Free Coursera online course, Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World. 11 weeks, starts 3rd February 2014.

Those interested in the British fantasy writer Mervyn Peake (Gormenghast) may be interested to learn that the journal Peake Studies has converted to being an open access journal. Sadly it’s not the entire run since 1988 that’s gone open access, only the first three issues of what appears to be a new series.

* Ben Woodard (2013), On an Ungrounded Earth: towards a new geophilosophy. Punctum Books, 2013. (Contemporary Lovecraftian philosophy).

* Luana Ferreira de Freitas (2011), “Insanidade fantastica”, Fragmentos July-Dec 2011, Vol.22 No.2, pp. 87-92. (Discusses insanity in fantasy literature, via hallucination in E.A. Poe and compulsion in H.P. Lovecraft. Brazilian Portuguese, with English abstract).

* Marco Antonio Rivera Gutierrez (2011), “Horror y figuratividad: la semiotica del espacio en el relato de terror”. (Approximate translation of title: “Horror and figuration: a semiotics for the spatialisation of terror”. In Spanish with English abstract).

* Marco Antonio Rivera Gutierrez (2011), “”The Outsider”, un Sujeto sin Destinador: analisis de las estructuras semionarrativas de superficiedesde la semiotica narrativa estandar”. (Semiotic analysis of the structual logic of “The Outsider”. In Spanish with English abstract).

* Jon Cogburn and Mark Allan Ohm (2013), “Actual Qualities of Imaginative Things: notes towards an object oriented literary theory” (Contemporary Lovecraftian philosophy).

* Mary Corr (2013), “Dr. Franklin C. Clark: early mentor to H.P. Lovecraft — the master of ‘weird tales’”, Rhode Island Medical Journal, December 2013, pp. 73-74. (Factually correct, but only a short magazine ‘filler’ article).

* Milosz Wisniewski (2013), “Swiat Howarda Philipsa Lovecrafta w ujeciu religioznawczym”, Humaniora: Czasopismo Internetowe, No.1, 2013, pp. 99–105. (In Polish, with English abstract. Applies the theories of Romanian researcher Mircea Eliade to Lovecraft’s mythology).

* Bradley Allen Will (1998, 2013), The “supramundane”: The Kantian sublime in Lovecraft, Clarke, and Gibson”. (Ph.D. thesis, placed online 2013. Explores the sublime experience of discovering something that exceeds human understanding).

* Steven E. Jones (2013), The Emergence of the Digital Humanities: Chapter 2, “Dimensions”. (Has several pages on ideas of “Lovecraftian dimensionality” in relation to knowledge).

* Duran Flores Merlin Lisseth and Pineda Zaldana Maritza Beatriz (2013), “El terror u horror como eje estructurante en los cuentos “El extrano”, “El sabueso” y “El ser bajo la luz de la luna” de Howard Phillips Lovecraft” (Joint undergraduate disseration, University of El Salvador).

* Tanya Krzywinska (2013), “Digital games and the American gothic: investigating gothic game grammar”, Intersemiose, Vol.2, No.4, July-Dec 2013. (About videogames, not tabletop RPGs).

* Sonja M. Karlas (2013), “Kosmicki horor, gotsko telo i tekst: H.P. Lovecraft “senka nad insmutom”, Journal for Languages and Literatures of the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sadu, Vol.3, No.3, 2013. (Title translates as “Cosmic horror, gothic bodies and texts: H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Shadow over Innsmouth”).

* Paulo de Tarso Cabrini Jr., (2013), “A literatura espirita: angelo inacio e os contos de H.P. Lovecraft”, Revista Litteris, Vol.2, No.12, Sept 2013. (In Portuguese. Theorises about spiritualist literature, and looks at so-called ‘spirit dictated’ spiritualist books in relation to Lovecraft).

New York Public Library has received…

“a three-year grant from the Aeroflex Foundation and Hippocampus Press to process one of its hidden gems, the General Research Division’s Amateur Periodical Collection. The grant will allow this significant collection to be catalogued for the first time, …”

Heavy Metal-ists Heathen Harvest have a long interview with S.T. Joshi.

* Laurel Jean (2013), Cosmic revulsion: representations of the Longinian sublime in the works of H.P. Lovecraft (Masters dissertation, Humboldt State University)

* Leonam Baesso da Silva Liziero (2013), “O Estado-Cthulhu e a emergencia do terror totalitario na teoria do Direito e do Estado no Seculo XX”, Revista Juridica, Vol 3, No. 32, 2013. (In Spanish. On Lovecraft as a prescient foreteller of the rise of… “the decline of the value of human life in the totalitarian State” in the 20th century)

* Sid Sondergard (early 2000s?), “Elder Gods, Mutants, and Sorcerers: the Lovecraft semiotic as sociocultural critique in horror comix”

Houdini fans following this blog may be interested in the new academic journal for stage magic, Journal of Performance Magic.

Current Research in Speculative Fiction 2014, University of Liverpool, UK. 10th March 2014. Deadline for abstracts: 31st January 2014.