October 2012
NEPCA established 1974
2012 NEPCA FALL CONFERENCE
NEPCA’s annual fall conference will convene Friday and Saturday October 26-26. This
newsletter will provide conference information on the following:
 Travel directions
 Lodging and food suggestions
 Issues to be discussed at the executive council meeting
 Information on NEPCA prize winners
 The tentative conference schedule (see back of newsletter)
 Registration forms (see back of newsletter)
ALSO IN THIS NEWSLETTER
This newsletter will also contain the following:
 Information on the 2012 conference and a first call for papers
 A listing of area chairs
 Teaching tips
 Book reviews
 Member information
 A listing of NEPCA officers
 Information on NEPCA Journal, the organization’s online publication
(See back pages for schedule and registration forms.)
DIRECTIONS and PRACTICAL INFORMATION
Driving:
The conference will take place at St. John Fisher College. Those using a GPS system should
program it for 3690 East Avenue, Rochester, NY 14618-3597.
St. John Fisher College is located 6 miles southeast of Rochester, NY, in the suburb of Pittsford.
The New York State Thruway runs south of the city.
By Car:
 The easiest approach is from Thruway Exit 45, which is marked “Rochester-490.”
 From that point, take I-490 for about 10 minutes to Exit 25, Fairport Road/NY 31F.
 Turn left onto Route 31F going west and proceed to the main entrance of campus.
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 The main entrance is 0.5 mile from I-490, at a traffic light where Fairport Road meets
East Avenue (Route 96).
Those wishing to print a campus map before arriving should go
to: http://www.sjfc.edu/dotAsset/112244.pdf
Estimated driving times from major NEPCA area cites are:
Buffalo, NY
1 1/4 hours
Syracuse, NY
1 1/2 hours
Albany, NY
4 hours
Pittsburgh, PA
4 1/2 hours
New York, NY
6 hours
Hartford, CT
6 hours
Boston, MA
7 hours
Train:
The Rochester Amtrak Station is located at 320 Central Avenue Rochester, NY 14605 and is
about 7 miles (and a 10 minute ride) from the St. John Fisher College campus. Cabs are readily
available outside the train station. Here is the Amtrak
Website: http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=am/am2Station/Station_Pa
ge&code=ROC
Air Travelers:
The Greater Rochester International Airport is located at 1200 Brooks Avenue. Rochester, NY
14624 and is about 10 miles (and a 15 minute ride) from the St. John Fisher College campus.
Cabs are readily available outside the terminal. Here is the Greater Rochester International
Airport Website: http://www.monroecounty.gov/airport-index.php/
WHERE TO EAT:
In your registration packets you will receive a booklet from the VisitRochester organization
listing many restaurants by location and dining choices. A copy may also be found on its
Website: http://www.visitrochester.com/includes/media/docs/2012GRV_unGrrr.pdf
WHERE TO STAY:
We have arranged for a special conference rate of $107.00 plus tax at the Brookwood Inn, 800
Pittsford-Victor Road, Pittsford, New York 14534. The rates will be available from Thursday,
October 25th through Sunday, October 28th. You must make your reservation before September
26, 2012 to assure receiving the special rate. The hotel is 6 minutes and a 5-mile drive from the
St. John Fisher College campus. Complimentary shuttle service to/from the Greater Rochester
International Airport is provided. To make a reservation, call 585-258-9000 and be sure to ask
for the NEPCA rate. The hotel’s website iswww.thebrookwoodinn.com
Other hotels (including estimated rates and distance from the campus) in the immediate St.
John Fisher College area may be found at the following website:http://www.hotelsrates.com/hotels/locations/Rochester/NY/usa/1278/
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ATTRACTIONS:
For those who have time before or after the conference, the following popular culture-related
attractions should be of interest. Your registration packet will have discount coupons available,
and details will be sent ahead of time as well:
The Corning Museum of Glass: http://www.cmog.org/
The National Museum of Play at the Strong Museum: http://www.museumofplay.org/
Ravenwood Golf Club: http://www.ravenwoodgolf.com/
RockVentures Climbing and Teambuilding Center: http://rockventures.net/
The Susan B. Anthony Museum and House: http://susanbanthonyhouse.org/index.php
For a list of other attractions see the VisitRochester Website: http://www.visitrochester.com/
REMINDER: NO CREDIT CARDS!
Conference fees and dues must be paid by personal check, bank check, money order, or in
cash. NEPCA does not accept credit cards or third-party services such as PayPal. It simply
costs too much to use such services, which NEPCA would be forced to pass on in the form of
higher fees. NEPCA prides itself on keeping conference fees and dues very low compared to
those charged by other professional organizations.
GRADUATE-STUDENT PAPER AWARD
NEPCA awards an annual cash prize of $300 and certificate for the best graduate-student paper
delivered at our fall conference. The Winner of the 2011 Graduate Student Paper Prize is
Lindsey Hanlon of Boston College for her paper, " Drawing from the Margins: Truth, Fiction,
and Power in Marissa Acocella Marchetto's Cancer Vixen."
The members of the Committee were: Amos St. Germain, Chair (Wentworth Institute of
Technology), Carol Mitchell (Springfield College), Margaret Wiley (Colby-Sawyer College),
Bruce Cohen (Worcester State University), Andi McClanahan, (East Stroudsburg University).
Graduate students attending this year’s conference should contact their session chair to be
eligible for the 2012 prize. Papers must be nominated by the session chairs.
ROLLINS BOOK PRIZE
The winner of the Peter C. Rollins Prize for the best book on popular or American culture
published in 2011 is Daniel Cavicchi (Rhode Island School of Design) for his Listening and
Longing: Music Lovers in the Age of Barnum. (See Books Reviews). Professor Caicchi will
receive a certificate and a check for $500.
NEPCA thanks the 2010 Rollins Prize Committee: Carol-Ann Farkas, chair (MCPHS), Jeff
Cain (Sacred Heart), Virginia Cowen (Queensborough Community College), Kristin Peterson
(MCPHS), and Rob Weir, (UMass Amherst).
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Nominations are now open for the 2012 Rollins Prize. Publishers should consult the NEPCA
Website for details. Please note: Only publishers can only nominate books for the Rollins Prize;
if you have published a book in 2012 and wish it to be considered for the 2012 Rollins Prize,
please direct your publisher to:
http://users.wpi.edu/~jphanlan/2009_Rollins_Prize_Committee%5b1%5d.htm
Edited collections, reference works, and original creative works (novels, plays, etc.) are
ineligible for the Rollins Prize.
CHECK YOUR LABEL!!!
Please check the label on your newsletter. If it says “Expired,” please pay your NEPCA dues right
away. Send your check to: NEPCA, c/o Robert Weir, 15 Woods Road, Florence, MA 01062.
NEPA membership dues are very cheap–just $30 for those working fulltime in academia, and $15 for
adjuncts, graduate students, emeritus professors, independent scholars, and interested members of the
piublic. Does NEPCA need such paltry fees? Yes, it does. Your fees defray the (soaring) cost of the
newsletter, pays postage and vendor fees, helps us maintain the online NEPCA Journal, pays stipends,
underwrites the Rollins and graduate student paper prizes, and allows NEPCA to conduct yearly
conferences. NEPCA gets no money from the national Popular Culture Association; it is entirely selfsupporting. So please pay your dues! The membership rolls are periodically purged of nonrenewing members. Please remain an active member to continue receiving NEPCA News and to be
able to contribute to NEPCA Journal.
And Update Your Info
Has your e-mail or mailing address changed? Have you changed jobs? E-mail addresses often change
due to mergers, switched providers, new academic servers, switching jobs, etc. If your e-mail or “snail
mail” address has changed in the past two years, please contact NEPCA and let us know so we can
update our database. Send a short note to: weir.r@comcast.net and I’ll update your file.
FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS—NEPCA 2013 CONFERENCE
NEPCA! Fall! Vermont! What’s not to like? NEPCA’s 2013 conference will be held on the
campus of St. Michael’s College in Winooski, Vermont on October 25-26, 2013.
If you would like to present, chair, or comment on a panel for our next conference, send a 250-300
word proposal and a one page CV to: Jennifer Tebbe-Grossman:
Jennifer.Tebbe-Grossman@mcphs.edu
You should also send your proposal to one of the area chairs listed below. They can advise you
on the nature, scope, and style of panels and presentations. They can also place you in the most
appropriate panel. If your topic does not appear, contact Peter Holloran (listed below as “None”).
If you'd like to be an area chair, please contact Rob Weir: weir.r@comcast.net
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American Literature and Fiction: Mark Madigan, Nazareth College, English Department, Rochester,
NY 14618, mjmadiga@naz.edu
Celebrity and Entertainment: Carol Mitchell, 27 Woodside Circle, Sturbridge, MA 01566
carol_mitchell@spfldcol.edu
Celtic Studies: Margaret Wiley, Colby-Sawyer College, Humanities, 541 Main St., New London, NH
03257, MWiley@colby-sawyer.edu
Comics and Graphic Novels: Lance Eaton, 87 Thurston St. # 1, Somerville, MA 02145,
lance.eaton@gmail.com
Ethnic and Race Studies: Sally Hirsh-Dickinson, 233 Switch Road, Andover, NH 03216
shirsh-dickinson@tds.net
Fashion and Body Image: Joe Hancock, Drexel University, 64 Stuart Drive, Norristown, PA 19401,
jhh33@drexel.edu
Film and History: Cynthia Miller, 484 Bolivar St., Canton, MA 02021,
cynthia_miller@emerson.edu.
Folklore and Folk Culture: TBA
Gender, Identity, Sex, and Sexuality: Don Gagnon, Western CT State University, 221 Willow Springs,
New Milford, CT 06776, GagnonD@wcsu.edu
Global Cultures: Frank A. Salamone, Iona College, 715 North Avenue, New Rochelle, NY 108011890, fsalamone@iona.edu
Health, Disease, and Physical Culture: Jennifer Tebbe-Grossman, Massachusetts
College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, School of Arts and Sciences, 179
Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, jennifer.tebbe@mcphs.edu
History and Uses of the Past: James P. Hanlan, WPI, 100 Institute Road, Worcester, MA 016092280, jphanlan@wpi.edu
Horror: Michelle Ephraim WPI, 100 Institute Road, Worcester, MA 01609-2280, Ephraim@wpi.edu
Humor: Jeff Cain, Sacred Heart University, 5151 Park Ave. Fairfield, CT 06825 cainj@sacredheart.edu
Labor Studies: Bruce Cohen, Worcester State College, History Department, Worcester, MA 016022597, bcohen@worcester.edu
Marketing and Advertising: Rick Magee, Heart University, 5151 Park Ave. Fairfield, CT 06825,
mageer@sacredheart.edu
Music: Christopher Scott Gleason, Department of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Management
Wentworth Institute of Technology, 550 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115,
gleasonc@wit.edu
New England/New York Studies: Marc Stern, Bentley College, History Department,
Waltham, MA 02452-4705, mstern@bentley.edu
Philosophy and Popular Culture: Tim Madigan, Dept. of Philosophy,
St. John Fisher College, Rochester NY 14618, tmadigan@sjfc.edu
Politics: TBA
Psychology:
Religion: June-Ann Greeley, Sacred Heart University, 5151 Park Ave. Fairfield, CT 06825,
greeleyj@sacredheart.edu
Science and Technology: Amos St. Germain, Wentworth Institute of Technology, Humanities
Division, 550 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, stgermaina@wit.edu
Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Legend: Michael Torregrossa, 34 Second St., Smithfield, RI, 02917,
Popular.Culture.and.the.Middle.Ages@gmail.com
Sports: Robert Weir, 15 Woods Road, Florence, MA 01062, weir.r@comcast.net
Television: Carol-Ann Farkas, MCPHS, 179 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, Carol-Ann.
Farkas@mcphs.edu
Urban Studies: Lisa Boehm, Worcester State College, Urban Studies Department, Worcester, MA
01602-2597; lboehm@worcester.edu
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Visual Culture and Digital Media: Sue Clerc, Buley Library, Southern Connecticut State
University, New Haven CT 06515, clercs1@southernct.edu
War and Culture: Mark Van Ells. Queensborough Community College, 222-05 56the Ave. Bayside, NY
11364, mvanells@qcc.cuny.edu
World Literature: Robert Niemi, St. Michael's College, English Department, Colchester, VT 05439,
rniemi@smcvt.edu
None of the Above: Peter Holloran, Worcester State College, Department of History, Worcester, MA
01602-2597, 617-876-6635, pholloran@worcester.edu
WOULD YOU LIKE TO HOST A NEPCA CONFERENCE?
NEPCA seeks host institutions for 2015 and beyond. If you think you’d like to host a NEPCA
conference on your campus, please contact Executive Secretary Rob Weir
(weir.r@comcast.net) or chat with Rob at the fall conference.
THE CULTURED CLASSROOM
If you have an example of a successful classroom lesson or strategy involving the use of
popular and/or American culture, please share it with your colleagues. Contact
weir.r@comcast.net
In this Amos St. Germain considers the conundrum of teaching culture and history at college in
which very few students are humanities-oriented.
Culture Studies: Science and Technology in the Classroom
When you teach at an institute of technology offering degrees in
engineering/architecture/technology/design and management, the liberal studies/general
education component must fit into some of the most highly structured curricula in all of American
education. You have to introduce styles of thinking to students within a very limited number of
courses and credit hours. While only about ten percent of college students will ever consider
majoring in mathematics, science, engineering or technology, a ninety-seven percent placement
rate upon graduation, even in this today’s job market, has provided Wentworth with rising
enrollments.
In History of Technology I try to introduce historical thinking. I also try to carry out the wisdom of
what technology and culture studies guru, Mel Kranzberg, noted years ago: “Technology is
neither positive nor negative nor neutral.” Within the next thirty years my students will be
engineers, designers, architects, managers and entrepreneurs. They will be running the country
and if they don’t understand the relationships between technology and society, who will?
At the start of the semester we look at primates coming down from the trees staring at their
opposable thumbs and by the end of the semester we have people in the space shuttle. I utilize
the best one-volume history of technology available, Science and Technology in World History
by McClellan and Dorn. I supplement the text with a variety of articles from Invention and
Technology, a science and technology magazine aimed at the general reader. Students
consider everything from piece on engineering your baby and the impact of mechanical
harvesters on agriculture, to the effect of vacuum cleaners on modern life.
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For research projects I ask students out to find out about the achievements of people they may
never have heard of, people such as Gertrude Elion, Charles Steinmetz. and Alexander Coulter.
They write research papers and, in teams, produce technology-rich oral presentations. In my
lectures I integrate the insights of popular science and technology scholars such as Henry
Petroski and Samuel Florman, and modern food history scholars such as Richard Wrangham
and Tom Standage. I also draw inspiration from James Burke’s classic Connections series.
Students will forget subject matter specifics, but I hope they will see connections between
science and technology and all the other areas of life.
My course materials are available to all who might wish to see them. Email stgermaina@wit.edu
Amos St. Germain
Humanities and Social Sciences
Wentworth Institute of Technology
BOOK REVIEWS
Listening and Longing: Music Lovers in the Age of Barnum. By Daniel Cavicchi, Wesleyan
University Press: Middletown, CT, 2011.
NOTE: This book is the winner of NEPCA’s 2011 Peter J. Rollins Book Prize.
