NEPCA Journal

2012-01-17T10:58:00.000-08:00

Capital Sporting Grounds: A History of Stadium and Ballpark Construction in Washington. By Brett L. Abrams, D.C. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarlane and Company, Inc., 2009.

In 2004, Washington D.C. was in line to become the new home of the hapless and homeless Montreal Expos. The deal was contingent on public financing for a new stadium. Mayor Anthony Williams pitched a new stadium in terms of the economic benefit to the city. That was the standard boilerplate argument for a publicly financed stadium in most cities, but, as Brett L. Abrams observes in Capital Sporting Grounds: A History of Stadium and Ballpark Construction in Washington, D.C., it was unique in the nation’s capital. Until 2004, stadium construction was never about economic benefit, but about prestige and status.

The key to understanding the politics of stadium construction in Washington, D.C., Abrams argues, is to regard the capital as four different cities. Most cities are two: the local city of those buildings and people within the city limits, and the regional city of the surrounding area. In addition, Washington is also an international city, consisting of the foreign embassies, international agencies, and their staffs, and a federal city, made up of the federal buildings and monuments, including the Capitol and White House, as well as the politicians and federal employees. (10-17) The constituency of the local city and regional city included Washington’s professional franchises and other spectator sports, such as the professional cycling circuit of the late nineteenth century. However, stadium plans were driven mainly by the constituency of the federal city, with an eye toward the perception of the international city. The federal city wanted a stadium that would befit Washington’s status as a national capital, and put [it] on par with capitals such as London and Paris, which served as centers of national life. The history of stadium building in Washington has [often been one of] conflict between the local/regional and federal/international constituencies over the purpose of stadium building.

The local city was ill served by ownership. The National League entry of the 1890s specialized in poor management and worse baseball. (59) It was disbanded after the 1899 season. In 1901 the American League placed a new franchise in the abandoned capital. Its first stadium was a twenty-five minute ride from Capitol Hill, an unusual location. The National Football League arrived in the 1930s when the Boston Redskins moved to the capital. The Senators and the Redskins usually wanted stadiums in a central location. Federal officials (representing the federal city) had more grandiose visions of building large stadiums named for general purposes. Senator Theodore Bilbo proposed a 100,000-seat war memorial stadium in 1944, and a Pennsylvania congressman immediately proposed a 200,000-seat monstrosity. In 1997 Marion Barry sought a publicly financed stadium to win the 2008 Olympic games. When that failed, Washington put forth a grander scheme for the 2012 games, despite Mitt Romney’s warning that the Olympics were an economic loser. Meanwhile, the local city received less attention. Two versions of the Senators left town (although not over stadium deals). When Jack Kent Cooke failed to secure a publicly financed stadium for the Redskins, he moved the team to Laurel, Maryland.

Stadium construction in Washington, D.C. has always been a tangled mess of money, politics, and prestige, and Abrams sorts the mess out clearly. This book would be very appropriate for a course in sports history or urban studies.

Robert W. Smith

Worcester State University

Comics Conference

2012-01-13T10:24:00.000-08:00

The Rocky Mountain Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels will be held at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, June 13-15, 2012. Scott McCloud and Charles Hatfield are among the guest speakers. Last-minute proposals are sought, but must be sent by January 15, 2012. For more information contact Christina Angel: christina@comicbookclassroom.org

Essays Sought on Fan Phenomena

2012-01-13T10:23:00.000-08:00

Intellect announces a new book series titled Fan Phenomena and seeks contributors. The series will explore American culture’s fascination with iconic or cultish phenomena in TV, film, books, fashion, and other media, including subjects that have visual appeal and deal with fan fashion, memorabilia, (fan) homage, merchandising and branding. Topics range from Buffy and Marilyn Monroe to zombies and Jane Austen.

If you are interested in contributing, are interested in an editorial role, or seeking further information about the book series, please send an email to series editor Gabriel Solomons: gabriel@intellectbooks.com

Dirksen Grants Available

2012-01-13T10:22:00.000-08:00

GRANTS: CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH AWARDS

DEADLINE: March 1, 2012.

The Dirksen Congressional Center invites applications for grants to fund research on congressional leadership and the U.S. Congress. Applications are accepted at any time, but the deadline is March 1 for the annual selections, which are announced in April. A total of up to $35,000 will be available in 2012.

The competition is open to individuals with a serious interest in studying Congress. Political scientists, historians, biographers, scholars of public administration or American studies, and journalists are among those eligible. Applicants must be U.S. citizens who reside in the United States.

Download the Word document -- Congressional Research Award Application -- and
complete the required entries. You may send the application as a Word or PDF
attachment to an e-mail directed to Frank Mackaman at fmackaman@dirksencenter.org. Please insert the following in the Subject Line: "CRA Application [insert your surname]."

Georgette Heyer Essays Sought

2012-01-13T10:19:00.000-08:00

The Journal of Popular Romance Studies seeks submissions for a special issue on detective and Georgian romance novelist Georgette Heyer. All critical approaches are welcome. Please submit scholarly papers of no more than 10,000 words to An Goris, managing editor managing.editor@jprstudies.org and betz@lasalle.edu. The deadline for submissions is May 4, 2012. For more information about JPRS, including other special calls for papers, go to http://jprstudies.org/submissions

New Popular Culture Conference

2011-12-14T12:40:00.001-08:00

The College of St. Joseph announces its inaugural popular culture conference. It will take place April 13th-14th, 2012 on the campus of the College of St. Joseph 71 Clement Road, Rutland, VT. Papers are sought on a wide range of popular culture/cultural studies papers, topics, especially panels that explore the enduring figure of the barbarian in Western popular culture. The deadline for proposals is January 15, 2012. Send 250-word paper proposals, 400-500 word panel ideas, or general questions to Dr. Jonas Prida: jprida@csj.edu

Recent Book on Early Film in Toronto

2011-12-13T18:16:00.001-08:00

Now Playing: Early Moviegoing and the Regulation of Fun. By Paul S. Moore. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-7914-7418-1

This book was a bit late getting to us, but it was worth the wait. There are lots of books about the early days of film, but most of them focus on the United States. Does it matter if we gaze outside U.S. borders? That’s one of the questions Moore, a sociology professor at Ryerson University in Toronto, seeks to answer. Where better to look than in Toronto itself, Canada’s largest city and cosmopolitan metropole, but one close to the U.S. border and susceptible to the lure of U.S. popular culture? Proximity to the border is an inescapable factor in Canadian film studies; as Moore notes, there was almost no indigenous filmmaking in the pioneering days of cinema. So do things change if we cross the border? Moore’s short answer is yes and no.

The conventional part of Moore’s book come in the first and last chapters, appropriately titled “Rendezvous for Particular People” and “Everybody’s Going;” that is, the evolution of film-going from a niche to a mass audience. Early film audiences in Toronto, as in most U.S. cities, came largely from the working class and contained large numbers of recent immigrants. Theaters were often impromptu, sometimes seedy venues located in working-class precincts, and content ran the gamut from mundane to risqué. There were differences, though. Nickelodeons—called “theatoriums” in Toronto—preceded movies, but their content was a bit different and many were not stand-alone attractions. Toronto film-going also had a shorter non-regulatory period than in many U.S. cities; from the start, middle-class Torontonians expressed concerns about probity and safety, the latter sometimes a thin ruse masking middle-class values discomfort. As in the United States, the concerns of the puritanical notwithstanding, movies proved so seductive to the middle class that would-be guardians of public morality shifted their tactics from raising alarm (and, in some cases, attempting to ban films) to regulation and censorship.

This may sound familiar, but Moore adds twists. For example, he pays attention to the use of fire laws in regulatory efforts, an understudied phenomenon given the combustibility of celluloid and the hazardous nature of early projection equipment. There is also a tendency to treat film as discrete, a mistake Moore avoids by placing movie regulation within the sweep of broader efforts to regulate society that extended to everything from poolrooms to peanut vendors and fortunetellers. He also calls attention to another understudied group: film promoters. Moore argues that the effort to make cinema conform to civic ideals also entailed shifting control from individual amoral profit-seeking exhibitors to “showmanship,” (75) an ideal in which tastes were shaped, not merely catered to, and one that involved active promotion, the enlistment of journalists, and the enforcement power of local bureaucrats.

Moore’s approach is simultaneously historical and sociological, but he gets full marks for offering a readable text rather than one encumbered by minutiae or theory. Most U.S. readers will delight in the subtle ways in which Toronto differs from cities south of the border. There are, for instance, approaches to moral issues that are laden with British sensibilities that had long since been cast aside in the United States, and there was (is) a much more highly developed sense of civic standards in Ontario. As Moore shows in his conclusion, the British Empire is also made manifest in earlier forays into the use of film for patriotic purposes. (The British Empire entered World War One nearly three years earlier than the United States.) Moore also makes superb use of Chicago school urban sociological theory to show the ways in which Toronto did and did not conform to developing models of urbanism.

Moore doesn’t pretend that Toronto is typical—not even in comparison to other Canadian cities. And this may be his biggest contribution of all. His is a reminder that most new forms of popular culture involve action and reaction that are battled out in local contexts upon which greater national and transnational values are imposed.

Robert E. Weir

University of Massachusetts Amherst

U2 Journal Launched; Seeks Contributors

2011-12-13T18:15:00.001-08:00

Achtung! The U2 Studies Journal, a peer-reviewed semi-annual e-journal, announces the launch of its website www.U2journal.com and has issued a call for papers for its May 2012 issue. The journal welcomes submissions from academics, students, lay-scholars and fans.

Papers Sought on TV Series "Fringe"

2011-12-13T18:14:00.000-08:00

Shapeshifters, Cyborgs, and Psychedelics: Analyzing the Alternate Worlds of J.J. Abrams’ Fringe, an edited collection by Sherry Ginn, Tanya R. Cochran, and Paul Zinder invites proposals or completed essays that explore J.J. Abrams’ science fiction television series Fringe (2008-present). Queries are welcomed: fringecollection@gmail.com Proposals are due March 1, 2012 and final manuscripts on March 1, 2013.

Southern Cultures Seeks Readers and Writers

2011-12-13T18:12:00.000-08:00

Southern Cultures, the award-winning and peer-reviewed quarterly from the University of North Carolina's Center for the Study of the American South, seeks submissions from scholars of popular culture on topics that address the American South. It is actively seeking scholarship on the popular culture and music of the South. To browse visit: http://www.southerncultures.org/content/read/

Roger Ebert Memoir Intriguing but Uneven

2011-12-01T18:13:00.000-08:00

Life Itself: A Memoir. By Roger Ebert. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2011.

