Das Lesen der Schundkämpfer

In contrast to former research, this paper argues that moral crusaders strategically focused on the plot level of (historical) popular literature. This article asserts that text and reception need to be combined when analysing moral panicking about textual popular culture. This approach is presented by contextualising the public denigration of two distinct narrative elements of the imported dime novel series Nick Carter in Imperial Germany, namely its urban setting and its hands-on detective hero, with changes in the perception of city life and in criminological epistemology. Departing from this example, this contribution reflects on the general benefits of such an approach for reception-oriented criticism.

Zigomar

Zigomar was the criminal mastermind of French writer Léon Sazie’s eponymous serial novel, or feuilleton, which appeared in the newspaper Le Matin between 1909 and 1910. It was in 1911, however, through a cinematic adaptation in six episodes by the Éclair Film Company and its leading director, Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset, that Zigomar and his Z-gang shot to worldwide fame. Serial detective fiction was certainly not new at the time, Éclair and Jasset led the way in 1908 with the famous Nick Carter series and multiple adaptations and imitations of Sherlock Holmes that had flooded the screens for years; however, the elevation of a criminal figure was still a very recent phenomenon—with Danish precursors such as Dr. Nikola (Viggo Larsen, 1909), Zigomar helped pave the way for classics such as Louis Feuillade’s Fantômas series (1913–14). Abel argues that Jasset’s Zigomar, played by Alexandre Arquillière, strengthened Sazie’s by transforming him into an immoral bourgeois gentleman, "a capitalist entrepreneur pushed to the point of excess" (Abel 1998: 358). As such, Zigomar was one of the first modernist antiheroes to grace the silver screen, an illustrious criminal who undermined bourgeois society by upsetting the social order and preying on its members— not, coincidentally, the cinema’s target audience.

The economy of liberal Italy: a roundtable discussion with Brian A'Hearn, Nick Carter, Giovanni Federico and Vera Zamagni on Stefano Fenoaltea's The Reinterpretation of Italian Economic History: From Unification to the Great War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 20111

The Reinterpretation of Italian Economic History: From Unification to the Great War is the first major study of the liberal Italian economy to appear in English for more than 20 years. It is also the first based on new statistical reconstructions of industrial and aggregate development for the period. Above all, the book represents the culmination of over four decades of ‘painstaking, meticulous, sophisticated and innovative research by one of Italy's finest economic historians' (Toniolo 2007, 130).

Marketing androgyny: the evolution of the Backstreet Boys

The trend in popular culture away from idealising mature, strong ‘men’ in favour of young, androgynous ‘boys’ can in part be traced to how pop music impresarios such as Lou Pearlman present sexuality to their huge market of young listeners. During their time under the management of Wright Stuff, 1996–1998, the Backstreet Boys were the most popular manufactured boyband in the world, and as such influenced the sexual development of millions of young women and men. This paper examines how, during this period, the presentation and marketing of the Backstreet Boys, and their youngest member Nick Carter in particular, encouraged queer readings, and how those subtle queer subtexts in the music and videos may have affected their (mostly) young, uncritical audience.