Australian pulps 1939–1959: You go high, we go low

10.26826/1012 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Kells
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
Pulp Fiction ◽  
Cover Art ◽  
High Output

Popular during the middle parts of the 20th century, pulp fiction novels and comics were produced in massive quantities by Australian publishers. Most were written by hacks and enthusiastic amateurs willing to sign contracts that demanded an incredibly high output of work. Pulp publications were cheaply made, formulaic and designed to be read quickly and then thrown away. Often noted for their lurid cover art and titillating titles, they satisfied an appetite for fast entertainment in the era before television. This book explores the pulp publishing scene in Australia from 1939 to 1959. It examines the circumstances that gave rise to this field of ‘low literature’; the major participants in it – publishers, authors and artists – and the different expressions of the pulp genre available to readers, including crime pulps, westerns, sci-fi, romance and ‘weird tales’. The book is vividly illustrated with covers from the author’s own collection of Australian pulp novelettes. It provides an introduction to an under-regarded and little known sphere of Australian publishing. It is a valuable record of the mostly overlooked Australian writers involved, and the distinctive conditions under which these cultural products were produced.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Boaz Huss
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
Jewish Mysticism ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Academic Study ◽  
The Revolution

The introduction presents Martin Buber’s early 20th century attempt to expose the existence of “Jewish mysticism,” and the later establishment of the academic study of Jewish mysticism by Geshom Scholem, and the revolution that occurred in the study of Jewish mysticsm in the 1980’s. The introduction outlines the genealogical study and critical examination of the concept and research field of Jewish mysticism that will be presented in the book, and explains that it seeks to expose the deep-rooted factors that have guided (and continue to guide) the identification of Kabbalah and Hasidism as mysticism, and how these influence the ways in which these movements are interpreted and studied. It discussed that two central claims that guide the discussion in this book. The first is that mysticism, in general, and Jewish mysticism, in particular, are not natural and universal phenomena that were discovered by researchers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Rather, these are discursive constructs which served to catalogue, compare, and explain a broad range of cultural products and social structures not necessarily related to one another. The second claim that guides the discussion of the study of Jewish mysticism involves the theological assumptions that underpin the category of mysticism.

scholarly journals Nietzsche’s shadow: On the origin and development of the term nihilism

2020 ◽  
pp. 019145372097545
Author(s):  
Juan Luis Toribio Vazquez
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
The Past ◽  
Specific Meaning ◽  
Academic Discourses

While the term ‘nihilism’ has become increasingly widespread throughout the past two centuries, not only in academic discourses but in popular culture more widely, there is a surprising lack of consensus regarding its specific meaning. This is perhaps owing to the myriad contexts in which the word has appeared since its inception, which range from specialized works of philosophy to an array of mass-cultural products. This article overviews the emergence and development of the term ‘nihilism’, in order to clarify some of the principal reasons for its prevalence and ambiguity. Having discussed the word’s origin, the article scrutinizes its significance in the early work of Friedrich Nietzsche, who was largely responsible for its popularization, and overviews some of its major appearances throughout the 20th century, in order to show that while Nietzsche stands as the iconic founder of discursivity on nihilism, posthumous uses of the word deviate sharply from his own determinations.

scholarly journals SOCIOSEXUAL ROLES IN OTTOMAN PULP FICTION

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-232
Author(s):  
David Selim Sayers
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Prose Fiction ◽  
Pulp Fiction ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Normative Framework ◽  
Shadow Theater

AbstractThe sociosexual world of the premodern Middle East has been studied through a variety of sources ranging from legal documents to shadow theater. Most such sources are either prescriptive or transgressive: they uphold or subvert a normative framework, telling us more about the framework itself than about how it was inhabited by subjects in everyday life. This study introduces the Tıfli stories as a descriptive source that transcends the prescriptive–transgressive dichotomy. An Ottoman-Turkish genre of prose fiction produced at least from the 18th to the 20th century, the Tıfli stories were a protorealist form of “pulp fiction.” Where most sources sought to stabilize specific sociosexual roles, the Tıfli stories explored the ambiguities inherent in these roles. This study employs the Tıfli stories to interrogate understandings of the Ottoman sociosexual world that rely strongly on normative sources and to stage an approximation of how norms were negotiated in practice.

In Search of a Cultural Code

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 281-297
Author(s):  
Olga Velikanova
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
Soviet Culture ◽  
Cultural Code

Abstract From the plethora of big and small achievements that the author celebrates in the book, my essay addresses such subjects as the continuity of cultural creativity in the 19th and 20th centuries, children’s literature, the sociology of reading, and the place of goodness in literature and life under Stalinism – all within the span of the 20th century. Sharing with the author my admiration of accomplishments of Russian and Soviet culture, I try here to historicize the themes and expand slightly on some of them, like perceptions of the cultural products.

Development of Reading Remediation for Dyslexic Individuals

2016 ◽  
Vol 224 (4) ◽  
pp. 240-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mélanie Bédard ◽  
Line Laplante ◽  
Julien Mercier
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Scientific Literature ◽  
Behavioral Data ◽  
Educational Neuroscience ◽  
Reading Remediation ◽  
Functional Brain ◽  
Neurophysiological Data ◽  
Brain Correlates ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
The Brain

Abstract. Dyslexia is a phenomenon for which the brain correlates have been studied since the beginning of the 20th century. Simultaneously, the field of education has also been studying dyslexia and its remediation, mainly through behavioral data. The last two decades have seen a growing interest in integrating neuroscience and education. This article provides a quick overview of pertinent scientific literature involving neurophysiological data on functional brain differences in dyslexia and discusses their very limited influence on the development of reading remediation for dyslexic individuals. Nevertheless, it appears that if certain conditions are met – related to the key elements of educational neuroscience and to the nature of the research questions – conceivable benefits can be expected from the integration of neurophysiological data with educational research. When neurophysiological data can be employed to overcome the limits of using behavioral data alone, researchers can both unravel phenomenon otherwise impossible to document and raise new questions.

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