13 replies to this topic

[theagenes]

Forwarding the CFP for next year's PCA conference. I'll be there again representin' and hopefully Mark as well.

Call for Proposals
CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Pulp Studies Area
Popular Culture/American Culture Association National Conference
Washington, DC
March 27-30 2013

Pulp magazines were a series of mostly English-language, predominantly American, magazines printed on rough pulp paper. They were often illustrated with highly stylized, full-page cover art and numerous line art illustrations of the fictional content. They were sold for modest sums, and were targeted at (sometimes specialized) readerships of popular literature, such as western and adventure, detective, fantastic (including the evolving genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror), romance and sports fiction. The first pulp Argosy, began life as the children’s magazine The Golden Argosy, dated Dec 2, 1882 and the last of the “original” pulps was Ranch Romances and Adventures, Nov. 1971.

The Pulp Studies area exists to support the academic study of pulp writers, editors, readers, and culture. It seeks to invigorate research by bringing together scholars from diverse areas including romance, western, science fiction, fantasy, horror, adventure, detective, and more. Finally, the Pulp Studies area seeks to promote the preservation of the pulps through communication with libraries, museums, and collectors.

With this in mind, we are calling for papers and panels that discuss the pulps and their legacy. Suggested authors and topics:

• Magazines: Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, Wonder Stories, Fight Stories, All-Story, Argosy, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Spicy Detective, Ranch Romances and Adventures, Oriental Stories/Magic Carpet Magazine, Love Story, Flying Aces, Black Mask, and Unknown, to name a few.
• Editors and Owners: Street and Smith (Argosy), Farnsworth Wright (Weird Tales), Hugo Gernsback (Amazing Stories), Mencken and Nathan (Black Mask), John Campbell (Astounding).
• Influential Writers: H.P. Lovecraft, A. E. Merritt, Robert E. Howard, C. L. Moore, Fritz Leiber, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Donald Wandrei, Clark Ashton Smith, and Henry Kuttner. Proposals about contemporary writers in the pulp tradition, such as Joe Lansdale and Michael Chabon are also encouraged. New Weird writers and others, such as China Mieville, whose work is influenced by the pulps, are also of interest.
• Influences on Pulp Writers: Robert Bloch, H. Rider Haggard, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack London, and Edgar Rice Burroughs were all influences, along with literary and philosophical figures such as Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edgar Allen Poe, and Herbert Spencer.
• Popular Characters: Conan of Cimmeria; Doc Savage; Solomon Kane; Buck Rogers; Northwest Smith; The Domino Lady; Jiril of Jiory; Zorro; Kull of Atlantis; El Borak; The Shadow; The Spider; Bran Mak Morn; Nick Carter; The Avenger; and Captain Future, among others. Also character types: the femme fatale, the he-man, the trickster, racism and villainy (such as Charles Middleton’s Ming the Merciless), and more.
• Artists: Popular cover artists including Margaret Brundage (Weird Tales), Frank R. Paul (Amazing Stories), Virgil Finlay (Weird Tales), and Edd Cartier (The Shadow, Astounding).
• Periods: The dime novels; Argosy and the ancestral pulps; Weird Tales, Amazing Stories, and the heyday of the pulps; the decline of the pulps in the 50s and 60s; pulps in the age of the Internet.
• Theme and Styles: Masculinity, femininity, and sex as related to the heroic in the pulps; the savage as hero, the woman as hero, the trickster as hero, etc.
• Film, Television and Graphic Arts: Pulps in film, television, comics, graphic novels and other forms are especially encouraged. Possible topics could include film interpretations such as Conan the Barbarian, comic book incarnations of pulp magazines and series; “new weird” reinventions of the pulps such as the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and The Watchmen; fan films; and newer productions, including the recently released Solomon Kane and Conan.
• Cyberculture: Cyberpulps such as Beneath Ceaseless Skies and pulp-influenced games such as the Age of Conan MMORPG or the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game.

These are but suggestions for potential panels and presentations. Proposals on other topics are welcome.