The United States in the 19th century is the setting for Daniel Cavicchi’s exploration of musical
culture. This period encompasses a shift from the active pursuit of making music to a passive
experience of watching and listening. Cavicchi is not a music historian, nor is he a musicologist.
But he takes a comprehensive approach in his research to describe social, cultural, and
economic factors involved in the creation of musical audience.
Until the early 1800s, for most of the working class in the United States, music was made, not
heard. Making music was a family and community event, particularly in the home around a
parlor piano. Immigrants brought their own instruments, but plunking, singing, and strumming
were part of the social fabric. Performances were available, but they were often the product of
amateurs, parade bands, or singers accompanying traveling circuses. Amateur music was
unpolished, parade bands were militaristic or political, and singing circus performers were not
necessarily talented. Other than the urban social elite, most people did not simply listen to
music, particularly to performances of high quality.
The mid-19th century saw the dawn of professional orchestras in New York, Boston, St. Louis,
and Cincinnati. Attending concerts was a new phenomenon. Ticket prices ranged from
affordable to outrageously high, according to diaries and reports. Concertgoers, from the rising
middle class, modeled their role as audience members after their experience as congregants in
church. They sat, quietly and politely listening to the performance in the same manner as a
sermon. The formality of a concert was unusual for the middle class, but oddly appealing, and
eventually became the norm.
Throughout the book Cavicchi explores societal factors that contributed to the rise of the
commercialization of music, which in turn fed into other 19th century innovations from technology
to celebrity. Profit could be earned from concert ticket sales, as well as goods and services. The
job of music dealer evolved to include music lessons along with sales of sheet music and
instruments. Rail travel made it possible for performers and their instruments to travel easily.
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The hype that greeted Jenny Lind’s U.S. debut was unparalleled. No one in the United States,
not even her impresario P.T. Barnum, had heard her sing. Yet her reputation and Barnum’s
skills as a promoter created a remarkable sensation in which thousands clamored to secure a
ticket to hear Lind, a form of what modern scholars describe as a form of commodity fetishism.
In like manner, Lind’s tour also established patterns now called product endorsements (Lindinspired hats, gloves, furniture), which added to the spectacle.
Ticket prices for many current musical performances ranged from those affordable to the
working class to astronomical levels that restricted entrance to those of substantial means. At
whatever price, though, the public was inexorably transformed from active to passive, from
makers of music to consumers of it.
This is a fascinating book that embraces a wide array of resources to capture a picture of an
unusual time in American musical cultural history. The quotations from and analyses of diaries
are particularly intriguing and well presented. Perhaps because Cavicchi is not a music
historian, his research and reporting is fresh and relatively unbiased.
The timing of this publication creates an interesting juxtaposition. At present, music
performances in 21st century culture are placing more emphasis on amateur performances. The
rise of American Idol and other televised performance competitions is giving the stage over
once again to participation rather than the passive listener whose development was
documented by Cavicchi. While the role of much of the audience continues to be that of passive
listeners, there is the hope that more Jenny Linds (or Taylor Swifts) are among us, somewhere,
waiting to be discovered.
The book would be particularly suited to seminars on American cultural history or courses on
the business of music. It would also be a useful addition to classes examining trends in society
and the arts.
Virginia S. Cowen, PhD
University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey
From Liberation to Conquest: The Visual and Popular Cultures of the Spanish-American
War of 1898. By Bonnie Miller. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011.
Note: This book was the runner-up for the 2011 Rollins Prize.
Vietnam was America’s first “living room war,” but the 1898 Spanish-American War was the first
one in which “media spectacle” (2) played a key role in why the United States went to war, how
war was justified, how Americans viewed its progress, and how they formed postwar
perceptions. (Newspapers played a key role in the Civil War as well, but on a regional rather
than national level. Moreover, the first newspaper halftone photograph did not appear until
1880.)
University of Massachusetts Boston assistant professor Bonnie Miller shows us 83 images
(photos, engravings, cartoons) that provide fodder for one of her theses: that the SpanishAmerican War was too complex to be reduced to simplistic narratives in which yellow journalism
is the main cause of the conflict and unmediated imperialist ideology its aftermath. For instance,
although a muscular foreign policy certainly found justification in the Spanish-American War,
critics drew upon the same imagery to fashion anti-imperialist screeds. There was, in short, no
such thing as “an” American view of the war. In one delicious set of contrasts, Miller presents an
image of a lean Uncle Sam toning his muscles on a punching bag labeled “Increased Navy”
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(156), a graphic depiction of Alfred Thayer Mahan’s theory of navies and empires. A few pages
later, though, we view a more ambiguous image: a triumphant Uncle Sam resting his bloated
stomach upon a podium (176). As Miller notes, the image might be viewed as “rising prosperity,”
or it could “suggest excessive engorgement” (176). Exactly! Other images remind us that wars
are seldom as glorious as hawks would have them be, and their aftermath generally ushers in
unanticipated challenges and problems.
Among the conundrums is what to do with empires once obtained. Within the hegemonic logic
systems of many late Victorians, the ideal scenario would have been to acquire foreign lands
devoid of foreigners. Miller shows this with graphic clarity in the Philippines. Before the war,
Filipinos and rebel leader Emilio Aguinaldo were depicted as fair-skinned, upright, and noble;
after each had the audacity to resist American control with the same fervor with which they had
opposed Spanish rule, they appeared as dark-skinned, dirty ragamuffins. In fact, one shocking
aftermath of the war was the lightening speed with which all those who fell under U.S. imperial
rule–Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Chamorros, Filipinos, Hawaiians, Ladinos–lost their personhood
and were depicted as semi-human savages. The stereotyping of post-imperialist success is as
vicious and as racialized as that applied to African Americans and the Chinese.
The book is visually rich, though some of Miller’s analyses rest upon Straw Man assumptions.
(Who actually reduces the war to the single cause of journalism?) Miller also transgresses the
line between complexity and reading too much into her images and ignoring simpler
explanations. For example, she is keen to explode one of the “persistent myths” that the war
was foisted upon President McKinley by a “war-hungry public manipulated by a sensationalistic
press and jingoistic political culture” (10). First, few historian with whom I’m aware absolve
McKinley of harboring preexisting imperialist motives. Second, Miller’s own evidence actually
strengthens older views that yellow journalism was central in leading citizens to dance to the
drumbeats of war. Miller tries to have it both ways. Later on she’s perfectly happy to see
“imperial iconography” (187) as having a “profound and long-lasting” (232) impact on
expansionists and anti-imperialists alike. Why pull the punch in the first instance, but not the
second?
Despite my analytical disagreements, I highly recommend this book. Historians already know
about much that is contained in Miller’s volume, but seldom has it been assembled in one place
with such detail. Miller’s historical examination adds immeasurably to current debates over
visual media and how images alter public opinion.
Robert E. Weir
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Modernist America: Art, Music, Movies, and the Globalization of American Culture. By
Richard Pells. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0-300-18173-9
Conventional wisdom holds that since the advent of movies, creeping “Americanization” has
inexorably homogenized global culture. In the standard telling, regional and indigenous
filmmakers, musicians, and artists were no match for juggernauts such as Hollywood, Tin Pan
Alley, or market-driven art and architectural preferences. The very word “modern” tends to
conjure U.S. institutions and icons such as MGM, the Metropolitan Opera, MOMA, the Chrysler
Building, Orson Welles, Frank Capra, George Gershwin, Frank Lloyd Wright, Andy Warhol….