ISBN 978-0-446-58497-5

Who, in the past twenty-five years, has done more to change the way we think of movies than Roger Ebert? More serious than the freakish Gene Shalit, less pretentious than Rex Reed, and more approachable than Pauline Kael, Ebert and the late Gene Siskel evolved a form of film criticism that might be labeled upper middlebrow--a way of accepting all screen images on their own merits. For Ebert, the question has never been whether a summer blockbuster or a kung-fu movie was the equal of a Fellini or a Bergman, but whether it was a good film of its genre. Two small measures of Ebert’s impact: On the weighty end of the scale, he was the first film reviewer to win a Pulitzer Prize. As for his impact on popular culture, who does not know the shorthand thumbs-up/thumbs-down assessment of a film? (Be careful if you use it; it’s copyrighted!) More recently, Ebert has become a hero for cancer survivors and the disabled; complications from a 2006 surgery for thyroid cancer cost him most of his jawbone and left him unable to speak or take nourishment through his mouth.

In Life Itself, Ebert leaves pity to others; he considers himself a man blessed by a good family, good education, serendipitous vocational fortune, rich professional relationships, dear friends, the blessings of late-in-life love, and the ongoing ability to view, muse upon, and write about movies. Ebert takes us from his Urbana, Illinois childhood and University of Illinois education to his time in Europe, his luck in securing a job with the Chicago Sun-Times, his TV success with At the Movies, his marriage to Chaz Hammelsmith, and back to Urbana, where he runs an annual film fest. His descriptions of his early days with the Sun-Times are like outtakes of the 1931 film The Front Page, complete with crusty editors, frenetic newsroom energy, and wide open horizons for those energetic and talented enough to seize them. Ebert was a product of those freewheeling days; he freely admits that he knew almost nothing about cinema when he was assigned the Sun-Times’ film critic’s job in 1967. Equally compelling are his recollections of the gritty side of Chicago, its dive bars (including the famed Billy Goat) and the city’s colorful cast of characters, including John McHugh, Mike Royoko, and Studs Terkel.

Movie fans will find numerous delightful anecdotes. Ebert speaks glowingly of several of those who touched him personally, and what an eclectic mix it is: Pauline Kael, Robert Mitchum, John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Martin Scorcese, Werner Herzog…. If there is any doubt about Ebert’s catholic tastes, consider that he thinks that both Ingmar Bergman and soft-porn king Russ Meyer were geniuses! And, of course, there is plenty about Gene Siskel (1949-1999), his TV sidekick, the urbane counterpoint to his own frumpy demeanor, and a man who was, variously, his mentor, cherished friend, and nemesis—often within a span of days.

Ebert’s willingness to admit to a love-hate relationship with Siskel is emblematic of the warts-and-all approach to his memoir. He is equally candid about past struggles with alcoholism, his sexual adventures and misadventures, his fascination with African-American women, his agnosticism, his grueling surgeries, and his own mortality. The major downside to the book is structural, not unfiltered candor. Neither chronological nor thematic, it’s a randomly distributed mélange of views and memories, many of which first appeared on the popular blog he began when he lost his physical voice. One wishes his editor had arranged the chapters in something approaching a logical sequence, as the book’s scattershot presentation limits its academic potential. Those legions who already admire Ebert will devour this book because they will be able to fill the considerable gaps. I doubt, however, that it would work as a whole for a journalism, film, disabilities, or American studies class. Those of us in the field of popular studies will want to mine it for anecdotes and/or place small doses of it on our library reserve readings list.

Robert E. Weir

Executive Secretary, NEPCA

2011-11-21T09:21:00.000-08:00

Living with Jim Crow. By Anne Valk and Leslie Brown, eds. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 176 pp. + xiii, appendices, notes, index.

Those who enjoyed Kathryn Stockett’s novel The Help can supplement it with real-life stories mined from Duke University’s Beyond the Veil oral-history collection. The book’s subtitle reveals what we get: African American Women and Memories of the Segregated South.

Scholars have long realized that Henry Grady’s 1877 “New South” speech was one of history’s cruelest linguistic hoaxes when applied to race relations; the only thing “new” in the South were the ways whites devised to terrorize, disenfranchise, and impoverish newly freed black men and women. Another of history’s deceptions involves its reporting of “landmark” civil-rights laws. As the women in Living with Jim Crow reveal, life often went on as if Brown v. the Board of Education or the 1964 Civil Rights Act never happened. Theirs is a portrait of coping, surviving, and (occasionally) thriving, despite all the racist obstacles in their way. Not to mention the sexist obstacles; the subjects of this book speak knowingly (and often naturally) of the “double burden” of being black and female. Male patriarchy, it would seem, was about the only thing in the Deep South that was truly color-blind.

Valk and Brown divide the interviews into five categories: being a child in the Jim Crow South, gender role expectations and sexuality, work, black cultural and institutional life, and the battle for social change. Of these, the section on black culture is the strongest, as we see women more as actors than as victims. We also see a very different kind of duality than the one posed by gender: the existence of a parallel universe inside the South in which black churches, beauty parlors, clubs, stores, and neighborhoods appear as “protective public places” (113) beyond the considerably long reach of white power.

This book would make a fine companion in an undergraduate history or literature survey. Its revelatory power for scholars is considerably weaker, however. The interviews contained in this book were collected more than two decades ago. In fact, Valk, now an associate director of Brown University’s Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, and Brown, an associate professor of history at Williams College, worked on the Beyond the Veil project when they were graduate students at Duke. Like so many oral histories, these lingered in archives for many years. In the interim, many new books and articles appeared to further illumine the Jim Crow South. Extensive editing and interspersed remarks drawing upon critical race and gender theory notwithstanding, there isn’t much here that will surprise academics. Nor is there much Valk or Brown can do to “spice up” the material recorded by laissez-faire collectors who chose not to direct their subjects toward particular subjects. We can appreciate the mundane details of country living, for instance, but stripped of a directed focus on race, it sounds quite similar to narratives collected from white rural dwellers recalling the “old days.” (Oddly enough, this is particularly the case in the chapter dealing with gender.)

That said, there’s not a thing wrong with producing a volume more suitable for undergraduates than scholars. Oral histories are what they are—slices of memory and life that personalize the bigger narratives that historians seek to explain. They seldom tell the whole story and they occasionally leave interpretive holes that historians must fill. Undergraduates, on the other hand, generally appreciate putting human names and faces to historical periods and forces. Earlier I evoked The Help, and with reason. It would be a wonderful teaching activity to pair a popular novel (or film) with the Valk and Brown volume to see where fact and fiction intersect and depart.

Robert E. Weir, Ph.D.

University of Massachusetts-Amherst

2011-11-21T09:20:00.000-08:00

The Great Oom: The Improbable Birth of Yoga in America. By Robert Love, Viking: New York, 2010.

Note: This book is the winner of NEPCA’s 2010 Peter J. Rollins Book Prize.

Yoga is one of the hottest fitness trends in the United States. In health clubs and yoga studios people bend, twist, sweat, and contort themselves in many different yoga “styles” as they seek inner peace and balance. The roots of modern yoga are in Hinduism, Indian philosophy, and the physical-culture movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Robert Love’s The Great Oom is one of many books published in recent years to examine modern yoga. Love is adjunct faculty at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, but is best known as the former managing editor at Rolling Stone. He has also worked as a freelance writer and as an editor for Playboy, Reader’s Digest, Best Life, and The Week. Love’s varied background in journalism serves him well in his first book, which explores the evolution of yoga as taught and preached by Pierre Bernard (1875-1955).

The title of the book is a bit misleading. Bernard—known as “The Omnipotent Oom”—did not give birth to yoga; he was merely one of many physical-culture enthusiasts who taught a Westernized interpretation of yoga. Bernard did befriend Swami Vivekenanda, an important Hindu swami who came to America to teach and preach modern Hinduism. More than a history of yoga, Love’s book is a biography of the unorthodox and flamboyant Pierre Bernard, who taught yoga within a conservative political and social culture that made his practices suspect.

Bernard’s training as a hypnotist, his reputation as a social climber, and his Casanova posturing gave him an air of mystery and helped him live a lavish lifestyle that at times got him into trouble. Born Perry Baker in Iowa, he first encountered yoga as a teenager when he met Sylvais Hamati in Lincoln, Nebraska. They moved to California, where Hamati’s young pupil changed his name to Pierre Arnold Bernard. Hamati remained Bernard’s guru for nearly two decades. Under Hamati, Bernard learned yoga postures (asana) and tantric philosophy, read Sanskrit texts, and studied philosophy, science, and ethics.

Bernard borrowed ideas from yoga, Tantra, Freemasonry, and other secret societies to establish his own Tantrik Order in San Francisco. His society met a growing interest in Eastern mysticism. Non-European practices like yoga and meditation were viewed as exotic by the idle rich, but as dangerous by moralists and politicians of the late Victorian era. Yoga often clashed with cultural obsessions with cults, “white slavery,” and the purity of young women. Bernard’s own eccentric lifestyle and propensity toward hucksterism fueled the controversies.

Bernard cultivated (business and carnal) relationships with wealthy individuals to establish his yoga communities in a series of cities around the country. Yoga postures, breathing exercises, and meditation had a captivating effect. Heiresses gave Bernard substantial donations to study yoga, and the scantily clad men and women exercising and performing gymnastic postures aroused the attention of vice squads. Each time Bernard and his followers encountered difficulties (including allegations of adultery, slavery, and kidnapping), they moved on to a new city. They ultimately landed on an estate in Nyack, New York, where Bernard created a thriving community and a substantial Sanskrit library. The “Clarkstown Country Club” was a functioning ashram complete with nubile young women in a circus-like atmosphere that included airplanes and elephants. There, stars of stage and sport practiced yoga and attended lectures alongside Vanderbilts and other wealthy elites. The Great Depression, shifting trends, and personal disputes finally conspired to topple Bernard’s improbable empire.

Love used an impressive array of resources to research Bernard and the cultural environment surrounding yoga in this era. He drew from private papers and unpublished memoirs in addition to newspaper articles and books. One omission in the book is any mention of young Bernard’s reported trip to India to study yoga and philosophy. Love may have chosen not to recount this tale, as there is no known evidence to support it. Bernard may have fabricated his travels to appear more exotic to his followers.

The Great Oom is a fascinating account of health, wealth, and society in the early twentieth century. Bernard’s life and work provide an interesting parallel to the professionalization of medicine, the rise of mysticism, and the growth of New Age philosophy. It would be a useful text for courses involving social trends in health or the history and philosophy of exercise and sport. It is a must-read for all who call themselves yoga students.