For general information on the Pulp Studies area, please visit our website:
http://pulpstudies.weebly.com/

Final Submission Deadline: November 30, 2012

• When submitting your paper, abstract, proposal, or panel please include your name, affiliation, and email address. For those submitting a panel, include the name, affiliation, and email address for each participant and note who will be the principle contact and panel chair.
• Abstracts should be approximately 250 words in length.
• Indicate if presentation media is required. Projectors will be present in most locations, but presenters must supply their own computers.
• A preliminary version of the schedule will usually be posted on our website in January. Due to the number of panels and participants, we are unable to accommodate individual scheduling requests. We encourage participants to come for the entire conference. The final version of the schedule will be distributed in hard copy at the conference with addendums if needed. For privacy reasons we do not publish email addresses in the online version of the program.
• Only one paper is accepted from the same presenting author. All presenters, including invited panel speakers and session chairs, must register and pay the conference registration fee. If you need an early confirmation for visa or budgetary reasons, please indicate this in your submission.

How to Submit Proposals: Submit proposals by November through the following website: http://ncp.pcaaca.org/

Note: Only papers submitted through the website will appear in the conference program. If you have any questions, please contact the Pulp Studies area coordinator:

Justin Everett
University of the Sciences
j.everet@usciences.edu

[theagenes]

I submitted my abstract earlier today:

Evolutionary Otherness: Anthropological Anxiety in Howard's "Worms of the Earth."
Jeffrey Shanks

After the 1859 publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species, as Western culture was forced to confront and assimilate a new paradigm regarding humanity's position in the natural world, evolutionary theory permeated popular culture and had a significant effect on the literature of the Victorian and Modernist periods. In particular, pulp adventure fantasists like Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. Rider Haggard, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Robert E. Howard often made use of tropes like apes and ape-men, degenerative races and cultures, and atavists and throwbacks, tapping into this existential uneasiness that Virginia Richter refers to as "anthropological anxiety."

In "Worms of the Earth," published in the November 1932 issue of Weird Tales, and several similar stories, Howard explores the themes of cultural degeneration and physical devolution as both a cause and a result of racial and ethnic conflict. Using these themes, as well as the related concepts of miscegenation, assimilation, and contact with the Other through imperialist and colonialist endeavors, Howard utilizes early 20th century anthropological anxiety as an effective mechanism of horror fantasy.

[deuce]

I submitted my abstract earlier today:

Evolutionary Otherness: Anthropological Anxiety in Howard's "Worms of the Earth."
Jeffrey Shanks

After the 1859 publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species, as Western culture was forced to confront and assimilate a new paradigm regarding humanity's position in the natural world, evolutionary theory permeated popular culture and had a significant effect on the literature of the Victorian and Modernist periods. In particular, pulp adventure fantasists like Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. Rider Haggard, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Robert E. Howard often made use of tropes like apes and ape-men, degenerative races and cultures, and atavists and throwbacks, tapping into this existential uneasiness that Virginia Richter refers to as "anthropological anxiety."

In "Worms of the Earth," published in the November 1932 issue of Weird Tales, and several similar stories, Howard explores the themes of cultural degeneration and physical devolution as both a cause and a result of racial and ethnic conflict. Using these themes, as well as the related concepts of miscegenation, assimilation, and contact with the Other through imperialist and colonialist endeavors, Howard utilizes early 20th century anthropological anxiety as an effective mechanism of horror fantasy.

Cool!

[theagenes]

Alright it's official, Chris Gruber will be joining Mark and me. Rusty is still a possibility. This is going to be an epic PCA.

[Mark_Hall]

Well, if you can get a few more of the original 2004 group, I'd could even join in! Now there was an epic year--and a first.

[theagenes]

Mark, you've still got a week to submit an abstract.

[theagenes]

The schedule has been posted. This will be my third time giving a paper in the Pulp Studies section which has been growing every year. This year will be the largest ever, with five different sessions in the Pulp Studies area. Mark Finn will be there, our fellow REH boardie Daniel Nyikos, Chris Gruber will be giving a paper on Costigan and masculinity in the Famous American Authors area, Rusty will be there as a guest -- should be cool.

If you are in the DC area you should consider coming by and checking it out. PCA is not your typical stuffy academic conference - it's a lot of fun. The comics and graphic novels area is huge as is the SF/Fantasy area. Below is the line up of Pulp Studies papers. I'll be chairing the anthropology/evolutionary session.