In the best tradition of path-breaking scholars, Richard Pells turns conventional wisdom upside
down. He neither denies the economic power of American culture, nor ignores its impact on
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global tastes, but he does take a major swipe at how much of that culture can be stamped
“Made in the USA.” In his telling, much of what has been labeled “American culture” abroad is
actually a re-export. In fact, virtually all that passed as “modern” during the 20th century was
European in origin. The most obvious example of this is Hollywood, which was built largely by
immigrant Jews such as Sam Goldwyn, Louis B. Mayer, and the Warner brothers. Likewise,
many of the entertainment world’s greatest stars were immigrants: Irving Berlin, Charlie Chaplin,
Gretta Garbo, Cary Grant, Bob Hope, Al Jolson, Mary Pickford, Rudolph Valentino….
The above connection is pretty well known, but Pells calls our attention to style as much as
personality; in essence, he wants us to concentrate more on the European influences of Ingmar
Bergman, not Ingrid. Without Ingmar Bergman, he argues, there would be no Woody Allen. In
like fashion, the Hollywood dream machine owes a debt to Georges Méliès, film noir to German
expressionism, 1970s movies to the French New Wave, and Martin Scorsese to Sergio Leone.
What Pells does with movies he does also to art, music, and architecture. Try imagining
Jackson Pollock without Picasso, or Marsden Hartley without Cézanne, Wassily Kandinsky, or
Franz Marc. Can one divorce the skyscrapers of Louis Sullivan from the Eiffel Tower, or
Broadway’s floodlit streets from the Champs-Elysées? In a particularly incisive chapter
tantalizingly titled “From Rite of Spring to Appalachian Spring (99-129),” Pells shows the
connections between challenging composers such as Stravinsky, Bartók, and Debussy and
those thought to be quintessentially “American,” such as Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, and
Virgil Thompson. Even jazz, Pells reminds us, thrived in expatriate communities in Berlin,
Copenhagen, Paris, and Stockholm before it took off in Harlem. Later on the acceptance of bebop and experimental jazz danced down roads surfaced by Dadaism and surrealism. (And so
did Disney!)
The true American genius, Pells argues, lay in controlling the marketplace, not ideas–in “selling
modernity (89),” not in inventing it. The issue at hand is hybridization, not Americanization. He
holds no truck with Europeans intent upon blithely labeling U.S. imports as cultural imperialism.
As he sagely writes, a “willingness to ignore cultural boundaries was at the core of modernism.
And it was precisely the blending of highbrow and popular styles that enhanced the appeal of
America’s culture for multiethnic and foreign audiences by capturing their varied interests and
tastes…. [T]hey were not so much instruments of seduction as ingredients in a hybrid culture,
part American and part foreign (401-02).” He ends his study by contemplating the myriad ways
in which the rest of the world has caught up to the United States and speculates that
postmodernist American culture is unlikely to command the economic hegemony of its modern
cousin.
This is an important book. Pells, an emeritus professor from the University of Texas at Austin,
has long been at the fore of 20th century cultural studies through works such as Radical Visions
and American Dreams (1973) and The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age (1985). Some
readers may take umbrage with his use of the term “modernism” and, indeed, it sometimes feels
as if Pells slaps the label onto everything that occurred in the 20th century. Pells largely views
modernism itself as a set of tendencies rather than a hard-fast definition. Is the movie “All the
President’s Men,” for example, really a form of film noir? That seems a stretch, and those
looking for holes can find them. But then again, who bothers to debate an inconsequential
book? Pells argues that what we call 20th century American culture was, at its core, the birth of
global culture. Number me among the convinced.
Robert E. Weir
University of Massachusetts Amherst
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Good Game: Christianity and the Culture of Sports. By Shirl James Hoffman, Waco,
Texas: Baylor University Press, 2010. 978-1-932792-10-2
As the Tim Tebow phenomenon demonstrates, the relationship between religion and sports is a
matter of perpetual controversy. Shirl James Hoffman explores this issue in Good Game:
Christianity and the Culture of Sports. The book is not as comprehensive as the title suggests;
the form of Christianity discussed is mainly evangelical Protestantism and the sports are mainly
football and basketball. Hoffman does, however, take the tack that the connection between
sports and Christianity has been to the detriment of Christianity rather than sports. Hoffman
adopts Frank Deford’s formulation that the Christianity in sports is really what he dubs
“Sportianity,”(14) a belief system that marries a Christian ethic of self-sacrifice to a “survival of
the fittest” mentality that would make Herbert Spencer blush.
Hoffman devotes the first half of her book to the history of the relationship between Christianity
and sports, and the second half to contemporary issues. The early church drew a distinction
between play, on which the church took no stand, and organized sport (especially the blood
sports favored by the Romans), which it rejected. By the ninth century, a tacit approval of play
gave rise to liturgical ball games, some of which were the distant ancestors of baseball. Some
organized sports, such as jousting, were so embedded in European culture that the church
could make little headway against them. Fast-forwarding to the nineteenth century, organized
sports took a beating from Southern evangelicals on the grounds that sports encouraged poor
behavior and physical violence. Liberal Protestants, especially Washington Gladden of the First
Congregational Church of North Adams, Massachusetts, led the charge against revivalism and
in favor of the Christian utility of sports. Hoffman argues that three movements made sports
acceptable to American Protestants. First was the Social Gospel movement, which linked
physical to spiritual health. Second was the growth of the YMCA, which played up sports and
downplayed Christianity as a means of getting unruly youths off the streets. Third was the ethic
of “Muscular Christianity” which saw team sports as a way to build character, especially
unselfishness and self-control. Curiously, Hoffman does not discuss the invention of basketball
in this context, even though James Naismith was involved in “Muscular Christianity” and he
invented the game in a Springfield, Massachusetts YMCA.
But what sort of character emerges from the fusion of Christianity and sport? Here Hoffman
condemns evangelicals for too closely identifying with sports. The central problem, Hoffman
believes, is that sports tend to encourage behavior unacceptable outside of a stadium. Hoffman
cites the paradox of legendary football coach Amos Alonzo Stagg, who at the same time was
held up as a model Christian sportsman and had a reputation as a cheater. To redress the
subjugation of religion to sport, Hoffman calls for a more rigid separation of church and stadium.
The proper example of the application of Christianity to sport, he argues, occurred in a college
softball game where the opposing team helped carry a player who had hit a home run but could
not make it to home plate on her own because she injured herself rounding first. While not as
comprehensive as the title indicates, this intriguing study could easily be used a course on
religious or sports history.
Robert Smith
Worcester State College
11
The Global Grapevine: Why Rumors of Terrorism, Immigration, and Trade Matter. By
Gary Alan Fine and Bill Ellis. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010. ISBN 9780-19973631-7.
The Global Grapevine is both humorous and horrifying. Authors Gary Alan Fine (Northwestern)
and Bill Ellis (Penn State, emeritus) blend sociology, literature, and folklore to look at the cycle
and meaning of rumors in the post-9/11 United States. Theirs is, in part, an update of the
pioneering work done in urban folklore by Jan Brunvand in the 1980s and 1990s. As the book’s
subtitle suggests, they hone in on three phenomena whose profiles were raised by 9/11:
terrorism, immigration, and international trade.
Central to their understanding of how rumors circulate is a distinction between the “politics of
credibility” and the “politics of plausibility. (24)” One must be able to imagine a thing before it
can become a rumor. The collective angst and fear emanating from the terrorist attacks in New
York, Washington, and Pennsylvania made horror scenarios much more plausible, they note,
but we should not lose sight of the political motives embedded in spreading or accepting a
rumor. Take 9/11. Among the rumors associated with it is the building surfer, the legend that
one man escaped doom by surfing the falling debris some 80 stories to safety. It is patently
absurd and physically impossible, but metaphorically it reinforces a belief in American
superiority, inventiveness, and an indomitable refusal to be defeated. More ominous were
rumors whose political motive was to reinforce anti-Arab sentiment: the tale that Arab cab
drivers (or employees) were absent from the World Trade Center on 9/11, that “grateful
terrorists (32-34)” gave advance warnings to kind strangers, that Arabs danced in the streets in
celebration, or that Satan’s face appeared in the rising smoke of the Twin Towers. Each
reinforced Arabs as “The Other,” and a dangerous one at that.
