Marginalised Mainstream 2014: Disguise

Marginalised Mainstream 2014: Disguise. 3rd annual international conference held 28th–29th November 2014 at Senate House, University of London, UK.

This year’s conference will consider the varieties, motivations, and meanings of disguise. From secret identities to theatrical performances, from fictional fabrications to factual concealment, disguises of all sorts are part of mainstream culture. This event will explore various manifestations of disguise in popular fiction, media, and culture that have previously been academically marginalised.”

As usual in academia, a tight deadline. Announced on their blog 13th May, with a deadline of 30th May. Expect the deadline to be extended.

This conference might be of interest to Lovecraftians in academia, re: disguise in Lovecraft’s stories (“The Whisperer in Darkness”; “The Thing on the Doorstep”; the various covert behaviours of cultists, such as in “Red Hook”) or in other ways (seriously anti-religious messages disguised inside ‘juvenile pulp trash’; Lovecraft’s playful way with pseudonyms; Necronomicon forgeries/fabulations; later Mythos fiction and its attempted close imitations of Lovecraft’s themes and settings; maybe even Lovecraft’s poetry in terms of its anachronistic 18th century ‘disguise’; etc).

Clark Ashton Smith after Lovecraft

Dream Builder: Recognizing Clark Ashton Smith’s Legacy in Fiction.

Above: The Crypt, by Samuel Prout.

Smith’s “The Beast Of Averoigne” as a well delivered 29 minute audio reading. Weird Tales, May 1933.

“one of the most intelligent of the stories [in The Fantasy Cycles of CAS is] “The Beast of Averoigne,” [in which] religion and science meet each other, and religion comes up dangerously short.”

“I could not go into that dim chaos of old forest…”

Gurus of Sci-Fi: the Hugo Gernsback and Forrest J. Ackerman Papers

Ackerman is known less as a writer and more as a literary agent for writers like Lovecraft and Ray Bradbury. […] Ackerman’s papers came to Syracuse University in the late 1960s. By 1973 they totaled 100 linear feet and included fanzines, correspondence, manuscript drafts, and ephemera — all of it to this day unprocessed.” (My emphasis)

Lovecraft was right, part 936

Siberian fisherman hauls up a ferocious god statuette made at the beginning of recorded time…

The figurine has almond shaped eyes, a large mouth with full lips, and a ferocious face expression “[…] the experts told me that this object was carved at the very beginning of the Bronze Age. […] Marina Banschikova, director of Tisul History Museum said: “Quite likely, it shows a pagan god.

Further afield in Lovecraftian places that really exist

Even more Lovecraftian places that really exist…

Abandoned organ room, Eastern Europe.

Miestnosorgan

Ani, medieval ghost town in Armenia.

ani

Library at Chateau de Groussay, France.

chateau-de-groussaylibrary

Abandoned Soviet power plant, with ‘eye’ dome.

power

Abandoned prison, Ross Island, India.

indianprison

Hotel Salto del Tequendama, Columbia.

columbia

Wreck of the S.S. America (1940), Canary Islands.

ssamerica

Abandoned tunnel under New York.

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Abandoned mine, Arctic circle.

arcticmine

Mirny mine, Siberia.

mirny

Ol Doinyo Lengai, Rift Valley, Africa.

OlDoinyoLengai

Abandoned power station, Belgium.

abandoned-places-1

“I had seen maps of the town, and knew where to find the home of my people.”

2014 Conference of The Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association (NEPCA). To be held at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island, on Friday 24th October and Saturday 25th October 2014.

“Given the conference location in Rhode Island, we would also be very much interested in organizing at least one session on H.P. Lovecraft…”