Categories
News

Biweekly News Roundup 2023-07-30

Personal / Website News

Dark Dead Things #2

The weird fiction/poetry literary magazine Dark Dead Things is publishing their second issue. I’m incredibly honored to be included in this issue with my essay on a Rene Girard reading of Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu.”

The issue can be ordered from the Dark Dead Things webshop as a bundle with a rad T-shirt of Meowlister Crowley. Issue 1 is still available, so check that out too and supporting this indie endeavor.

Sincere gratitude to Mike Salinas for including me in this issue.

Stranger Things Essay Citation

My essay, “Lost Nights and Dangerous Days: Unraveling the Relationship Between Stranger Things and Synthwave” that was published in Kevin Wetmore’s book, Uncovering Stranger Things, has been cited in Jutta Steiner’s book Nostalgie Im Upside Down: Das progressive Potenzial von Nostalgie in Der Retro-Serie Stranger Things.

My Stranger Things/synthwave essay continues to be my most cited piece of writing. Very flattered!

Bibliography Updates

I’m increasing seeing other texts aside from The New Peplum becoming cited and reviewed. Because of that I am creating subpages for some of these works with more detail. If you click the dropdown on the Bibliography menu you’ll start seeing them. These updates are a work in process, but I look forward to sharing more detail about these pieces I’ve composed or edited over the years.

Atlantis, the Lost Continent

A new episode of Scholars from the Edge of time is now online! In this episode Michele and I discuss the 1961 American sword and sandal film, Atlantis, the Lost Continent. Check it out on YouTube.

Publishing Recap

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

Published in February, this collection contains my essay “Dance or Dēcēdere: Gladiator and Industrial Music Sampling.”

Vernon Press Product Page

Published in May, this issue of Weird Tales contains my essay “When the Stars are Right.”

Weird Tales Product Page

Published in late March, the first issue of the zine Footage Fiends, contains my essay “Analisi Della Cosa: Found Footage in Caltiki and Italian Theater Going Practices.”

Limited to 50 physical copies.

Order via Patreon.

Published in early August, the second issue of Dark Dead Things contains my essay “Correlating the Contents: Mimetic Desire in H. P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Call of Cthulhu’.”

Order at Dark Dead Things.

Miscellaneous Tidbits

CFP: Ancient World, Modern Music II at CAMWS 2024

Dr. Jeremy Swist has a new CFP that’s live:

An organized panel to be proposed for the 120th annual meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West & South, April 3rd – 6th, 2024 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA at the invitation of Washington University, St. Louis.

After a successful 1st edition of the panel in 2022 at Winston Salem, we are seeking abstracts for another panel on the reception of antiquity in modern music. 15-minute papers on the topic may discuss any genre of modern & popular music, including folk & country, rock & metal, hip-hop & pop, and theater & soundtracks, and may focus on lyrics, album artwork, music videos, live performances, or the music itself. We are particularly interested in questions of how musicians integrate ancient culture, myth, and art into a modern medium, and how they read antiquity in response to the personal, the aesthetic, & the political.

Send 300-word abstracts and questions to Jeremy Swist (swistjj@miamioh.edu) by 15th August 2023. Potential panelists must commit to present in person if accepted.

Recent Peplum Acquisitions

I’ve plucked up two peplum films recently to add to the library.

First is Land of the Pharaohs which just got the Blu-ray treatment this past June. Michele and I recently talked about this movie on Scholars from the Edge of Time (YouTube video link here) and I really dug it! When I saw Warner Archive was going to do a new version of it I had to pre-order it.

Next is an old release of a movie called G2: Mortal Conquest. Apparently this movie is a re-worked version of the 1995 movie Gladiator Cop. A name like Gladiator Cop, I gotta watch it! However it’s OOP and kinda pricy, so I’ll pluck up a copy later. In the meantime, this alternate version in the form of G2 will have to do. I remember Daniel Bernhardt from Future War which was on MST3K, which was baaaaad. So, I am hoping this movie will be just as campy fun.

Secret Agent Barbie GBA Game

Last weekend was Barbenheimer – when two blockbuster films, Barbie and Oppenheimer, got released the same weekend. It looked like a pretty fun pop culture event, two movies at the polar opposites of tone and subject matter, but linked none-the-less.

I didn’t get a chance to partake, but I’ll definitely watch both movies when they are released on Blu-ray. In the meantime, just for fun, I’ll share the odd Barbie artifact in my collection: a complete, in box (CIB) copy of Secret Agent Barbie: Royal Jewels Mission.

I bought this game long ago, I believe at the SoCal Retro Gaming Expo in Ontario, CA. I don’t have many CIB retro games in my collection (then and now), and I recall this game being extremely cheap. It was also a time, I believe, I was knee deep in spy-fi studies when Michele was working on her James Bond book. So because of all of that, I plucked up this game when I happened upon it. I recall playing it for a bit on my Retron-5 and enjoying it. Perhaps I’ll have to give it a proper play through.

Anyways, a rare opportunity to see a CIB Barbie game: box, cartridge, poster, manual, and Nintendo booklet. Not pictured is my plastic case I keep the game in to keep it in the best condition I can (the outer box is a bit bent in though).

Categories
News

News Roundup W/E 2021-07-11

Personal / Website News

H. P. Lovecast Podcast

New episode of the H. P. Lovecast Podcast is online! In this episode we discuss “The Barrens” by F. Paul Wilson and “The Faces at Pine Dunes” by Ramsey Campbell both from the Arkham House anthology Cthulhu 2000. The episode can be streamed from our Buzzsprout website or your Podcast app of preference.

General Neo-Peplum News

Call for Peplum Papers

There are a few CFPs for peplum related conferences going on right now.

The first is from Dr. Jeremy Swist and Dr. Charlotte Naylor Davis on Heavy Metal and Global Premodernity. The CFP can be found here on Google Docs.

The second is from Michael A. Torregrossa on Medieval in Popular Culture Sponsored Sessions at MAPACA 2020. The CFP can be found at UPENN.

Rest in Peplum

Rest in peplum to iconic director Richard Donner! Director of many high profile and influential films, such as The Omen (1976), Superman (1978), and Lethal Weapon (1987), he also directed peplum adjacent fare such as Ladyhawke (1985) and Timeline (2003). He passed away at the age of 91.

Prolific character and genre actor William Smith passed away at the age of 88. His most iconic peplum role was playing Conan’s father in Conan The Barbarian (1982). He was also in Atlantis, the Lost Continent (1961).

Michele and I had the honor to meet William Smith at a convention.