Or maybe it was the Jews who were responsible for 9/11. Fine and Ellis show how that 9/11
legend has old roots indeed, including the Black Death hysteria, the Dreyfus trial, and the
Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion, a hoary piece of anti-Semitic literature
circulating since 1897 (based on an 1864 French satire). The authors link Arab/ Jewish rumors
to a larger unease over immigrants and foreigners accelerated by 9/11. Ellis offers a case study
of Hazelton, Pennsylvania, a decaying mine town revitalized when a meatpacking firm
expanded, and lured thousands of Caribs to the city. They may have literally saved Hazelton,
but that’s not the story told by longtime residents who see the newcomers as carriers of
disease, drugs, and violence.
Hazelton is part of a larger cycle of American cautionary tales over things such as foreign-made
goods and the danger of being an American tourist abroad. Many of the rumors–poisonous
snakes in clothing linings, contaminated Corona beer, murderous Hispanic gang initiations,
deadly spiders in bananas–are decades-old and nearly all have been debunked by Brunvand
and urban legend websites. Current anti-immigrant rumors, for example, bear resemblance to
tales such as Mrs. O’Leary’s cow starting the Great Chicago Fire, Typhoid Mary, and 19thcentury hysteria over Catholics and the Chinese.
So why do these rumors persist? In part because they simplify that which is complex; in part
because rumors insulate racist and nativists by allowing them to speak the unspeakable in
disguised form. But rumors are also fed by their plausibility–some Palestinians did celebrate
9/11, Osama bin Laden once did get aid from the United States, some Chinese goods have
been contaminated. Fine and Ellis argue that since globalism is here to stay, we can expect
12
more rumors and we should evolve strategies to cope with them. They recommend aggressive
challenges to new rumors, though they suspect that time and stability are the greater healers.
Like globalism, diversity is also a permanent part of society; we might as well get used to it.
This book is hysterical in both of the common meanings of the word–both funny and frightening.
It is exceedingly well written and would work very well in the classroom, a coffee klatch, a
community readers’ group, or a breezy private read.
Robert E. Weir
University of Massachusetts Amherst
An Engineer’s Alphabet: Gleanings from the Softer Side of a Profession. By Henry
Petroski, Cambridge University Press: New York, 2011.
Henry Petroski is a professor of civil engineering and history at Duke University and the author
of some seventeen books. He is a world known scholar on the subject of structural failure, but
this, his most recent book is important as a pleasing introductory text in technology and culture
studies.
This small book (343 pages, but only 7 ½ inches by 4 ½ inches) is an abecedarian, an
introductory work in a field with its subject matter arranged in twenty-six alphabetically ordered
chapters. It is coffee table book in everything but size, is well written and entertaining. Sections
of it are self-contained so it can be consulted for knowledge or pleasure at any time. The book
has more than thirty illustrations and Petroski”s encyclopedic entries make for fun reading.
Petroski writes a monthly column for Prism, the magazine of the American Society for
Engineering Education, and is a regular contributor to the magazine, American Scientist. One
sees reflections of this upon his style as he writes not only for his fellow engineers, but for the
general reader as well. It is difficult to make science and engineering clear and understandable,
but Petroski achieves this with aplomb.
Petroski’s twenty-six chapters are a display of the breadth and variety of technology and culture
studies. The chapters are of varied length. For example, his entry in the “Z” section consists of
an entry on Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It is a mere two hundred
words, while a “B” entry titled “back of the envelope” involves five pages of writing, calculating,
and engineering. He justifies giving that much space to the quirky “back of the envelope” entry
by explaining that the habit of educated guessing is a necessary but vanishing skill in the field of
engineering. Petroski offers a wide range of subjects, including: famous engineers from the
ancient past to the present, notable authors who studied engineering, works in film and fiction
that feature engineering, famous engineering disasters, and the history of the development of
engineering codes of ethics and professional societies. One also finds a brief history of the
development of engineering education, and of academic subjects such as material science,
engineering science, and engineering drawing. He also details crucial issues in engineering in
the twentieth century and challenges for the future of the profession.
Petroski as scholar and practitioner rejects the concept of academic silos and the two- cultures
argument that posits that the culture of the arts is different from that of engineering and the
sciences, that they have little in common, and that professionals in each are contemptuous of
each other. In An Engineer’s Alphabet the reader glimpses the wide range of topics covered by
Petroski in his previously published (and voluminous) books, articles, and columns. It is both a
good read and an important contribution and introduction to the history of technology and
13
technology and culture studies, one on which you can nibble as much as you want any time you
want.
Amos St. Germain
Wentworth Institute of Technology
Fighting the Current: The Rise of American Women’s Swimming, 1870-1926. By Lisa Bier.
Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011. ISBN 978-0-7864-4028-3. 220 pp. + photos, notes,
bibliography, index.
Who knew that could make such a splash in reconfiguring American gender roles? Lisa Bier, a
librarian at Southern Connecticut State University, reminds us that today’s female Olympians
owe their right to compete to a pioneering generation of strong-willed women who pushed
beyond societal disapproval and slowly shed clothing layers, sexism, and Victorian strictures.
Bier opens with a refreshingly honest admission–that she’s a slow writer and researcher. Her
original intent was to write a biography of Gertrude Ederle, the plucky 20-year-old who, in 1926,
became the first woman to swim the treacherous English Channel. Before she could complete
that work, however, several other biographies hit the market. Much like Ederle, who failed in her
first attempt at the Channel, Bier rethought her plan. We can be glad that she did; Fighting the
Current gives Ederle’s feat a deeper context than it might otherwise have had.
Swimming is, today, such a routine activity that it may surprise readers to learn that aquatic
women were rare for much of Western history. Indeed, among the joys of Bier’s book are the
small details that we often overlook. Even most fishermen’s wives knew how to swim, though
they lived by the coast and routinely rowed out to sea in small boats. Clothing proved a major
obstacle. Boys and men often stripped naked to take the plunge, but society would countenance
no such boldness from women. Many readers have probably laughed at old photos of 19th
century bathing costumes for women, but have we stopped to consider that these were for the
beach, not the water? As Bier relates, many of these were made of wool and, once wet, would
have added as much as 45 pounds to a swimmer’s body weight. That is, if she could stay afloat
at all; many of the costumes billowed and filled with water. Late Victorian water maidens fought
knockdown battles with moralists merely for the right to strip off stockings and ditch attached
skirts! Those who wished to swim competitively–as opposed to paddling about in sexsegregated bathing platforms in an age before most homes had running water–faced challenges
such as aspersions on their femininity, dire medical prognoses, and a host of structural
obstacles.
Obstacles came in both physical and ideological forms. There were few swimming pools in the
late 19th century, nor were there many water treatment facilities. Urban swimmers, such as
those who formed the influential New York Women’s Swimming Association, dove into rivers
fouled with sewage, dead animals, and toxic waste. And even when young women proved their
mettle in various amateur races and exhibitions they faced institutional discrimination. Pierre de
Coubertin created the modern Olympic games in 1896, but women were barred; none would
swim until the 1920 Antwerp games.
Bier’s story is one of women’s steely determination to dive through gender barriers. It was this,
after all, that made Ederle’s feat possible in the first place. Ederle is the focus of the final third of
the book, but most readers are likely to find more revelations in the short biographies of lessremembered pioneers such as Charlotte Boyle, Ethel Golding, Annette Kellerman, Helen
Meany, Rose Pitonof, Ailenn Riggin, and Helen Wainwright. As for Ederle, the story of her post-
14
Channel life is, in many ways, as fascinating as her big swim. Suffice it to say, Ederle was an
early victim of celebrity and what we today call paparazzi culture.