Virginia S. Cowen, PhD
Queensborough Community College / the City University of New York

NEPCA Executive Council Decisions and Post-Conference Assessment

2011-11-18T11:49:00.001-08:00

NEPCA just concluded a highly successful conference at Western Connecticut State University the weekend of November 11-12, 2011. Many thanks to program chair and president-elect Don Gagnon for making NEPCA welcome, and to Leslie Lindenauer for handling arrangements with grace and aplomb. The Executive Council enacted on the following business at the rise of the conference:

1. Executive Secretary Rob Weir reported that NEPCA now has over 250 dues-paying members and the organization and its treasury are healthy.

2. The full membership approved a bylaw amendment to allow NEPCA to extend the executive secretary’s tenure beyond two terms, at the pleasure of members. Rob Weir was reappointed to the position.

3. An otherwise successful conference was marred by no-shows. Council members suggested placing an honors pledge on next year’s acceptance letter. NEPCA will update the Website to reflect only those who gave papers.

4. Don Gagnon was unanimously chosen to be NEPCA president for 2011-2012. David Tanner moved onto the Executive Council as Past-President, taking the post vacated by Mark Van Ells. Carol Mitchell was unanimously elected to a second three-year term on the council and James Hanlan was elected to a vacant spot.

5. Carol-Ann Farkas agreed to initiate a discussion on overhauling submissions for the Rollins Book Prize as this year’s nominations were light in number and–beyond our prizewinner and a few others–weak in quality. More news will follow, but the council did decide to allow individuals to nominate their own books, though officially they will still have to go through their publisher.

6. An ad hoc committee was appointed to explore NEPCA’s participation in the national PCAACA conference, which will be held in April of 2012. The members of the committee are: Amos St. Germain, Peter Holloran, Carol-Ann Farkas, and Carol Mitchell. They will generate ideas, which will be circulated to the Executive Council for action.

7. Tim Madigan will host the 2012 NEPCA conference, which will be held October 26-27, 2012 on the campus of St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.

8. Bob Niemi has agreed to pursue the possibility of holding the 2013 conference at St. Michael’s College in Winooski, Vermont. This would mark a return to St. Michael’s, where a successful conference was held in 1991. Bob also suggested that we add a second afternoon session to NEPCA conferences and run no more than five concurrent panels. He will draft a proposal, which will be sent to the Executive Council for action.

9. A new policy for conference vendors was approved by the council after a small modification. It will be posted on the official NEPCA Website. There will also be a new guideline for individuals wishing to sell books, journals, etc. (As a nonprofit, NEPCA cannot retail on behalf of a second party.)

10. Carol-Ann Farkas agreed to have a work studies student retype NEPCA’s bylaws so that amendments can be added and the update can be posted on NEPCA’s Website.

11. The Executive Council voted to raise the prize granted to the best graduate student paper from $200 to $300 and to increase the Rollins Prize winner award from $200 to $500.

12. Lance Eaton agreed to work with Jim Hanlan to add a Ride/Room Share section to the NEPCA Website for next year’s conference.

Sports Literature Association Seeks Conference Papers

2011-11-18T11:47:00.001-08:00

The 29th annual conference of the Sport Literature Association will be held Wednesday, June 27 through Saturday, June 30, 2012, at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts. The program committee invites proposals for individual papers and/or complete sessions related to the literature of sport.

Scholarly and critical submissions for the conference should follow general guidelines set forth in the association's publication, Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature. Submissions can include essays on sport literature (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, or film) or on the rhetoric of sport. Original fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry are welcome. Abstracts are due April 27, 2012, and should be submitted to the program chair Duncan R. Jamieson: djamieso@ashland.edu

New Collection on The Joker Seeks Essayists

2011-11-18T11:46:00.001-08:00

Contributions are sought for upcoming publication titled The Joker: Critical Essays on the Clown Prince of Crime, Robert Moses Peaslee & Robert G. Weiner, editors. The editors seek abstracts of no more than 500 words outlining proposed essays of 6,000-8,000 words. Abstracts should make clear the author’s approach to the material in epistemological terms and indicate whether or not the piece has appeared in previous forms elsewhere. Abstracts should show potential as rigorous primary research, theory development or criticism.

Abstracts should be submitted no later than December 15, 2011. Please send abstracts via email to rob.weiner@ttu.edu

Actung Seeks Staff Readers

2011-11-18T11:45:00.001-08:00

Achtung! The U2 Studies Journal, a peer-reviewed semi-annual e-journal publication, seeks readers for submissions to join the volunteer staff reader group. If interested, please submit a current vita and a brief statement expressing your interest and qualifications to editor@U2journal.com or contact Scott Calhoun for more information: calhouns@U2journal.com

LGBT Conference Seeks Papers

2011-11-18T11:43:00.000-08:00

In celebration of the centennial of the birth of LGBT pioneer Harry Hay, CLAGS (the Center for Lesbian & Gay Studies at CUNY) and the Harry Hay Centennial Committee invite proposals for a broad-reaching conference exploring key facets of LGBT life and their evolution over the last six decades. It will be held in New York City September 27-30, 2012. The conference theme is “Radically Gay: The Life & Visionary Legacy of Harry Hay.” Organizers seek papers and panels on various aspects of LGBT life, which need not be confined to Hay.

Submit a 300-word abstract and a 2-page CV to: Daniel Hurewitz at daniel.hurewitz@hunter.cuny.edu by January 31, 2012, with Hay Centennial in the subject line.

NEPCA is Coming!!!!

2011-11-07T16:30:00.000-08:00

Just a few short days until the Northeast Popular/American Culture Association convenes on the campus of Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, CT. NEPCA will meet on Friday November 11 and Saturday November 12. See http://users.wpi.edu/~jphanlan/NEPConf.html for more details.

WCSU did not experience any power outages and all systems are go.

JPC Reintroducing Book Reviews

2011-11-07T16:26:00.000-08:00

The Journal of Popular Culture is reintroducing its Book Review section. The JPC seeks reviewers to review monographs on any aspect of U.S. or
international popular culture. If you are interested in writing a review for the JPC
Culture or if you are an author or publisher with a book you would like to
have reviewed, contact Tricia Jenkins: T.Jenkins@tcu.edu

JAC Seeks Reviewers

2011-11-07T16:24:00.000-08:00

Book Reviewers wanted for The Journal of American Culture. If you are a PCA/ACA member and would like to review for the JAC, please email book review editor Lynn Bartholome. Be sure to include a short vita, areas of expertise/interest, and a mail address. Reviews are 600 words in length and are due in 60 days. lbartholome@monroecc.edu

R. L. Shep Ethnic Textile Prize

2011-11-07T16:21:00.000-08:00

The Textile Society of America is soliciting nominations for the R. L. Shep Ethnic Textile Book Award for books published in 2011. "Ethnic" textiles are defined as the non-industrial textiles of Asia, Africa, Oceania, and Native and Latin America, as well as those in identifiable cultural groups in Europe and North America. The deadline is March 1, 2012. For further information, visit
http://www.textilesociety.org/awards_shep.htm

John Hope Franklin Library Travel to Collection Funds

2011-11-07T16:18:00.000-08:00

The John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture at Duke University announces the availability of travel grants for research travel to its collections. The deadline in 1/31/2012

URL: library.duke.edu/rubenstein/services/grants/index.htm

Columbia Libraries Grant

2011-11-07T16:17:00.000-08:00

The Columbia University Libraries (CUL) invites applications from scholars and researchers to a new program designed to facilitate access to Columbia’s special and unique collections. CUL will award ten (10) grants of $2500 each on a competitive basis to researchers who can demonstrate a compelling need to use Columbia’s libraries. The deadline is January 31, 2012. Contact: libawards@libraries.cul.columbia.edu

Mark Baker Eddy Fellowships

2011-11-07T16:14:00.000-08:00

Research fellowships are available for study at the Mary Baker Eddy Library in Boston. Deadline for application is February 2, 2006. Contact: fellowships@mbelibrary.org

Feminist Studies Book Prize Information

2011-10-19T08:51:00.000-07:00

The 2011 Susan Koppelman Award for Best Anthology, Multi-Authored, or Edited Book in Feminist Studies in Popular Culture will be awarded at the annual Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association convention in Boston April 11-14, 2012. Books published in 2011 can be nominated through December 31, 2011. Information is available at http://www.h-net.org/~pcaaca/

SHAFR Conference and Call for Papers

2011-10-19T08:50:00.000-07:00

The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) invites
proposals for panels and individual papers for its annual conference, which will be held June 28-30, 2012 at the Hartford Marriott Downtown, Hartford, Connecticut. Proposals must be submitted via the online interface by December 1, 2011. See: www.shafr.org/conferences/annual/2012-annual-meeting/

Southern Culture Book Reviews Available

2011-10-19T08:48:00.000-07:00

Southern Cultures has just posted an online Book Reviews section that includes reviews of 130 books from noted scholars and scores of acclaimed authors. To browse the new Book Reviews section, please visit: http://www.southerncultures.org/content/read/book_reviews/

To read the latest issue or find information about submissions, please
visit: www.SouthernCultures.org

NEPCA IS COMING!

2011-10-03T13:24:00.000-07:00

Reserve your hotel rooms now, the Northeast Popular/American Culture Association will convene at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, CT November 11-12, 2011. Hotel recommendations can be found in the newsletter mailed to current members. There are also details available on the official NEPCA Website.

Tainted Lit Volume Seeks Contributors

2011-10-03T13:22:00.000-07:00

Essay contributions are sought for a volume titled Teaching Tainted Lit: Popular American Fiction and the Perils and Pleasures of the Classroom, to be edited by Janet G. Casey. Please send a 300-word abstract and cv to jcasey@skidmore.edu by 15 Jan. 2012. Selected essays will be due in late 2012.

New England Studies Proposals Sought

2011-10-03T13:19:00.000-07:00

Papers on any topic of New England studies are sought for the upcoming PCA/ACA conference in Boston on April 11-14, 2012. Contact Peter Holloran if you have a proposal: pholloran@comcast.net

Women of Appalachia Conference

2011-10-03T13:18:00.000-07:00

The Women of Appalachia conference will convene October 20 and 21, 2011 on the campus of Ohio University Zanesville. The theme is “Women of Appalachia: Native American Impact, Influence and Intersection.” Grammy award-nominated artist Becky Hobbs will appear. The schedule is not yet finalized and those interested should Google the conference for updates.

Afghan Star and the Power of Popular Culture

2011-09-08T18:10:00.001-07:00

Afghan Star. Directed by Havana Marking. Zeitgeist Films, 2009, 87 minutes. (In Pasthu, Dari, and English with subtitles.)

Viewers of the documentary Afghan Star might be impressed by the awesomeness of the Afghan landscapes and cityscapes, by the ingenuity of Afghan people, or by various aspects of the film, but readers of NEPCA Journal will also be struck by the powerful testament this documentary offers of the importance of popular culture in understanding politics, history, economic development, gender, and culture at all levels. This beautifully made and engaging film follows Tolo TV’s 2008 contest for the next “Afghan Star,” that is, the singer voted most popular, via mobile phone, by the Afghan audience. The contest truly gripped the nation, with men, women and children throughout the land picking a favorite singer, and approximately one third of the population viewing the show and registering their votes.

