Thanks to the generosity of the College Summer Research Fellowship Program, I was able to conduct field research in Tokyo for my book project.  I attended the 2010 Comiket to witness and document firsthand a fascinating dojinshi subculture that emerges twice a year as part of an enormous human spectacle of rampant copyright violations.

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I have never seen anything quite like it, on a scale that was difficult to wrap my head around.  Over 300,000 participants over a weekend purchase manga created by amateur authors based on popular material, including other manga, films, and just about anything else you can imagine.  I’ve using the material gathered on my trip to expand and revise a chapter for the book project.