Event overview
Between 1939 and 1952 hundreds of millions of paperbacks flooded the handbags, homes, pockets and newsstands of America. In the 1950s—the heyday of commercial pulp publishing—two paperback crime novels appeared titled Paula and a number of lesbian pulps included characters with the name. This talk looks at the two novels—one a reprint (and retitled) edition by 1930s lesbian author Gale Wilhelm, the other a paperback original (PBO) by Dan Kingery—to consider the demotics of reading—connections forged between private erotics and democratic publics. Sex and murder, but also scenes of reading, are pervasive, echoing the novel’s scandalous history. Utterly forgotten now, these emblems of American pulp will be reconsidered in the context of the Congressional hearings, censorship trials and publishing house directives during the Cold War-era.
Biography:
Paula Rabinowitz is Professor of English, affiliated with the departments of American Studies; Moving Image Studies; Cultural Studies; and Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota. Her research, teaching and training are in the areas of American materialist-feminist cultural studies, especially the interconnections among class, gender and popular, vernacular and political cultures during the twentieth century. Currently co-editing a four-volume series with Cristina Giorcelli, Habits of Being (Minnesota), her books, including They Must Be Represented: The Politics of Documentary (Verso, 1994) and Black&White&Noir: America’s Pulp Modernism (Columbia, 2002), and essays consider the roles of cinema, photography, literature and objects in the formation of twentieth-century American modernisms. Her current book, American Pulp, will be published by Princeton in 2014.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 18 Mar 2013 | 5:30pm - 7:00pm |
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