The show was a great pleasure for an audience that one that one can’t help but feel particularly deserves pleasure after years of war and strife. Winning the top prize would, of course, make a great difference in the life of whomever was chosen, but director Havana Marking also reveals the importance of the contest to the nation as a whole, as described overtly by fans, the show’s producers, and its contestants. The opening scene, in which a sightless boy sings, clearly and poignantly about how his heart can understand the world, sets the tone. Throughout the film children talk about the life-giving nature of music, the solace it gives, and its importance within Afghan culture, themes reiterated by a number of interviewees. The mother of one contestant says that she can forget the death of her fifteen-year-old son when her daughter sings. Many of the enthusiastic young people mirror the star fandom habits in other countries, as they shyly profess infatuation with singers, or dress up dolls to play the various contestants. But Afghanistan is not like other nations; viewers are experiencing television and musical performances in a land where the Taliban had forbidden both from 1996 to 2001. The legions of viewers are also--male and female, young and old--expressing their individual tastes and relaxing in shared, virtual recreational space. Sometimes the virtual becomes actual, as many fans meet at cafés and other public locations to watch the show, and attendance is packed for the finals.

Celebrity, enjoyment for enjoyment’s sake, and secular spectacle are new phenomena for many young people, although older people remember Afghan culture in the 1980s, when men and women attended university, bands featured female singers, and urban popular culture did not seem to differ dramatically from that of the West. The resurgent culture of the people and the marketplace is also contrary to the authoritarian state in that viewers, male and female, vote for their favorite singer and some even campaign for them. Enthusiasm for talented singers transcends the harsh regionalism that is one of the obstacles to democracy in Afghanistan. Voting for the Afghan Star often seems a surrogate practice of representative government.

It doesn’t always take place easily, though. At one point the Taliban, claiming their whereabouts were being conveyed to their enemies by cell phone, threatened to blow up transmission towers if people used their mobile phones. But popular culture’s power is revealed by the fact that the Taliban’s interdiction had little impact on voting for the stars. Islamic clerics comment on negatively on the morality of the musical performances, although they often do so with more diffidence than the warlords.

A particularly dramatic moment in the movie concerns one singer’s unacceptable addition to her performance. While some contemporary American viewers might find the incident, including peoples’ reactions, extreme, it is worth remembering that prohibitions against artistic practice and display have been part of Western culture as well. The Puritans, for example, said that theatre was immoral because it was dishonest and ostentatious. Critics of seventeenth-century French theater, as well as contemporary movie critics, have condemned what they claimed was a siren call to public immorality embedded in performance arts and spectacle. Whether art can cause degeneration or regeneration has been a question of secular and religious authorities throughout the modern era.

The majesty of Afghanistan, the nation’s recent history, the resiliency and intelligence of its people, and the optimism they exude are well displayed. On one level the film teaches us about a people and an area of the world that is very different from our own. On another, though, we see how issues about art, performance, and entertainment are not so foreign at all. Not to give anything away, but, when we contemplate the reasons behind the crowning of the ultimate victor, we might be tempted to conclude that celebrity is the same world over! The documentary Afghan Star, now in video release, is one of the richest, most moving and informative films on offer in a long time.

Melanie Murphy

Emmanuel College

Northeast Modern Language Association

2011-09-08T12:01:00.000-07:00

The Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) will hold its annual convention at the Hyatt Rochester in Rochester, New York March 15-18, 2012.

Papers are still being solicited for this conference. For more details see:http://www.nemla.org/convention/announcements.html

Best Book on Textiles

2011-09-08T12:00:00.000-07:00

The Textile Society of America has awarded the 2010 R.L. Shep Ethnic Textiles Book Award to Five Centuries of Indonesian Textiles, edited by Ruth Barnes and Mary Hunt Kahlenberg and published by DelMonico Books-Prestel.

Nominations for the 2011 R.L. Shep Ethnic Textiles Book Award are due March 1, 2012. Further information about the nomination process and the names of previous winners, can be found on the TSA Website: http://www.textilesociety.org/awards_shep.htm

NEPCA is Coming!

2011-09-06T11:12:00.000-07:00

The fall NEPCA conference is coming! We will convene November 11-12 on the campus of Western Connecticut State University in Danbury. See the NEPCA Website for more details. (Listed on the top left of this page.)

Members: Your newsletter should arrive any day now.

Southwest Texas Conference

2011-09-06T11:11:00.001-07:00

The Southwest/Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Association conference will be held at the Hyatt Regency in Albuquerque, NM between February 8 – 11, 2012. Paper proposals are currently being solicited. For more details see: http://www.swtxpca.org

Stieg Larsson Collection Seeks Contributors

2011-09-06T11:09:00.000-07:00

Open Court Books is currently accepting proposals for The Dragon Tattoo and Philosophy, edited by Sara Livingston and Josef Stieff for publication in late 2012. Proposals can address any iteration of the Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson: the books, the films, the TV series, or the real-life drama of the life and death of Larsson himself.

The editors seek a non-academic writing style that has personality and is easy to understand, though the work should also be analytical and conceptual. Submit a 1-2 page proposal before October 1, 2011. Finished manuscripts will be 3500-4000 words. Send the proposal to: ocbook@gmail.com

Book Proposals Sought: Folk and Vernacular Music

2011-08-12T13:47:00.000-07:00

The University of Tennessee Press seeks to honor the legacy of Charles K. Wolfe (1943-2006) though a series of books on American popular and folk music. Wolfe was the author or editor of more than twenty books on topics such as a biography of Leadbelly , gospel, folk, and bluegrass music, and the Grand Ole Opry.

The press and series editor Ted Olson invite book proposals that constitute cutting-edge scholarship as well as more popular works that reflect Wolfe's range of interests but also expand them. Send proposals to olson@etsu.edu

Essays Sought on Lois Lane (Yes, Lois Lane!)

2011-08-12T13:43:00.000-07:00

A book titled Being Lois is planned, a collection of essays exploring the character Lois Lane from the DC Superman universe. Contributors are being sought.

Please send one page (around 500 words) abstracts to: Lois.Lane@gmx.net by August 20, 2011.

Include the following information:
[a] the research question
[b] the methodology
[c] the findings
[d] the bibliography (5 sources)

Pulp Magazines Available for Scholars

2011-08-12T13:41:00.000-07:00

The Pulp Magazines Project is an open-access digital archive dedicated to
the study and preservation of one of the twentieth century's most influential literary & artistic forms: the all-fiction pulpwood magazine. The Project also provides information on the history of this important but long neglected medium, along with biographies of pulp authors, artists, and their publishers. It can be accessed at: http://www.pulpmags.org/

Cultural and Media Audiences Journal

2011-08-12T13:38:00.000-07:00

The latest issue of Participations, the online journal devoted to the broad field of study of cultural and media audiences, is now available online at: www.participations.org

Participations also seeks new contributions in the field of mass/popular culture. For details on submissions see:
http://www.participations.org/submission_guidelines.htm

Development Conference in Portugal

2011-08-12T13:34:00.000-07:00

The HERITAGE 2012 International Conference on Heritage and Sustainable Development will convene June 19-22, 2012 in Porto, Portugal. Papers are currently being solicited for the gathering. Visit the conference website for full details about the conference scope, topics and submission procedures at http://www.heritage2012.greenlines-institute.org

Appalachian Studies Conference

2011-08-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

Call for Papers: The 35th annual Appalachian Studies Conference will be held at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) March 23-25, 2012. The conference theme is “The Wide reach of Appalachia.”

Proposals on any aspect of northern Appalachia are encouraged. Questions should de directed to ASA2012IUP@gmail.com. Follow the following link for information about the conference and how to submit proposals:
http://www.appalachianstudies.org/conference/2012/ASA_CallforPartic2012.pdf

Call for Contributors: Egypt and Surrealism

2011-08-12T13:28:00.000-07:00

The journal Dada/Surrealism has planned a special journal issue: “Wonderful Things” - Surrealism and Egypt.” Dada/Surrealism invites essays that explore the significance of the multiple relations, points of contact, dialogues, engagements and exchanges between surrealism and Egypt.

Please send a 250-word abstract, tentative title and brief CV to the guest
editors Patricia Allmer at p .allmer@mmu.ac.uk and Donna Roberts at dmrobe@googlemail.com by October 16th, 2011.

Completed essays will be due February 13th 2011, and should be between 6000-8000 words. For queries contact Patricia Allmer and Donna Roberts at the email addresses above. For further information on Dada/Surrealism please visit http://ir.uiowa.edu/dadasur/

Planning and Changing Seeks Articles

2011-07-26T11:17:00.000-07:00

Planning and Changing: An Education Leadership and Policy Journal seeks articles on public school policy or higher education policy. It is a peer-reviewed forum and a critical, intellectual resource for educational leaders, practitioners, and policy makers.

Contact: Managing Editor Andrea J. Rediger, ajredig@ilstu.edu See also:
http://centereducationpolicy.illinoisstate.edu/publications/ and
http://www.planningandchanging.ilstu.edu/

New York Comic Con

2011-07-26T11:16:00.000-07:00

Free professional passes are available for educators, librarians, and others wishing to attend the New York Comic Con on October 13 at Javits Center in New York. Those wishing to attend all four days (10/13-10/17) can obtain passes for just $10. See http://www.newyorkcomiccon.com / for more details.

Exotic Dance Photos Available

2011-07-26T11:13:00.002-07:00

The Ohio State University Libraries and the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute have made public a digital collection of photographs from OSU’s Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance from Burlesque to Clubs.

The images on the cabinet and tobacco cards in the collection open a window to the theatrical entertainment of burlesque of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as well as to exploration of feminine beauty, socially acceptable behavior, cross-dressing and gender issues, and exoticism.

They can be viewed at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/60966199@N08/sets/7215762631241342 1/

Bring Out Your Undead!

2011-07-26T11:13:00.001-07:00

Contributors are sought for an under contract volume titled Undead in the West: Vampires, Zombies, Mummies, and Ghosts on the Cinematic Frontier. The deadline for 500-word abstracts is September 18, 2011 and the planned publication date is 2012.

