in media has concentrated on popular culture forms. In 1999, Jenkins founded the Comparative Media Studies master's program at MIT as an interdisciplinary and applied humanities course which aimed "to integrate the study of contemporary media (film, television, digital systems) with a broad historical understanding of older forms of human expression.... and aims as well for a comparative synthesis that is responsive to the distinctive emerging media culture of the 21st century." The same ethos can be found in Jenkins' research across various forms of media. Vaudeville and popular cinema Jenkins' interest in vaudeville theater and popular cinema was an early focus of his research career - his Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Wisconsin explored how the comedy performances of American vaudeville influenced comedy in 1930s sound films, such as those of the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, and Eddie Cantor. The dissertation became the basis of his 1992 book What Made Pistachio Nuts?: Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic. A key argument of Jenkins' scholarship here was that vaudeville placed a strong emphasis on virtuoso performance and emotional impact which contrasted sharply with the focus of classical Hollywood cinema on character motivation and storytelling. Jenkins' approach was partly inspired by cultural commentators who believed that early cinema was unfairly treated by skeptical commentators of its era because it was a rising new popular culture medium. It was also influenced by scholars of film aesthetics such as David Bordwell. This approach would later help shape Jenkins' scholarly appreciation of video games as another rising popular culture medium attracting much criticism. Comics studies Jenkins, long a fan of comics, is also a scholar of the medium and it continues to be one of the key topics of his academic writing and speaking. Jenkins' interest in comics ranges from superhero comics to alternative comics. His academic publications includes work on comics by Brian Michael Bendis, David W. Mack, Art Spiegelman, Basil Wolverton, Dean Motter, amongst others. In December 2015, it was reported by Microsoft Research New England's Social Media Collective (where Jenkins was a visiting scholar at the time), that Jenkins was working on new book focused on comics. Video game studies Jenkins' research into video games was influenced by his prior interest in the debates around emerging popular culture media forms as well as his parallel interest in children's culture. Referring to Gilbert Seldes' Seven Lively Arts (1924) which championed