Bier is strongest when telling stories and recounting detail, though one longs for a bit more hardhitting analysis in the book. For instance, the National Women’s Lifesaving League helped
smooth the waters for competitive swimmers. Placing it in the context of social housekeeping
theory would help illumine why that was able to do so. Nor does Bier pay attention to sexuality;
part of the brief against women’s swimming clubs involved whispered rumors of lesbianism.
Nonetheless, this seemingly modest book is so rich that it sneaks up on you like a racer making
a charge to the finish.
Robert E. Weir
University of Massachusetts Amherst
CULTURE NUGGETS
By Rob Weir
A few thoughts on four new books–let’s call them two hits and two misses. Shamus
Rahman Khan published a book I never thought I’d enjoy: Privilege: The Making of
an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School (Princeton University Press). My initial
thought was, who wants to read about a bunch of pampered rich kids? I was wrong.
Khan both attended and taught at St. Paul’s in Concord, New Hampshire before moving
on to Columbia. His is both a participant and a participant observer’s view of how elites
are constructed, and a vital reminder that kids are still kids, even when they are being
inexorably socialized for a predetermined role. It’s a book about hormones, social roles,
peer pressure, racial identity, and social class. I highly recommend it, and it would work
well in a sociology class.
Lois Harrison Kahan, The White Negress (Rutgers University Press) explores the
collision between black and Jewish culture in early 20th century America. That’s not new
ground, but Kahan vividly illustrates the elision with examples from literature and the
vaudeville stage. She also looks at both sides of the coin by looking at the compromises
and enhancements made by black artists such as Zora Neale Hurston when they
engaged in “interethnic exchanges.” Kahan also intriguingly argues that Jewish
performers such as Sophie Tucker symbolically donned blackface as a way of asserting
authority generally reserved for Jewish men. I’m less persuaded by empowerment
arguments for those Jewish artists who literally donned blackface, but I confess
skepticism over that line of argument from all who have advanced it. Read Kahan’s fine
book and make up your own mind about what it means when Jewish and black cultures
intersect.
There was a time in which Jimmy Breslin was viewed as a pathbreaking writer and a
gritty and sardonic observer of American culture; that time was the 1970s. His newest
book, Branch Rickey (Viking), is a rambling look at the man best known for signing
Jackie Robinson. Breslin knows how to mine the archives for tasty anecdotes, but
there’s not much here that baseball fans don’t already know. And Breslin’s chatty nonlinear writing seems both dated and more suited for a talk show couch.
15
Mark Gornik, Word Made Global: Stories of African Christianity in New York City
(Erdmans) takes us inside three New York churches: the Presbyterian Church of
Ghana, the Church of the Lord (Aladura), and the Redeemed Christian Church of God
International Chapel. The first body is mainstream and located in Harlem, the second is
Pentecostal and situated in the Bronx, and the third is in Brooklyn, but is part of a
citywide network of churches that dabble in faith healing and actively proselytize.
Gornik’s first chapter discusses the globalization of African Christianity and is, in my
estimation, the book’s most useful part. We meet the pastors and congregants of the
three churches under discussion, but the portrait is that of Christian churches that
happen to have African immigrants in them. I was more interested in why that matters
rather than probing varieties of faith. Gornik is the director of City Seminary and is,
naturally, more focused on religious doctrine than ethnography. Fair enough, but
wouldn’t most readers want to know how these churches would look different if
attendees were, for example, white people from the Ukraine?
FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTIONS WELCOME
NEPCA is a nonprofit organization registered in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Our
operating expenses come from conference fees, membership dues, and your donations. If you’d
like to make a donation (tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law) please mail a check to:
NEPCA, c/o Robert Weir, Executive Secretary, 15 Woods Road, Florence, MA 01062.
NEPCA ARCHIVE
NEPCA maintains a permanent archive at Worcester Polytechnic Institute library. If you have
materials you think should be archived, please contact Rob Weir: weir.r@comcast.net Those
seeking to access archived NEPCA materials should contact: Rodney Obien, Archivist, W. P. I.,
Gordon Library, 100 Institute Road, Worcester, MA 01609.
NEPCA JOURNAL
NEPCA maintains an electronic journal that provides the latest news, conference details, and
professional information for its members. Details on professional conferences, scholarly
opportunities, calls for papers, grants, etc. now appear in the online NEPCA Journal, which is
updated regularly and is not as time sensitive as the newsletter. NEPCA Journal also publishes
peer-reviewed book reviews. Check out NEPCA Journal at: http://nepcajournal.blogspot.com/
Please also note that NEPCA Journal is not the same as the NEPCA Website. You should still
consult the latter for all information that relates to the business side of NEPCA.
The Website URL is: http://users.wpi.edu/~jphanlan/NEPCA.html
The NEPCA Journal URL is: http://nepcajournal.blogspot.com/
Book reviews are actively sought for the peer-reviewed online journal. Contact Rob Weir if
you’d like to write one (or more!): weir.r@comcast.net
16
Your Accomplishments: Please let NEPCA know if you’ve published a book or an article,
presented a paper, won an award, or gotten a promotion so we can share the news with your
friends and colleagues.
NORTHEAST POPULAR CULTURE/
AMERICAN CULTURE ASSOCIATION OFFICERS
President
2012
Don Gagnon (WCSU)
Past President
2011
David Tanner (MCPHS
Executive Secretary/Editor
Robert Weir (UMass-Amherst)
Program Chair 2011 Conference
Tim Madgian (St. John Fisher)
Executive Council [term expires]
Carol Mitchell (Springfield College) [2014]
Jennifer Tebbe-Grossman (MCPHS) [2012]
Carol-Ann Farkas (MCPHS) [2013]
Lance Eaton [2013]
Virginia Cowen (Univ. of Dentistry of NJ) [2013]
NEPCA WebSite: http://users.wpi.edu/~jphanlan/NEPCA.html
See the NEPCA Website for a list of past presidents as well as past conference sites.
TENTATIVE CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
Note: Only those papers designated by an asterisk (*) have been confirmed as of the press time
for NEPCA News (August 1). Those seeking official confirmation of presentations should pick up
the final conference schedule, which will be distributed upon registration.
Deans, department chairs, and others seeking to confirm the actual attendance of those listed
on the program should contact Executive Secretary Robert Weir after the conference.
Session One: Friday, October 26, 2012: 3:30 PM-5:00 PM
Registration: Registration will begin at 2 pm in Basil Hall: Golisano Midway Level.
