to how many copies are sold on average; circulation thus has a relationship—albeit an inexact one—with audience. In its broadest sense, it opens onto a rich vein of theorizing about how culture shapes our experiences of space, time, and social connection.