Send abstracts to co-editors, Cindy Miller cynthia_miller@emerson.edu and Bow Van Riper bvanriper@bellsouth.net

Graphic Novels Journal Seeks Contributors

2011-07-26T11:11:00.000-07:00

The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics plans to publish a themed issue on boys'
love manga and seeks contributors. The deadline for submission of 250-300 word abstracts is October 14, 2011. Email editors@yaoiresearch.com with queries. The final essays should run 5,000 to 7,000 words.
For more details see: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/cfp/rcomcfp.pdf

Critical Studies Conference Seeks Papers

2011-07-26T11:10:00.000-07:00

A conference titled “Radical Aesthetics and Politics: Intersections in Music, Art,
and Critical Social Theory” seeks papers for its gathering on December 9, 2011 at Hunter College, City University of New York. This multidisciplinary conference aims to explore these questions centering on the intersections between aesthetic practices and radical political action. Please submit a 200-300 word proposal, including a title and full contact details to Portia Seddon: portiaseddon@gmail.com by August 15, 2011.

The conference is organized by Critical Studies in Expressive Culture
http://chreculture.blogspot.com/ and by the Department of Anthropology at
Hunter College, CUNY http://maxweber.hunter.cuny.edu/anthro/

Contributors Sought for Journal

2011-07-26T11:08:00.000-07:00

The International Research Journal of Library, Information and Archival
Studies, a monthly multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal, seeks manuscripts on an ongoing basis. A guide to authors is available at: http://interesjournals.org/IRJLIAS/Guide%20to%20Authors.htm

NEPCA Bylaw Change Proposed

2011-06-18T12:30:00.001-07:00

The fall meeting of NEPCA will put before membership a proposed change in Article IV of the NEPCA Bylaws. Line two of Section IV currently reads “The Secretary-Treasurer and the Members-at-Large shall be elected for three-year terms once renewable.” The proposed amendment would strike the word “once” and read: ““The Secretary-Treasurer and the Members-at-Large shall be elected for three-year terms, renewable.”

The Executive Council recommends this change, but in accordance with NEPCA bylaws it must be voted upon by membership.

NEPCA Fall Conference First Notice

2011-06-18T12:29:00.000-07:00

Mark your calendars! The Northeast Popular/American Culture Association’s fall meeting will occur on November 11-12, 2011 on the campus of Western Connecticut State University. Watch our Website http://users.wpi.edu/~jphanlan/NEPCA.html for more details or follow us on Facebook.

Publish your Ghoul Works!

2011-06-18T12:26:00.000-07:00

An anthology titled Undead in the West: Vampires, Zombies, Mummies, and Ghosts on the Cinematic Frontier seeks contributors. The deadline for abstracts: September 18, 2011. Please send your 500-word abstract to both co-editors, Cindy Miller
(cynthia_miller@emerson.edu) and Bow Van Riper (b vanriper@bellsouth.ne t).
Deadline for submissions is September 18, 2011.

Accepted essays will be due in February 2012, for a 2012 publication.

Call for Music Articles on the 1960s

2011-06-18T12:25:00.000-07:00

Volume! The French Journal of Popular Music Studies seeks contributions for a
special issue on music and counterculture. Any scholarly essay on popular music and counterculture, focusing on link to the "central" period of the sixties and seventies, is welcome. Full details can be secured from: here: http://www.seteun.net/spip.php?article255

Bread and Roses Centennial Conference Seeks Presenters

2011-06-02T11:31:00.000-07:00

The Bread and Roses Centennial Conference commemorating the 1912 Lawrence, MA textile will be held at the Lawrence History Center on April 27 - 28, 2012. Papers and other presentations are now being accepted for that event. The deadline for submissions is July 1, 2011.

For more information see: www.breadandrosescentennial.org/

Child Image in Media Submissions Sought

2011-06-02T11:30:00.000-07:00

Red Feather Journal, an online, peer-reviewed, international and interdisciplinary journal of children's visual culture, seeks submissions for the Fall 2011 issue. The deadline for the fall issue is July 15, 2011. Interested contributors please submit the paper, an abstract, and a brief biography (with full contact information) as attachments in Word to Debra Olson: debbieo@okstate.edu

The journal publishes twice a year and accepts submissions on a rolling basis. See

www.redfeatherjournal.org for more details.

Religion Journal Seeks Contributors

2011-06-02T11:28:00.000-07:00

The University of Toronto Press Journals Division is pleased to announce that the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture is now part of its journals family. It is a web-based, peer-reviewed journal committed to the academic exploration, analysis, and interpretation of the interrelations between and interactions of religion and religious expression and popular and mass culture. The journal is based in Canada but is international in scope and open to the exploration of religion and popular culture in a variety of cultures and from a multiplicity of disciplines.

Those interested in contributing scholarly work should submit their manuscripts through PRESTO, UTP's online peer review system at h ttp://jrpc.presto.utpjournals.com/jmanager/.

For submission information, please contact the JRPC editor Mary Ann Beavis, Academic mbeavis@stmcollege.ca

Vampires, Zombies, Mummies and Ghosts

2011-06-02T11:26:00.000-07:00

An anthology titled Undead in the West: Vampires, Zombies, Mummies, and Ghosts on the Cinematic Frontier seeks contributors.

Those interested should send a 500-word abstract to both co-editors, Cindy Miller (cynthia_miller@emerson.edu) and Bow Van Riper (bvanriper@bellsouth.net).

Deadline for submissions is September 18, 2011. Accepted essays will be
due in February 2012, for a 2012 publication.

2011-05-23T08:25:00.000-07:00

The Eastern Stars: How Baseball Changed the Dominican Town of San Pedro de Marcorís. By Mark Kurlansky. New York: Riverhead Books, 2010. 332 pp. ISBN 978-1-59448-505-3.

Baseball fans will recognize these names instantly: Rico Carty, Joaquin Andújar, Alfredo Griffin, George Bell, Tony Fernandez, Sammy Sosa, Fernando Tatis, Robinson Canó…. What do they have in common? They are among eighty-six major league players who hail from a single town in the Dominican Republic, San Pedro de Marcorís, and most of them played for the local team, the Estrellas Orientales ( Eastern Stars).

Eighty-six professional players would do any town proud, but all of this has occurred since 1962. Major League Baseball (MLB) was segregated from 1898 until 1947, when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. As Mark Kurlansky reminds us, though, Robinson’s debut led to more of a trickle than flood of players of color into MLB’s ranks. Deep prejudices and structural barriers remained, especially for darker-skinned Latinos. Minnie Minoso, a Cuban, set the stage when he signed with Cleveland in 1948, but was another eight years until the first Dominican, Ozzie Virgil, made it to the majors. Six years later Amando Samuel became the first player from San Pedro de Marcorís to make it, but he did open the floodgates and confirmed San Pedro de Marcorís as a baseball hotbed. Kurlanksy asks the obvious question, “Why San Pedro de Marcorís?” It’s a small place, but the answer is complex.

Kurlansky’s “baseball” book is one of the more readable surveys of Dominican history I’ve sampled. The story of baseball in San Pedro de Marcorís doesn’t begin in 1962, rather in the late-nineteenth-century when foreign investors started to gain a foothold in Spain’s decaying Caribbean empire. Baseball appeared alongside sugar barons and missionaries; legend holds that Cubans played the first Caribbean baseball in 1866, and that they imported the game to the Dominican Republic some time thereafter. Not surprisingly, sugar corporations sponsored many of the first teams. Kurlansky spins a tale of agriculture, imperialism, dictators, poverty, and political corruption in which even baseball could be a pawn in a larger game. The infamous Trujillo family, for instance, tied sugar interests and personal vanity to success of a sponsored team and bought talent akin to the modern-day Red Sox and Yankees. So why did San Pedro de Marcorís, not a Trujillo center, become crazy for baseball? What does one do in such a place? Answer: work in sugar and struggle to survive, or play ball and hope someone punches your ticket out. As Kurlansky relates, one doesn’t have to play pro ball for very long to come back to San Pedro de Marcorís as a hero, with enough money to be set for life, and with lifetime credentials to play or coach in the Dominican league and baseball academies. Those who have seen the wonderful 2008 film Sugar will appreciate another of Kurlansky’s themes: the cultural shock many Dominicans receive when they first come to the United States. Today nearly 25% of all MLB players are Latino, but the culture and language gaps between them and native-born North Americans remains broad.

Kurlansky is very good with history and culture, so it comes as a surprise that his treatment of baseball itself is rather lackluster. He takes pains to explain the smallest things, such as what basic terms mean. This isn’t necessary given the unlikelihood that someone unfamiliar with the game will read this book. But it goes beyond that; the very tone turns simplistic in the way that books directed at adolescent sports fans can be. This leaves holes in the analysis. For instance, Kurlansky mentions but doesn’t shed much light on drug and age falsification scandals associated with Dominican baseball academies. Nor does he go into much detail about an ongoing sore spot between MLB and Dominican players-- the latter’s insistence on playing winter ball on the island. (MLB teams fear injuries and physical exhaustion to its top talent, though it’s more than willing to send younger players to winter leagues to hone skills.)

In all, this book is two-thirds very good and one-third so-so. But if you love irony, consider this: Although San Pedro de Marcorís has produced amazing players, the Eastern Stars are the Chicago Cubs of the Dominican Republic. Since their founding in 1910, they’ve only won the nation’s championship twice.

Robert E. Weir

University of Massachusetts Amherst

Political Folk Music a Good Survey, but Not Revelatory

2011-05-18T18:35:00.000-07:00

Political Folk Music in America from Its Origins to Bob Dylan. By Lawrence J. Epstein. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. 2010. ISBN 978-0-7864-4862-3.

Political Folk Music in America from Its Origins to Bob Dylan would make a very fine introductory textbook for a course dealing with American social movements. That statement pretty much sums up the virtues and shortcomings of this volume.

For those who know very little about acoustic-based protest music, Epstein offers a concise and highly readable overview. There are, however, no revelations for those already familiar with folk music terrain. Epstein uses idealism as his hook and argues that one should never become so absorbed in the song or enamoured of the artist that one forgets that political music’s primary aim is to stimulate social change. That’s not exactly stop-the-presses news. Nor does Epstein break new ground in the music he spotlights. Like many similar volumes, his account gives short shrift to the pre-recording era. In fact, Epstein pretty much ignores it altogether and begins his account with the Carter family. And the book’s title alerts that the narrative is limited on the other end of the chronological sweep as well. We do not learn about political music’s role in the American Revolution, in the rise of popular movements of the nineteenth-century, in opposing slavery, or in the labor movement until we get to Joe Hill and the Industrial Workers of the World. Hill was indeed a marvel, but what about the Knights of Labor, the organization that passed the musical social protest torch to the IWW? On the other end of spectrum, Epstein leaves us with dead folk icons--Phil Ochs, Mary Travers, Liam Clancy, Odetta, Dave Van Ronk--aging song warriors--Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton, Joan Baez--and those who have moved on, like Dylan. (Do Clancy and Van Ronk even belong on this list?) There is more space devoted to rockers such as Bruce Springsteen than to the lions of the current era: Ani DiFranco, Billy Bragg, Steve Earle…. (Why no John Gorka, Dan Bern, Utah Phillips, Dead Kennedys, Dixie Chicks, and untold numbers of women’s music artists?) Epstein falls prey to the common mistake of confusing either academic recognition (Guthrie, Leadbelly, Baez, Dylan) or commercial success with the social protest tradition. He needs to pay more attention to folk “communities” and social movements and less to sales figures and media play. He is correct that political music seeks to change the world, but that is done battle-by-battle, not sale-by-sale.