American Literature
Chair: Rose De Angleis, Marist College
*Rose De Angelis (Marist College): “Transforming Womanhood in Louisa Ermelino’s The
Sisters Mallone”
Dustin Hannum (University of Rochester): “Identities Politics: Sheppard Lee,
Sentimentality, and the Antebellum Problem of Personhood”
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Sanna Oh (Ewha Womens University): “Mothers May Soar in Toni Morrison’s Song of
Solomon”
Richard J. Gerber (Independent Scholar): “Goo Goo Goo Joob!:The John Lennon/James
Joyce Connection Through Lewis Carroll’s “Looking-Glass”
Comics and Graphic Novels I:
Chair: TBA
Bond Benton and Daniela Peterka-Benton (SUNY Fredonia): “When the Abyss Looks
Back: Treatments of Human Trafficking in Superhero Comic Books”
*Paul J. Spaeth and Phillip G. Payne (St. Bonaventure University): “Jack Kirby’s
(Captain) Americans”
Charles Natoli (St. John Fisher College): “Little Orphan Annie and Conservative Politics”
Global Cultures:
Chair: TBA
Daisy V. Domínguez (The City College of New York): “Native American Athletes and
Sports on on Film: Intercultural Dialogs”
*Emma Elise Pierce Schell (Independent Scholar): “Considering Digital Borders: Online
Fans (of Korean Dramas) and Transnational Identity”
Emma Dassori (Pine Manor College): “Gozzi and the Commedia dell’Arte: Salvaging the
Sacchi Company”
*Lois Ascher (Wentworth Institute of Technology): “‘Sharing Strangers’: Strangers in the
Village”
Marketing and Advertising:
Chair: TBA
Tiffany Knoell (Bowling Green State): “Quality You Should Know: Advertising and
Warner Bros. Animation, 1931-1941”
*Robert MacGregor (Bishops University): “Rat Poison Advertising in America: The First
100 Years”
Christian Nelson (Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences): “Dove and
the Beauty Double Bind”
Philosophy I: Ethics and Popular Culture:
Chair: Tim Madigan, St. John Fisher College
*Tim Delaney (SUNY-Oswego): “Street Gang Portrayal in Popular Culture”
*Gerald J. Erion (Medaille College): “Through the Fun-House Mirror: Jon Stewart on
TV’s Entertainment Bias”
*Tim Madigan (St. John Fisher College: “‘And Good-Bye to You Too, Old Rights of Man’:
Ethical Dilemmas and Billy Budd”
Religion:
Chair: TBA
*Tim Davis (Columbus State): “Monk’s Bread: The History of the Commercial Bakery at
the Abbey of the Genesee”
18
*Sabatino DiBernardo (University of Central Florida): “A Religion Problem: Classification
and the Pathologizing of the Religio-Political Other”
*Jim Y. Trammell (High Point University): “Selling Entertainment and Salvation:
Thoughts Toward Analyzing Christian Media Marketing”
Visual Culture and Digital Media I:
Chair: Tom Proeitti, St. John Fisher College
Tom Proietti (St. John Fisher College): “The Social Revolution: The Future of Media”, a
Panel Discussion with 4 Rochester Media Experts
War and Culture: When the Battle is Over: Wars and Their Aftermath
Chair: Mark Van Ells, Queensborough Community College
*Kyle Reinson (St. John Fisher College) and *Carolyn Vacca (St. John Fisher
College): “American Hero, Meet Corporate Culture: America’s First Veteran-Owned
Radio Station and the Struggle for Identity”
Ginger Cucolo (Independent Scholar): “History of Dog Tags”
*Steven Gardiner (Zayed University): “In the Shadow of Service: Veteran
Masculinity and Civil-Military Disjuncture in the United States”
5:15-6 PM Wine and Cheese Reception: 5:15-6 PM
6:00- 7:00 PM Keynote Session
KEYNOTE SPEAKER:
SCOTT EBERLE
Dr. Scott Eberle is Vice President for Play Studies at The Strong Museum and editor of the
American Journal of Play. He holds a doctorate in Cultural History from the University at Buffalo,
and has developed dozens of exhibits for The Strong’s National Museum of Play, lectured
widely on historical interpretation, and contributed articles to the American Journal of Play, the
Journal of Museum Education, Death Studies, and History News. He is the author, coauthor, or
coeditor of four books, including Classic Toys of the National Toy Hall of Fame: A Celebration of
the Greatest Toys of All Time! Currently he is co-editing Handbook of the Study of Play, slated
for publication in 2014.
Saturday October 27, 2012
Registration: Begins at 8 am in Basil Hall: Golisano Midway Level. Registration is ongoing
throughout the day, but coffee and refreshments will be served to those who arrive before
Saturday’s first session.
19
Session Two: Saturday, October 27, 2012: 8:30 AM-10:00 AM
Dance I: Rewriting Dance’s Recent History: The Performance of American Cultures
Chair: Maura Keefe, The College at Brockport
*Maura Keefe (The College at Brockport): “Gender Warriors or Dying Swans?: A
Historiography of and by Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo”
*Elizabeth Osborn (The College at Brockport): “Democracy as Both Noun and Verb: The
Explicit Politics of Judson Dance Theatre”
Karl Rogers (the College at Brockport): “A Camp Site of Desire: Paul Swan Dances
Queerly”
Ethnic and Race Studies I
Chair: Mark Madigan, Nazareth College
*Alan D. Meyer (Auburn University): “’A Rare Bird….’: Race, Masculinity, and the
Community of Pilots in Postwar America”
Nicole Bishop (Niagara University): “White Masculinity in the 21st Century Imagination:
The Moral Code of the Reluctant Outlaw on Breaking Bad and Sons of Anarchy”
Daniel McNeil (DePaul University): “‘We can’t disguise the fact that there are Black
people in the film’: White Liberals, Black Radicals and the Neoliberal Revolution”
Gender, Identity, Sex and Sexuality I: (In)Visible Men: Queer Performativity and
Theatricality
Chair: Donald Gagnon, Western Connecticut State University
*Ryan M. Burns (University of Rhode Island): “Make a Man Out of You”: Masculine
Subjectivities in the Films of the “New Disney Era”
* Stefanie Goyette (Harvard University): “Travestied Words, Illegible Genders:
Transvestism and Interpretation in the Old French Fabliaux”
TBA
Health, Disease and Physical Culture I: Contextual Interpretations of Health and Illness
Chair: Jennifer Tebbe-Grossman, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
Sophie Freestone (University of Chicago): “the Pestilence of London: Women, Hygiene,
Prostitution and Pollution”
Virginia S. Cowen (University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey): “The War for
Health”
*Nicole C. Wertz Edinboro University of Pennsylvania) and Chris J. Minns (Indiana
University of Pennsylvania): “The Framing of Health in Health Magazines”
Science Fiction, Fantasy and Legend I: Visions of the Future
Chair: Michael Torregrossa, Independent Scholar
*Cory Matieyshen (National University): “Bert the Turtle Won't Save You: American
Science Fiction Prose and Criticism of Nuclear Civil Defense During the 1950s”
*Derek Newman-Stille (Trent University): “Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl In The Ring and
the Use of Speculative Fiction to Disrupt Singular Interpretations of Place”
Özüm Ünal (Bahçeşehir University): “Mothering the ‘Other’: Representation of the
Decentered Bodies in Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men”
20
Shannon Tarango (University of California Riverside): “Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger
Games As a work of Dystopian Young Adult (YA) Fiction And The Politics of Resistance”
Sports I: Field of Dreams: Minor League Baseball
Chair: Robert Weir, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Frank A. Salamone (Iona College): “Growing Up with the Rochester Red Wings in the
Forties and Fifties”
*Joseph Price (Whittier College): “Out on a Wing: Reading Frontier Field”
*Robert Weir (University of Massachusetts Amherst): “Chicks Dig the Long Ball, but GMs
Prefer a High OBS”
Session Three: Saturday, October 27, 2012: 10:15 AM-11:45 AM
Comics and Graphic Novels II:
Chair: TBA
*Lindsey M. Hanlon (Boston College): “Picturing the Enemy: The Construction of the
Islamic Other in Post-9/11 Comic Anthologies”
Alicia Remolde and Kristen Julia Anderson (Montclair State University): “Muted Mutant
Powers: Gender Inequality in Marvel’s X-Men Universe”
