Biweekly News Roundup 2023-12-03

Personal / Website News

New Publication: The Journal of Stoogeological Studies Vol 1

The debut issue of The Journal of Stoogeological Studies is out now!

I received a draft PDF of the first issue and its 88 pages of essays, reviews, and other musings all about the Three Stooges (and, as of 12/27, there’s supposed to be a bit more content added this week, so it’s getting even bigger!). I’m honored to have a short piece in this journal called “An Imperial Decree? Soitenly! Matri-Phony as Proto-Toga and Sandal Comedy.” I am no expert on The Three Stooges or a super fan or anything, but I love writing about sword n’ sandal stuff so this was a unique venue to talk about the genre in an eccentric way.

For information on procuring a copy of the zine contact editor Will Sloan (website is https://www.willsloan.ca).

UPDATE: Amazon product page here.

Becca Boo #1 Review

New review up at my website! I take a gander at the first issue of the sex-comedy comic book Becca Boo the Bimbo Ghost.

The review can be read here. I enjoyed the comic and chipped in the for Kickstarter for issue 2, so expect a review of that when it is published. The issue 2 Kickstarter can be found here.

H. P. Lovecast Podcast

Brand new episode of H.P. Lovecast Podcast is now online!

Michele and I finally conclude our annual Mimic series discussion by talking about Mimic 3: Sentinel. The episode can be streamed at our Buzzsprout website, via the embedded player below, or via your podcast app of preference.

McFarland Christmas Sale

My publisher, McFarland, is doing a holiday sale on ALL their titles. Use code “HOLIDAY23” at checkout to receive 25% off your order. The sale appears to go on for the entire month of December, but McFarland suggests placing orders before the 16th in order to receive them in time for Yuletide.

This is a perfect opportunity to scoop up books I’ve participated in. For editing:

• The New Peplum
• Horror Literature form Gothic to Post-Modern

And for contributing:

• Horror in Space
• James Bond in Popular Culture
• The Many Lives of the Twilight Zone
• Uncovering Stranger Things

If you pluck up a book, thank you for your support!

Emmanuelle Legacy CFP Re-opened + Bibliography

Since garnering publisher interest, I’ve re-opened the CFP for the Emmanuelle legacy book. The updated CFP can be found here.

I’ve also started annotating Emmanuelle scholarship and posting it here at my website so other scholars have a nice bibliographic resource. The bibliography and annotations can be found here and it’s a major WIP.

Publishing Recap

Below is a recap of my publishing endeavors so far in 2023.

Miscellaneous Tidbits

“Azathoth” song on Bandcamp

John 3:16, the composer of the HP Lovecast podcast theme song, “Azathoth,” has released the track on Bandcamp!

Here is the link to check it out, stream it, or purchase it via name your own price. Sincere thank you to John 3:16 for being a super supporter of our podcast, sharing our content, and of course, creating this awesome tune.

CFP: The Mummy Edited Collection

Michele is teaming up with Sean Woodard to do an edited collection on The Mummy series. They have a CFP listed at UPENN, but I am also sharing a copy below.

Editors: Michele Brittany and Sean Woodard

Contact email: mummybookproject@gmail.com

Abstract Deadline: December 15, 2023

Chapter Drafts Deadline: June 15, 2024

Essays sought for an edited collection focused on Universal Pictures’ The Mummy franchise.

The 1999 Universal reboot of The Mummy, starring the indelible duo of Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz, remains a tentpole of ’90s popular culture and cinema. Not only did The Mummy launch two sequels, a spin-off series, and a reboot, but it has lived on as a cult film, loved by fans for its mixture of horror, action/adventure, and humor. The film has also developed a strong meme culture on social media — one of the most viral examples contains a photo of a car bumper sticker proclaiming: “Honk if you’d rather be watching the 1999 cinematic masterpiece ‘The Mummy’ starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz.”

While academic research has been focused on various releases of The Mummy (1932, 1959, 1999, and 2017), there has not been a singular scholarly text devoted to the film franchise. The recent “Brenaissance” in Fraser’s film career and the film’s anticipated 25th anniversary in 2024 make it an appropriate time to celebrate and re-evaluate the film.

The purpose of this edited collection is to place The Mummy into a cultural and theoretical context, as well as critically analyze the franchise, its connections to other genre films, and its continued influence.

We seek proposals for chapters that approach the subject matter with theoretical concepts that will appropriately meet the rigorous expectations of an academic work, but through a prose style that shall be accessible for both an academic audience and a general readership.  

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Resurgent interest in Brendan Fraser/“Brenaissance”
• Stephen Sommers as an auteur
• Representation of Egypt in popular culture and early filmic representation
• Eastern mythology/culture/religion
• Exoticism of non-western cultures
• Post/De-colonialism 
• Heroic representation
• Body horror
• Eco-horror/Ecocriticism
• Gender representation
• Toxic depictions in film
• Queer/LGBTQ+ representation
• Meme/GIF culture
• Psychoanalysis
• Generational nostalgia 
• Element of music/film scoring
• Genre hybridity
• Film cycles/reboots/retcons (such as The Scorpion King, The Mummy animated series, Universal Classic Monsters, Hammer Studios, Dark Universe, etc.) and related adventure/archaeological-driven films (such as Ark of the Sun God, The Sphinx, The Librarian franchise, etc.)

Please send abstracts of 300 – 500 words with a working title and five (5) keywords, accompanied by a short third-person author bio (100 words max), to mummybookproject@gmail.com as a Word document. Final essays should be 6,000 – 8,000 words in length, including endnotes and bibliography, and be formatted according to the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition. The collection is being considered by a leading academic press.

Proposed Timeline

• October 1, 2023 thru December 15, 2023 — Call for Papers
• January 15, 2024 — Notification of abstract acceptances sent to authors  
• January 15, 2024 thru June 15, 2024 — Book chapters drafting period
• June 15, 2024 thru July 15, 2024 — Initial editorial review of submitted chapter drafts
• August 1, 2024 thru October 1, 2024 — Double-blind Peer Review Period
• October 1, 2024 thru November 15, 2024 — Contributor revision period
• December 1, 2024 — Final editorial acceptance decisions
• December 1, 2024 thru January 15, 2025 — Layout design, indexing, and proofing stage
• January 15, 2025 thru February 15, 2025 — Copies of chapter proofs sent to contributors for copyediting review
• March 1, 2025 — Final manuscript submitted in hard copy and digital formats to publisher

Editor bios:

Michele Brittany is a writer, editor, podcaster, and artist. She edited James Bond and Popular Culture and the Bram Stoker Award-nominated Horror in Space: Critical Essays on a Film Subgenre. She co-edited Horror Literature from Gothic to Post-Modern: Critical Essays and co-hosts H. P. Lovecast podcast with Nicholas Diak. She lives in Glendale, Arizona.

Sean Woodard (MA | MFA) is a PhD candidate in English at University of Texas at Arlington. He also serves as the Assistant Editor for Global Insight: A Journal of Critical Human Science and Cultureand the Film Editor for Drunk Monkeys. He has contributed chapters to the edited collections Journeys Into Terror: Essays from the Cinematic Intersection of Travel and Horror and Bloodstained Narratives: The Giallo Film in Italy and Abroad. His research interests include horror cinema, the American West, psychoanalysis, fairy tales, and film scoring.