Pulp Studies I: Pulp pedagogy: Active learning and Active Reading in the Pulps.
Thursday, March 28, 2013 - 11:30am - 1:00pm

“I Confess”: Pulps and the Audience’s Populist Voice. - Lauren Gibson, University of West Florida

"Filling the Void”: Pulps, Movies, and Censorship in the 1930s - Emily Sisler, University of West Florida

"Behind the Curtain:" Women and the Science Fiction Pulps - Rachel Johnson, University of West Florida


Pulp Studies II: Anthropological and Evolutionary Dimensions of Pulp Fiction
Thursday, March 28, 2013 - 1:15pm - 2:45pm

Evolutionary Otherness: Anthropological Anxiety in Robert E. Howard's "Worms of the Earth" - Jeffrey Shanks, National Park Service

Ancestral Memory in the Fiction of Robert E. Howard - Rebekkah Brown, Independent scholar

Bodies without Integrity: Undermining the Body in the Fiction of Leigh Brackett - David Schappert, Moravian College and Moravian Theological Seminary


Pulp Studies III: Sex, Swords and Sinews in the Fiction of Robert E. Howard
Thursday, March 28, 2013 - 3:00pm - 4:30pm

“I’m Getting Tired as Hell Working for the Other Man”: Robert E. Howard, Industry, and Individualism - Daniel Nyikos, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Robert E. Howard's Pulps: From Adventure to Weird Tales - Deke Parsons, Claremont Graduate University

Vaqueros and Vampires in the Old West: Robert E. Howard and the Genesis of the Weird Western - Mark Finn, Independent Scholar


Pulp Studies IV: The Politics of Pulp Fiction
Thursday, March 28, 2013 - 4:45pm - 6:15pm

The Shadow Politics of Weird Tales: Epistemological Crises, the Modern Subject, and the Other - Jason Carney, Case Western Reserve University

The Pulpular Front: Pulp Magazines as Anti-Fascist Propaganda - David Earle, University of West Florida

In the Shadow of Fu Manchu: Pulps, Politics, and the Yellow Peril - Alexandra Yancey, St. Thomas University

‘An invasion of the bookstalls’: 1920s Pulp Magazines and the Foreign Market - Patrick Scott Belk, University of West Florida


Pulp Studies V: Celebrating "Those who move their lips when they read": Appreciating Working Class Fictions
Thursday, March 28, 2013 - 6:30pm - 8:00pm

“Rhetorical Stances in Amazing Stories Readers' Letters” - Gabriel Cutrufello, Swarthmore College

Toward a Definition of Weird Fiction: Debates in the "Eyrie" Letters in the Edwin Baird Issues of Weird Tales. - Justin Everett, University of the Sciences

The Individual Pulp Story: Reading the Pulp Story Closely - Benjamin Wallin, Nyack College

Edited by theagenes, 30 January 2013 - 04:14 PM.

[Strom]

Very interesting! Wish I could go and checkout the Conference. Say hello to Rusty from all of us at the forum! And give us an update when you get back.

[theagenes]

Will do. I'll have a trip report with pics for my blog for sure. I'll publish the actual paper somewhere as well, possibly the new Pulp Studies journal that's being proposed or TDM.

[theagenes]

In two days I'll be joining Rusty Burke, Mark Finn, and Chris Gruber in Washington D.C. for the 2013 PCA/ACA Conference. In the meantime, I've turned my 2011 PCA/ACA paper on Howard's use of the Atlantis theme into a video podcast. Enjoy!

 Creating an Age Undreamed Of

Edited by theagenes, 26 March 2013 - 04:47 AM.

[BarB]

Wow Jeff -- you, Mark, Chris and Rusty -- what a line up! My best to all of you. And my thanks too for the great representation....a stellar cast indeed.

BB

[theagenes]

Alright, here's my trip report on all the shenanigans that went on in DC at the PCA/ACA conference last week. Enjoy!

 

http://www.anageundr...rip-report.html

 

 

Four crazy Conan.com boardies let loose in the Nation's capital:

 

[Strom]

Thanks for the report!  Great job by all involved.  Sounds like a very busy, productive conference with some great fellowship as well.  I posted about your report on the REHF facebook page  

[theagenes]

Thanks Strom! Chris Gruber has also posted his trip report on his blog:

 

http://punchdrunkbar...ce-success.html

 

 

And here's another pic that I just got from Rusty. That's Grub on the left, David Schappert (who gave a great paper on Leigh Brackett) in the middle, and me on the right waxing academic about Bran Mak Morn, with a great Finlay illo on the big screen.