All of this said, I enjoyed this book because it left so much unsaid and leaves holes for a classroom instructor to fill. The critique above is offered more as a warning to folk music scholars than as an indictment of the work. If we let this book be what it is, an introduction rather than a path- breaking analysis, it succeeds. To borrow an old phrase, Epstein’s book “whets the whistle.” It is unpretentious, clear, and breezy--just the ticket for an undergraduate course. I intend to give it a test drive during winter semester when I’m slated to teach a course titled “Folk Music and Social Change.”

Robert E. Weir
University of Massachusetts Amherst

49th Parallel Articles and Call for Submissions

2011-04-15T13:32:00.000-07:00

The latest articles from the American and Canadian Studies journal 49th Parallel can be viewed at http://www.49thparallel.bham.ac.uk/current.htm

The journal also seeks submissions for upcoming issues. See http://www.49thparallel.bham.ac.uk/submissions.htm for details.

Music Encyclopedia Seeks Contributors

2011-04-15T13:29:00.000-07:00

The Encyclopedia of Music and American Culture seeks contributors for a volume to be published with ABC-CLIO in December 2013. Of particular need are biographical entries of 500 words each.

Those interested in writing for the project should contact Jaqueline Edmondson at: jedmondson@psu.edu

NEPCA Call for Papers: Sports

2011-04-15T08:36:00.000-07:00

CALL FOR PAPERS: SPORTS

The Northeast Popular/American Culture Association (NEPCA) is seeking proposals for a panel on sports to be presented at its annual fall conference. NEPCA will convene on the campus of Western Connecticut State University (WCSU) November 11-12, 2011. WCSU is located in Danbury, CT and is accessible by Amtrak from New York City, Boston, and other major cities.

NEPCA welcomes proposals on any topic related to sports as a cultural or historical phenomenon, the only stipulation being that the focus of the panel will be scholarly and analytical. Topics need not be confined to North American sports or New England topics.

Those interested in submitting should email a proposal (maximum 500 words) and a one-page vita to both the Conference Program Chair, Don Gagnon, at gagnond@wcsu.edu and the Area Chair for Sports, Rob Weir, at weir.r@comcast.net The deadline for proposals is June 1, 2011, but will begin to assemble panels as soon as suitable proposals are received.

NEPCA welcomes a diverse mix of graduate students, adjuncts, retirees, and independent scholars, as well as full-time faculty members. It seeks to provide a setting in work in progress can be shared. NEPCA also seeks to make its conferences affordable. Presenters must be members of NEPCA in order to present, but can join the organization upon acceptance of the proposal.

Rollins Not Afraid to Challenge Orthodoxy

2011-03-18T11:48:00.000-07:00

America Reflected: Language, Satire, Film, and the National Mind, By Peter C. Rollins, Washington, D.C., New Academia, 2010.

This volume by Peter C. Rollins is published by New Academia, a house with numerous products in the area of culture studies. Professor Rollins, a recently retired distinguished professor at Oklahoma State University, is well known to scholars as one of the “founding fathers” of the popular culture movement. The chapters in America Reflected have appeared in print previously, but collectively they serve as both introduction to and a summary of many years of scholarly work. Each chapter also features useful bibliographical entries.

Rollins begins with personal and autobiographical details that both tell the reader who he is and provide a view of the development of the American Studies movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s. As for the content, Rollins provides six chapters on Will Rogers, three on the contributions to culture theory by linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf, two on World War I and its depiction in film, three on World War II and film, two on the Cold War, nine on the Vietnam Conflict, and six on assorted subjects such as John James Audubon, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Amy Lowell.

Rollins is perhaps best known for his work on Will Rogers and the Vietnam War. The chapters on Rogers give a picture of the profession of acting in Rogers’ day and remind us of how prescient his insights seem today. More importantly these chapters and most of the others in this volume are examples of the kind of writing to be found in the journal, Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies founded by Rollins and John E. O’Connor. Those chapters will remind readers of pioneering scholarship that probed the myth, symbol, and imagery of iconic figures such as Charles A. Lindbergh and Andrew Jackson.

The most fascinating chapters--and ones that alone make this book a valuable contribution to American Studies and American history--are those on Vietnam. Many people will recall television documentaries such as the PBS production “Vietnam: A Television History” and “The Uncounted Enemy,” which appeared on CBS. Rollins, however, produced two documentaries that take a remarkably different point of view, “Television’s Vietnam: The Real Story” and “Television’s Vietnam: The Impact of Media.” Scholarship on Vietnam is simply not complete without considering Rollins’ thoughtful work. Rollins argues that Vietnam was a tragedy in human terms, but because the United States was not defeated militariláy, the loss must have been sustained elsewhere. Rollins sharply disagrees with the tone and some of the content of the PBS series, and the same can be said of CBS’s look at General William Westmoreland, which landed in court. Rollins reminds us that the book on Vietnam is by no means closed, and his chapters provide an excellent bibliography through which readers can explore recent work.

To read this book is to touch the man. But more importantly this book is an example of American Studies scholarship and a substantive contribution to each of the subjects it treats. It should be a pleasing addition to personal and academic libraries.

Amos St. Germain

Wentworth Institute of Technology

Grateful Dead Book Aims Too Narrowly

2011-03-18T11:46:00.001-07:00

The Grateful Dead in Concert: Essays on Live Improvisation. By Jim Tuedio and Stan Spector, eds. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2010. ISBN 978-0-7864-4357-4

In Long Strange Trip, former Grateful Dead publicist Dennis McNally tells the story of two 1990 concerts in which the band was breaking in its new keyboardist, Vince Welnick. The first concert was filled with brilliant moments and Welnick was jazzed. Yet just several nights later the Dead’s show was “abysmal.” McNally sought to comfort the disconsolate Welnick with these words: “Vince, you don’t understand. It’s not you. This is a band that really sucks sometimes, and tonight’s the night” (585).

I can think of no better metaphor to sum up the twenty essays in The Grateful Dead in Concert. There are moments of crystalline insight, such as Erin McCoy’s essay that plumbs the band’s Americana roots, Jay Williams’s look at the Dead’s bohemian nationalism, and Natalie Dollar’s effort at cracking the communication codes that built the Deadhead movement. Good stuff. But this is also a book that really sucks sometimes. The project has a clever hook in that the essays are assembled like a concert: a tune-up, three sets, and an encore. Had each of the authors stuck to the dominant riff of building interpretive frameworks with the consideration topnotch musicians give to assembling a playlist, this might have been a very fine book indeed. Alas, two major problems disempower this book like a severed power cable: fandom and academic pretentiousness.

Several of the writers seem to have forgotten that the book’s purpose is to illumine the band. Few groups have ever approached the Dead in cultivating such an impassioned and loyal following. Fine, but a scholar’s main task should be objective and dispassionate. To place one’s one love of the band above analysis is only appropriate for a volume titled What the Grateful Dead Meant to Me. There are, alas, several entries in this volume that are so idiosyncratic and personal that outside readers will be hard pressed to find broader insight.

But these essays are easy on the reader compared with those in which the writer is simply showing off. Several essayists indulge in postmodernist excess at its absolute worst. Their prose is obtuse, jargon-ridden, and unreadable. Although I applaud the effort to apply intellectual rigor to the study of popular culture, must we do so by extracting all the joy? More to the point, of what good is any analysis when the writer has engaged in the intellectual equivalent of speaking in tongues? Who, exactly, is served by such an approach?

Put together, it’s hard to know what audience Tuedio and Spector hoped to reach. Deadheads? Most of them, rightly, will turn to their tapes, downloads, records, and memories rather than read this book. Undergraduates? No way. Most lack the tools or the patience to wade through this book’s dense prose. Other intellectuals? The collection’s lack of a consistent disciplinary focus renders them an unlikely collective target. The book was inspired by a small group of self-styled Grateful Dead scholars whose path-breaking efforts suggested new ways in which scholars could use music to illumine American society. In this book, however, some of them have lost their way and are speaking only to each other. As much as I’d like this to be a book we could assign to popular and American culture classes, it is not. Call it an off night.

Robert E. Weir

University of Massachusetts Amherst

Poles Get Bad Deal from Hollywood

2011-03-13T20:12:00.000-07:00

Hollywood’s War With Poland, 1939-1945. By M. B. B. Biskupski. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2010.

Germany’s attack on Poland in 1939 marked the beginning of the Second World War. The doomed attempt by Polish soldiers to stave off the attack, as well as the long-term campaigns of sabotage waged throughout the war by brave members of the Polish underground, would have made for stirring movies that could have motivated the enemies of the Axis Powers. And yet, with rare exception, the Polish war effort was mostly ignored in Hollywood movies of the era.

In this provocative work, M. B. B. Biskupski argues that there was a deliberate attempt by Hollywood studios to show Poland in a negative light, unlike other countries – such as Denmark and Czechoslovakia – that had also been overrun by the Nazis. Biskupski, a historian of the Polish diaspora and a longtime movie aficionado, spent many hours in film archives looking at first drafts of scripts, and he details how the depiction of Poland was often radically changed from inception to ultimate appearance on the screen. Biskupsi points out the curious fact that not only was the Polish war effort downplayed, but quite a few films made it appear as if many Poles, including government officials, welcomed the German invasion. This perversion of the truth was supplemented by an equally appalling untruth: that Russian troops had “entered” Poland in 1939 to limit Hitler’s eastward march. The actual fact, of course, was that Hitler and Stalin were then allies and had mutually agreed to carve up Poland between them. But shortly after Hitler’s attack on Russia, when the Soviet Union became by default an ally of Great Britain and ultimately America, this unpleasant fact was considered best forgotten by those in charge of Allied war efforts.

As Biskupski meticulously demonstrates, the two chief reasons for Poland’s unfair depiction in Hollywood films of the war years were the Roosevelt Administration’s concerted efforts to lessen friction with the Soviet Union, and the pro-Soviet (and sometimes explicitly pro-Communist) attitudes of several of the most noted screenwriters of the time. Aware that Stalin likely intended to control Poland after the war, the administration had no intention of encouraging the restoration of Polish independence, and put pressure on the Hollywood studios whenever this issue might arise. Writers who welcomed Soviet intentions abetted this.

