Category Archives: Scholarly works

New Fossil

04 Tuesday Nov 2014

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The latest issue of The Fossil is available now, and page 6 has a short article on the Ken Faig collection of amateur journals, now safely in a university archive…

KEN FAIG DONATED HIS amateur journalism collection to the Special Collections Department of the University of Iowa in Iowa City.” [includes the run of] “Nyctalops, George Record’s The Dark Brotherhood Journal, Robert M. Price’s Crypt of Cthulhu, many journals published by Marc Michaud’s Necronomicon Press, and a complete set of the mailings of the Esoteric Order of Dagon…”

It also appears that the Library of Congress is seeking, in paper format… “a run of THE FOSSIL from 1965 on” (see p.11).

The Lost History of Esoteric Writing

04 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by in New books, Scholarly works

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A weighty new book from the University Of Chicago Press looks interesting, Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing. According to a review, this is is a…

compelling, surprising, and persuasive defense of Strauss”[‘s claim that…] “virtually all philosophers up until the early 19th century wrote their books ‘esoterically’ — that is, using a rhetoric of concealment, with a surface teaching meant for general readers and a hidden teaching for those who were intelligent, clever, and tenacious enough to uncover it.” [The author] “supplies a mountain of evidence in support of Strauss’ claims — quotes from just about every major philosopher (and many other writers) from ancient Greece to 19th-century Germany testifying to the reality of esotericism.” — Damon Linker, The Week.

a landmark work in both intellectual history and political theory” — Wall Street Journal.

S.T. Joshi Endowed Research Fellowship – open for applications

29 Wednesday Oct 2014

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Applications are now open for the new S.T. Joshi Endowed Research Fellowship, for research on H.P. Lovecraft and his circle. The lucky recipient gets to spend six weeks at Brown University, with $2,500 to cover travel and expenses. Application deadline: 31st January 2015. The email address below was from the initial announcement, and I’m assuming it’s still the one for contact.

brownu1brownu2

Art Laboratory Berlin, call for work on nonhuman subjectivities

29 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, Scholarly works

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An open call:

Art Laboratory Berlin is initiating an open call for art works, texts and cooperative works with artists, scholars and scientists on non-human subjectivities.

Recent philosophical works by Graham Harman [known for his work on Lovecraft] [and others] have questioned the solely human role of subjectivity that has formed the core of ‘humanism’ over the past five centuries. [and suggested there may be] a new multiplicity of viewpoints of non-human intelligence, agency and subjectivity, that make up our planet (and beyond).

Possible topics could include:

* Perspectives under threat – non-human viewpoints during the great species die off. [which is a dubious claim]

* Bacterial viewpoints – how microbes communicate, interact and experience the world.

* Non-human perspectives – intelligence and agency in animals, plants, bacteria.

* Re-definition of intelligence, agency and sentience in ways that are not anthropomorphic.

* What do some of these perspectives make of Homo Sapiens? e.g.- 90% of the cells in our body do not have human DNA – we are a host, a topography, for billions of bacteria and fungi.

* How about agency (and even intelligence) beyond life – virii or crystals for instance.

* Are complex data systems, algorithms, artificial intelligence beginning to have points of view, and forms of agency that are beyond human comprehension?

Art Laboratory Berlin is seeking submissions and proposals predominantly for exhibitions, performances and workshops, but is also interested in cooperation with scholars and scientists for the production of a series of lectures, texts and a symposium.

The deadline for entries is 15th December, 2014. Chosen proposals will form part of our 2016-17 programme, Please submit your proposal by email to: nonhumanisms@artlaboratory-berlin.org and please title the subject-line: POST RQST.

The application should include a proposal (not longer than 5 pages), a C.V. and work portfolio (not longer than 10 pages). We ask that you keep the size of attachments altogether under 5Mb. For video or other large files we encourage the use of Web links.

Maps and Mapping in Children’s Literature

23 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by in Maps, Scholarly works

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Call for Papers: Maps and Mapping in Children’s Literature…

Literature for children and young adults is a rich source of material for the study of literary maps, one that has been largely overlooked, despite the growth in academic interest in this area of study.

Not so relevant to Lovecraft, but this call might be interesting to those researching similar genre authors, especially those in the sword-and-sorcery genre where the addition of fan-made maps have enhanced the fiction’s appeal to later generations of young teens.

There is the surveyor mapping in “The Colour Out of Space”, and one passing moment when Lovecraft follows a rough local map… “I was steering my course by the map the grocery boy had prepared” in “The Shadow over Innsmouth”. This latter probably reflects his own practice during his numerous antiquarian visits to strange towns. There are also carved wall maps in At The Mountains of Madness which are found, copied and followed. But Lovecraft’s fiction is probably more interesting for the implied idea that certain spaces could not be found, or had not yet been placed, on maps.

Gothic Spaces / Gothic Places conference

23 Thursday Oct 2014

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I’ve only just found out about this one: Gothic Spaces / Gothic Places at The Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies, England, on 25th October 2014. The academic symposium has an interesting opening paper about… “John Carter, the zealous defender of the Gothic architectural style in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century British culture” and publisher of the 18th century The Gentleman’s Magazine. Another Carter to offer up as a possible inspiration for Lovecraft’s Carter, perhaps?

Rhode Island History contents list

17 Friday Oct 2014

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A handy single searchable PDF with the complete tables-of-contents for Rhode Island History journal, January 1942 through Fall 2007. All rather dry of Lovecraft interest, apart from the late 1970s when there are a few possibly interesting articles such as “The Ku Klux Klan in Rhode Island”, and “Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam,” by Robert W. Kenny. Kenny being the young 18th Century literature specialist at Brown, who was the initial source of Brobst’s information that Lovecraft was once spotted working as a cinema ticket-seller. (Thanks to Ken Faig for the Kenny-Brobst information, though I was the one who discovered that Kenny was an 18th Century literature specialist).