In addition to being a fascinating work of historical detection, the book also gives wonderful synopses of such forgotten films as Action in the North Pacific (1943), Abroad with Two Yanks (1944), and None Shall Escape (1944). Particular attention is paid to one of the few films of the time that actually depicted the Polish Underground in positive terms, Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be (1942), a comedy whose satiric look at the Nazi occupation remains controversial. In it, a ham actor named Tura, played by Jack Benny, is hiding for his life and in disguise, but can’t help asking the head of the Gestapo if he had ever seen Tura perform. “What he did to Shakespeare, we are now doing to Poland,” the colonel jovially replies. Biskupski points out that the line was so offensive that “even Lubitsch’s wife asked him to cut it from the film,” (84). Knowing just what the Nazis did to Poland, it remains a grotesque jest.

Well-written and well-argued, the book is also, given the grim topic, surprisingly amusing at times, especially when it repeatedly points out the ever-shifting accents of Paul Muni, often in the same film.

Tim Madigan
Saint John Fisher College

CALL FOR ESSAY SUBMISSIONS

2011-03-09T19:56:00.000-08:00

Essays are sought for an upcoming McFarland & Company publication titled Fidelma of Cashel: Essays on Peter Tremayne’s7th-Century Crime Mysteries. It will be edited by Edward J. Rielly and David Robert Wooten.

Essays are to be approximately 3000-4000 words long, typed double-spaced. The essays are to be written in clear, concrete terms devoid of jargon. Anyone interested in contributing an essay should contact the editors immediately with a brief proposal (2-3 paragraphs) and a short description of relevant background. Invited essays will be due as e-mail attachments no later than October 1, 2011.

Inquiries and Proposals to: Edward J. Rielly, Dept. of English, Saint Joseph's College, 278 Whites Bridge Road, Standish, ME 04084-5263, erielly@sjcme.edu; and David Robert Wooten, Director, International Sister Fidelma Society, PMB 396, 1643B Savannah Highway, Charleston, SC 29407-2202, david@sisterfidelma.com

Southern Culture and the Civil War

2011-03-08T16:24:00.000-08:00

The War and its aftermath have always been important subjects for Southern Cultures. For new featured content and previously published material on the Civil War, please visit:
http://www.southerncultures.org/content/read/read_by_subject/civil_war/

Fulbright Applications

2011-03-08T16:22:00.000-08:00

The competition for 2012-13 Fulbright Scholar grants is now open. The application deadline for most programs is August 1, 2011. U.S. scholars and professionals can learn how to present their credentials at www.iie.org/cies

American and Canadian Studies Journal Seeks Essays

2011-03-02T18:40:00.000-08:00

The peer-reviewed American and Canadian Studies journal 49th Parallel seeks papers for upcoming issues. Articles, especially those with an interdisciplinary approach, of 5,000-7,000 words are sought on a broad range of American Studies topics.

For full submission guidelines please visit: http://www.49thparallel.bham.ac.uk

Southern Cultures Makes Essays Available

2011-03-02T18:39:00.000-08:00

In celebration of Black History Month, Southern Cultures has dedicated a new section of its website to all of its essays and features from the last decade on African American history and culture. They can be viewed at:
http://www.southerncultures.org/content/read/read_by_subject/african_american_history_and_culture/

Spiritualism Collection Seeks Contributors

2011-03-02T18:38:00.000-08:00

Call for Papers – Edited Multi-Volume Series on the Spiritualist Movement

Essays are sought for volume dealing with spiritualism. Among the disciplines solicited are: history, religious studies, anthropology, sociology, gender studies, literature, philosophy, and psychology.

Chapter proposals of approximately 200-250 words should be submitted via e-mail to Christopher M. Moreman: cmoreman@gmail.com on or before April 15th, 2011.

Folklife Deadlines Approaching

2011-03-02T18:36:00.000-08:00

The American Folklife Center has four impending deadlines for grants. To find out more, consult its Facebook events page:
http://www.facebook.com/americanfolklifecenter?sk=event s

Centenary Look at the Triangle Fire

2011-02-23T12:46:00.000-08:00

The CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10016 will present a commemoration of “The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and Its Legacy” on March 24, 2011. This daylong conference (9 am to 6:30 pm) is free and open to the public, but registration is required to secure limited space.

For registration, more details and the full conference program, visit www.trianglefireconference.org

Drama Education Journal Seeks Contributors

2011-02-23T12:45:00.000-08:00

Call for Papers: Research in Drama Education: the Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance
Themed edition on innovation, technology and converging practices in drama, applied theatre and performance.

RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, a refereed journal, seeks writers for the special themed issue exploring the intersections between drama, applied theatre, digital gaming, technology and educational practices. Scholars are invited to submit a proposal of between 300- 500 words for an article of approximately 5,000 words in length.

Send proposals by April 30, 2011 to: Dr Joe Winston: J.A.Winston@warwick.ac.uk and michael.anderson@sydney.edu.au

Contributors whose proposals have been accepted will be informed by June 29, 2011. Authors will be asked to submit their full article for peer review as is customary for the journal, by November 25, 2011.

JAC Seeks Reviewers

2011-02-16T18:27:00.000-08:00

Book Reviewers are needed for The Journal of American Culture. If you are a PCA/ACA member and would like to review for the JAC, email book review editor Lynn Bartholome. Attach a short vita, areas of expertise/interest, and a mailing address. Reviews are 600 words in length and are due in 60 days.

Contact: lbartholome@monroecc.edu

Journal Seeks Contributors

2011-02-16T18:25:00.000-08:00

Cassandra E. Simon, editor of the Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship, invites manuscripts from all disciplines leading up to and following University of Alabama's hosting of the National Outreach Scholarship Conference in October 2012.

Additional details can be found at: http://www.jces.ua.edu/

Summer Oral History Institute

2011-02-16T18:24:00.000-08:00

The Oral History Institute will meet June 7-9, 2011 on the campus of Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. The institute trains participants in planning and conducting successful oral history projects and will be led by faculty professors from the fields of history, sociology, archiving, and journalism. .

Admission to the institute is limited to thirty and is competitive. The cost is $275, which includes two nights lodging, six meals, and all workshop materials.

To obtain an application, contact Frank Dunkle at (800) 293-9774 or
frankd@ohiohumanities.org. The application deadline is April 22.

2011-02-14T18:48:00.000-08:00

The Team America Loves to Hate: Why Baseball Fans Despise the New York Yankees. By Charles R. Warner. Santa Barbara, Ca.: Praeger, 2009

To many baseball fans, the central question posed in Charles R. Warner’s The Team America Loves to Hate: Why Baseball Fans Despise the New York Yankees is a simple one. “I’m a Red Sox fan and a D’Backs fan. So, yes, I despise the Yankees,” one fan responded. “There should be no explanation why.” (85) Warner is more interested in why fans from around the country feel the same way, and posted his query on the various team message boards. Warner’s quest for Yankee hatred is part of a broader inquiry into the broader social phenomenon of fandom, following Gustav Le Bon’s study of crowd activity.

Hatred of the Yankees came from three sources: hatred of the players, hatred of the fans, and hatred of the economic system of baseball that produced the Yankees. Hatred of the players is simple to understand, it came either from resentment of a favorite player signing with Yankees as a free agent, or from one team’s hopes dashed at the Yankees’ hands. A Braves’ fan traced his hatred to the home run Jim Leyritz hit off Mark Wohlers in the 1996 World Series. One Red Sox fan was so traumatized by Bucky Dent’s home run the 1978 playoff that he became a Blue Jays fan. An Indians fan hated the Yankees for their role in Ray Chapman’s death in 1920 and Herb Score’s eye injury in 1957. (23-24) Warner notes that fans tend to draw a distinction between “homegrown” players such a Derek Jeter, who earn a measure of respect, and Alex Gonzalez, who takes an unmerciful beating and is viewed as a hired mercenary. (23, 27) Yankees fans also draw the ire of the rest of fandom. Warner points to arrogance and a sense of entitlement, as do many of his respondents. Of course, such an attitude is a product of long-term success, and some respondents see this attitude emerging in Red Sox fans.

The most interesting and revealing responses came from fans of teams with limited contact with the Yankees. They tended to see the Yankees as a symbol of a system that creates a few wealthy franchises and many more poor ones. Warner argues that “baseball fans perceive the Yankees and Major League Baseball (MLB) as inseparable parts of a system; a two-headed monster which, according to the final balance sheet, produces various strains of enmity within the fanbases of those other 29 teams.” (31) This explains why Pirates fans supplied Warner with the most responses. One exchange among Pirates fans reveals this small-market resentment of a large-market franchise. Many other major sports are structured so that teams can exist in small markets and still succeed. The Pirates concluded that MLB, not the Yankees, was the source of their complaint. In addition, George Steinbrenner often appeared as a caricature of a 19^th century robber baron. Along with the small-market versus large-market split, Warner’s study shows an anti-East Coast sentiment. Cardinals, Cubs, and Angels fans complained of being force-fed the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry on television to the exclusion of all else. This sentiment has spilled over into a secondary Red Sox hatred, but this seems to be a function of the team’s recent success. A similar study a decade ago would have doubtless shown a high level of Braves hatred.

Warner makes one mistake common in baseball books; he over-theorizes the topic. He includes an extensive discussion of crowd behavior and child psychology that, while valuable, seems better fit to a general discussion of fandom rather than his specific inquiry. Indeed, Warner abandons broader theory in his conclusion; fans, especially those of smaller market teams, hate the Yankees not merely out of envy but out of a sense that the game is rigged in favor of large-market teams. Nonetheless, Warner has presented a revealing study of fan behavior, full of implications for the place of baseball in American popular culture.

Robert W. Smith

Worcester State University

Washington University Travel to Collections Grant

2011-02-11T05:11:00.000-08:00

The Department of Special Collections of Washington University Libraries St. Louis, Missouri announces its annual travel grant competition. The application deadline is March 15, 2011 for travel between May 15, 2011 and June 30, 2012. Grants of up to $1000 are available to faculty, graduate students, undergraduates, and independent scholars using the library collections for research. For more information, contact Joe Thompson at: joseph.thompson@wustl.edu or visit the on-line catalog at
http://library.wustl.edu/units/spec/filmandmedia/

Sports Anthology Seeks Contributors

2011-02-11T05:10:00.000-08:00

An anthology titled American History through American Sports seeks essays for inclusion in an upcoming three-volume collection of essays under contract to Praeger Publishers. The essays of 4,000-5,000 words should focus on sports, history, and popular culture and are due May 23, 2011.
Contact Bob Batchelor for a list of available topics: rpbatche@kent.edu

History and American Memory Call for Papers

2011-02-11T05:08:00.000-08:00

Chapter proposals are sought for an edited volume about the re-creation of history and American public memory. The projects seek papers on a broad range of topics and time periods that address the commemoration of a specific event, person, or period, or which address the theory of historical memory, as it is re/produced in commemoration, re-creation, celebration, and protest.

The deadline for chapter proposals is May 1, 2011. E-mail a 500-word proposal and brief bio or CV to the editors:

Dr. Jeffrey L. Meriwether, Chair jmeriwether@rwu.edu

and

Dr. Laura Mattoon D’Amore, ldamore@rwu.edu

Caped Crusaders Has Weaknesses as Text

2011-02-04T07:11:00.000-08:00

Caped Crusaders 101: Composition through Comic Books, 2^nd ed. By Jeffrey Kahan and Stanley Stewart. McFarland & Company Inc. Publishers, 2010. ISBN 978-0-7864-4774-9

Jeffrey Kahan and Stanley Stewart, the co-authors of Caped Crusaders 101: Composition Through Comic Books, seek to use comic books as a pedagogical tool to teach composition, with their book as a guide. In their introduction, they state that that their mission is to “revive a love of reading” through an examination of comic books, whose audience remains “so passionate…that they cherish (comic books) like treasures to be handed down to future generations.” (1-2) Through examining the themes and topics contained therein, readers will ultimately be urged to “further reading, writing, and discussion both within and outside the classroom” (Kahan and Stewart 5).

Much of the authors’ criticism of comics works well on its own; analyses of issues of race and foreign policy through the lens of superhero comics, for example, are well-written and astute. But it’s just that– analysis-with very little inclusion of the comics themselves, save for a stray panel here and there. The authors, whose enthusiasm is palpable throughout, assume readers’ familiarity with the comics a bit too much to be truly effective in their mission to revive a love of reading through the comics themselves. In addition, their opinions are so forcibly presented that they leave little room for students’ interpretations of the comics discussed therein. In writing classrooms, primary source material is an essential component of the pedagogical process; it allows students to formulate their own opinions. Kahan and Stewart’s book provides little in the way of the comics themselves, and little room for student thought.

The seeming contradiction in their thesis’s execution – revive a love of reading through comics, but without presenting any comics -- is further emphasized in the book’s later chapters, when the focus tends to shift away from an analysis of comic books to an analysis of comic book movies. With so much verbiage spilled about superhero comics’ value to young readers, it’s hard to take the book’s mission statement seriously when so much of the focus tends towards film. While it’s certainly true that superhero films are more readily accessible to instructors than comics or reprints thereof, and thus in some ways more conducive to a classroom setting by dint of their availability, the “reading” of film, although valuable, doesn’t sync up with the program of literacy the co-authors profess. What begins as a pro-reading /written composition text loses both focus and credibility as the book continues. In one passage, for example, the co-authors discuss Watchmen, Alan Moore’s masterful 1986-7 superhero comic series, mentioning that “Ozymandius fires a nuclear device” (Kahan and Stewart 146). The problem here is that throughout the comic series, Moore develops a major plotline in which Ozymandius creates and delivers a fake alien invasion into the heart of New York City – it’s in the movie adaptation that nuclear devices are found in the plot. In fact, the comic’s climax comes when a giant, fake alien is teleported into the heart of New York City, with nary a nuclear explosion to be found. It doesn’t appear that authors have done their homework, or their reading.

The co-authors’ analyses of themes in superhero comics (and, to be fair, superhero movies) are engaging on their own, but comics-as-composition feels forced. Back to the drawing board.

Michael T. Fournier

Middlesex Community College

Deadline Tomorrow for PCA Canada

2011-01-30T18:19:00.000-08:00

The Popular Culture Association of Canada has extended its deadline for paper proposals for a conference to be held at the Sheraton Fallsview Hotel and Conference Centre, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, Thursday May 12 - Saturday May 14, 2011.

Proposals should consist of a title, an abstract of no more than 250 words, and a list of keywords or key phrases (maximum5), and a brief biographical note of 100 words or fewer.

The extended deadline for proposals is tomorrow, January 31, 2011.

Please send proposals (or requests for further information) to one of
the conference co-chairs:

Nick Baxter-Moore (nick.baxter-moore@brocku.ca)
Greg Gillespie (ggillespie@brocku.ca)
Scott Henderson (shender@brocku.ca)

Three-Volume Spiritualism Series Seeks Authors

2011-01-30T18:16:00.000-08:00

Call for Papers – Edited Multi-Volume Series on the Spiritualist Movement

Papers are being sought on a variety of topics related to the modern Spiritualism movement. The projected set will be roughly divided into three
volumes representing: The History of the Spiritualist Movement in America
and the World; Debates over the Evidential Claims Made by Spiritualism and
Spiritualists; and Other Forms of Mediumship in Relation to Spiritualism.

Chapter proposals should be approximately 200-250 words, submitted by
e-mail to Christopher M. Moreman: cmoreman@gmail.com on or before April
15th, 2011.

Collection on Gay Fiction Seeks Contributors

2011-01-30T18:11:00.000-08:00

Call for Papers: A new collection on the topic of Paperback Originals and the Origins of Contemporary Gay Literature seeks contributors. The collection will focus on Sixties gay paperback originals, especially authors such as Victor J. Banis (Don Holliday), Carl Corley, Christian Davies (Chris Davidson), George Davies (Lance Lester, Clay Caldwell, Ricardo Armory), Jan Ewing (Jack Evans), Richard Fullmer (Dirk Vanden), Dean T. Goodman (Douglas
Dean), “Jay Greene,” George Haimshohn (Alexander Goodman), Joseph Hansen (James Colton or James Coulton), Peter Tuesday Hughes, William J. Lambert III, Vincent Lardo (Julian Mark), Richard Love (Richard Amory), “Michael Scott,” Samuel M. Steward (Phil Andros), Larry Townsend.

Send 500-word abstracts or 25-30 page articles by February 15, 2011 to Jaime Harker, Associate Professor of English, University of Mississippi at: jlharker@olemiss.edu and Drewey Wayne Gunn, Professor Emeritus, Texas A&M University-Kingsville sleuthhound@sbcglobal.net

Final essays are due by June 15, 2011.

SHEAR Summer Seminar

2011-01-30T18:06:00.000-08:00

The Society for Historians of the Early American Republic invites applicants for its Landmarks in American History and Culture Workshop for Community College Faculty summer program on the topic of “Revolution to Republic: Philadelphia’s Place in Early America.” This is a workshop funded by the We the People program of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Participants who are accepted will receive free tuition and a $1,200 stipend to help cover food, travel and lodging. Two dates are available: June 5-11 and June 12-18, 2011.

The deadline for applications this year is March 1, 2011.

For more information about program objectives and activities, please visit
http://www.shear.org/nehlandmarks, or call (609) 895-5456 or email nehlandmarks@shear.org

Marks and Spencer a Fashion Destination?

2011-01-23T19:58:00.000-08:00

Fashion For the People: A History of Clothing at Marks & Spencer. By Rachel Worth, New York: Berg-Oxford International Publishers, 2007.

Academic study of Western fashion has long concerned itself with styles marketed and consumed by the rich, while virtually ignoring the everyday clothes worn by the rest of us. This is a state of affairs that Rachel Worth, principal lecturer in fashion studies at the Arts Institute at Bournemouth, aims to correct in Fashion for the People: A History of Clothing at Marks & Spencer. Worth uses the popular British clothing retailer as a case study of how fashion trends emerged among the masses from the 1920s through the 1990s. She traces how advancements in technology, distribution, marketing, and manufacturing influenced what she terms the “democratization” of fashion for the people of Britain in the twentieth century.

As Worth explains, Marks & Spencer has humble roots. Company founder Michael Marks was a Polish immigrant who came to Leeds, England in the early 1880s. He began as a traveling peddler of sewing supplies and stockings. Soon after, he established stalls in various public markets, and finally opened several branches in storefronts across the country. His business partner, Tom Spencer, was a former cashier at the Dewhirst warehouse, where Marks first bought wares at wholesale. By 1939, they had opened some 1,200 stores, and the name Marks & Spencer was ubiquitous throughout Britain.

As women had less time for sewing their own clothes, particularly after World War I, the retail giant took advantage of changing market trends by introducing lines of low-priced, well-made clothing for working-class women. Worth explains how entering the market for so-called “ready-made” clothing in England was far from easy (31). Even more than the U.S. public, the British populace of the early twentieth century believed store-bought clothing to be cheaply manufactured and of poor quality. Drawing extensively from company archives, Worth explains how Marks & Spencer ultimately overcame this public perception. In 1928, the retailer established its own St. Michael brand, meant to signify quality. To ensure this promise, Marks & Spencer worked closely with manufacturers, which the retailer held to exacting standards. In 1935, the company went as far as to set up its own in-house laboratory to test materials and dyes for long-term wear.

Worth focuses particularly on Marks & Spencer’s later reliance on synthetic fabrics, which allowed the retailer to sell stylish-looking garments at affordable prices. “Marks & Spencer’s enthusiasm for the introduction of new fabrics in the 1950s was clearly influenced by a deliberate policy of making ‘the housewife’s burden’ a less onerous one,” writes Worth (55). It worked. In the 1950s and 60s, clothing made of synthetic materials was perceived to be of higher quality than natural fabrics—polyester could, for instance, hold a permanent pleat. Synthetics also required less care than natural fabrics, presumably saving women from the hassle of garment care.

Fashion for the People is a fascinating read for anyone interested in the intricate play between popular consumption, fashion design, technology, marketing, and culture. American readers who have never stepped inside a Marks & Spencer store will still recognize references to bygone fashion trends, such as mix-and-match wool jersey sets from the 1950s, or flared trousers from the 1970s. And what reader wouldn’t appreciate photographs showing Marks & Spencer window displays filled with flying polyester skirt sets?

Worth’s main point is that Marks & Spencer built a reputation on marketing high-quality clothing to people across the spectrum of Britain’s social classes. “Indeed, in the period after the Second World War, it was becoming increasingly difficult to define ‘the working class,’” Worth writes. “Marks & Spencer’s role, from the 1950s, in introducing the new synthetic fabrics—along with their classless appeal—certainly contributed to this process” (122). What remains to be seen, according to Worth, is how Marks & Spencer—with its time-honored philosophy of marketing to the masses—will survive in an increasingly niche-driven market.

Rebecca Griffin
University of Massachusetts

New Issue of Flow Online Now

2011-01-20T17:23:00.000-08:00

Volume 13:6 of Flow: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture is available at http://flowtv.org.

The new issue features columns from: Daren Brabham, Cindy Conaway and Sheila Marie Aird, Jayson Harsin, Andrew King, and Christopher Lockett.