TBA
Dance II: Dance in Popular Culture
Chair: Maura Keefe, The College at Brockport
Amanda McCullum (The College at Brockport): “American Reality Shows: Bodily Agency
and the ‘Other’”
Oluyinka Akinjiola (The College at Brockport): “Dancing the Orishas: Exporting a
Constructed Form of Popular Culture from Havana to Arcata”
*Kevin S. Warner (The College at Brockport): “The Visible Effects of So You Think You
Can Dance: Reactions to a Popular Culture Phenomenon in Dance Education”
*Janet Schroeder (The College at Brockport): “Hybrid or Happenstance?: Vernacular
Dance Traditions in Mexico and Appalachia”
Ethnic and Race Studies II
Chair: Mark Madigan, Nazereth College
Samantha Earley (Indiana University Southeast): “Evangelizing Political and Social
Change for Nineteenth Century African American People: A Reading of Mrs. Zilpha Elaw’s
Spiritual Autobiography Memoirs of the Life, Religious Experience, Ministerial Travels and
Labors of Mrs. Zilpha Elaw”
Chrystel Pit (University of Massachusetts-Lowell): “KLVL, la voz latina: Radio as an
Ambassador of Racial Tolerance in Houston, Texas, 1950s-1980s”
Stacy Shaneyfelt: “Beauty and the Beast: An Exploration of the Ugly American Myth and
the Postcolonial Otherness in Lahiri’s ‘Interpreter of Maladies’”
21
Gender, Identity, Sex and Sexuality II: Men on the Margins: Masking Sexuality In and
Behind the Prose
Chair: Donald Gagnon, Western Connecticut State University
Benjamin Welton (West Virginia University): “Unmasking the Other: Political and Racial
Others in Selected Transatlantic Fiction, 1922-1935”
*Ryan Segura (Independent Scholar): “Detecting The Phallus: Homosocial Bonding in
Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Purloined Letter’ and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the
Baskervilles and A Study in Scarlet”
*Heidi Wallace (Buffalo State College): “The Objective Death of Reinaldo Arenas”
Health, Disease and Physical Culture II:
Chair: Carol-Ann Farkas, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy And Health
Carolyn Roy-Bornstein, MD (Tufts University School of Medicine): “The Other Side of the
Stretcher: A Pediatrician/Mother Examines Injury, Illness and Loss from a New Patient
Perspective”
*Victoria Longino (Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences): “‘The
Building’ and God’s Hotel: Contrasts in Modern Medicine and Lessons in Empathy”
*Sandra Dutkowsky (Ithaca College): “The ‘Unpresentable’ in Illness Narratives”
Science Fiction, Fantasy and Legend II: Old Legends, New Stories
Chair: Michael Torregrossa, Independent Scholar
Mary Bridgeman (Trinity College Dublin): “Complex subjects in Twilight, The Vampire
Diaries, and True Blood”
*Laura Wiebe (McMaster University): “Witches, Elves, and Bioengineers: Magic and
Science in Kim Harrison’s The Hollows”
*Kathleen Mulligan (Providence College): “Robin Hood: from ‘History’ to Folklore and
Back Again”
Michael Torregrossa (Independent Scholar): “Once and Future Kings Revisited:The
Theme of Arthur Redivivus in Recent Arthuriads of the Comics Medium”
Sports II: The Politics and Economics of Baseball
Chair: Robert Weir, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Michael Lomax (University of Iowa): “A Reshuffling Market: The Pacific Coast League’s
Efforts to Become a Third Major League and How the Braves Made Milwaukee Famous”
Michael Haupert (University of Wisconsin La Crosse): “The Demand for Baseball and the
Growth of the Entertainment Business”
*Bradley A. Rogers (LeHigh University): “Dispatches From the Heart of the Reagan Era”
11:45-1:10 Lunch, Annoucements, and Awards
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Session Four: Saturday, October 27, 2012: 1:15 PM-2:45 PM
Gender, Identity, Sex and Sexuality III: Nationhood/Personhood: Latino, Latina, and
Spaces Between
Chair: Donald Gagnon, Western Connecticut State University
*Joelle Mann (Buffalo State College): “Women of Epic Proportions: Speaking from the
Borders of a Dominican-American Epic”
*Katie Grainger (University of Washington): “A Discursive Analysis of the Contemporary
Representations of the Femme Fatale in Hollywood and Latin American Film”
Melanie Huska (University of Minnesota Twin Cities): “Illegitimacy and Redemption:
Gendered Representations of the Nation in Mexican Historical Telenovelas”
Health, Disease and Physical Culture III: The Writers and Readers Circle: Vital Signs
from Popular Culture and Beyond
The Writers and Readers Circle is an informal session that anyone attending the NEPCA
conference may participate in by reading from their own or from another author’s creative and
expressive writing related to health care. Attendees are welcome to read and reflect on their
own health care related writing (poetry, excerpts from longer works such as short stories,
memoirs, narratives--published, unpublished, in progress, incubating, etc.) to an interested,
supportive audience. Attendees may also read and comment on writing by other authors from
popular culture/American culture and beyond and from contemporary and earlier times on
subjects that reflect on health care from such perspectives as those of patients, caregivers,
family, etc. The Writers and Readers Circle Chair will facilitate the session. Please bring your
writing and favorite literature to the conference.
Chair: Christine Parkhurst, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
Christine.Parkhurst@mcphs.edu
History and Uses of the Past I
Chair: TBA
Alyssa Anderson (New York University): “Nunca Más: The Role of Narrative in Creating
Justice in Post-Dirty War Argentina”
Dougie Bicket (St. John Fisher College): “Staying above the Fray: The Strange Case of
the National Park Service in an Era of Hyper-partisanship”
*Allyson Perry (West Virginia University): “’Soon the Feminine Sex Invaded the Teaching
Ranks’: The New Woman and Gender in Late-Nineteenth-Century West Virginia “
*Alexander Simmeth (University of Hamburg Germany): “‘Krautrock’ and the
Transnationalization of Popular Culture”
Philosophy II: Philosophy and the Zeitgeist
Chair: Tim Madigan, St. John Fisher College
*Patricia Drumright (Monroe Community College): “The Phantom of the Opera:
Spectacular Musical or Archetypal Story?”
Ryan M. Dahl (Independent Scholar): “All Joking Aside: Interpreting the Joker as a Sane
and Philosophically-Driven Entity”
*Joseph Marren (Buffalo State College): “The Mertonian Journalist”
David White (St. John Fisher College): “Philosophy: Popular, Professional, and Curative”
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Science and Technology
Chair: Amos St. Germain, Wentworth Institute of Technology
*Dana W. Paxson (Independent Scholar): “Convergences and Collisions: Literature,
Technology, Publishing, Visions, Inventions, by One Author”
*Frank Rooney (Wentworth Institute of Technology): “The Betrayal of Technology or the
Aphrodisiac of Power: An Essay”
*Lita Tirak (College of William and Mary): “The X-Ray Lady: Surveillance and Identity of
the New Woman"
Sports III: Reinforcing and Challenging Norms
Chair: TBA
Michael L. Thomas (University of Chicago): “Within the Code: Rugby and the Ethics of
Sport”
*Laura Troiano (Rutgers): “Everybody’s Neighborhood Stadium: Memory and Baseball in
Newark, NJ”
Donghyuk Sin (University of Iowa): “Alone in the Middle of Nowhere: Stories of the
Cultural Plight of Korean Minor League Baseball Players”
*Dominic Longo (Independent Scholar): “The Circus Comes to Town: Hank Aaron and
the Indianapolis Clowns in Buffalo”
Visual Culture and Digital Media II:
Chair: TBA
*Justin LaLiberty (Independent Scholar): “XXX Parodies, Spectatorship, Fandom and the
Public Acceptance of Eros Iconography”
*Robert Niemi (St. Michael’s College): ““Fascist Kitsch: Reprising the 'Art' of Thomas
Kinkade"
*Brian Peterson (Shasta College): “Watching Swing Music: Visual Culture of the
American Dance Orchestra, 1935-1941”
Session Five: Saturday, October 27, 2012: 3:00 PM-4:30 PM
Gender, Identity, Sex and Sexuality IV: Violence and Gender Issues in Film
Chair: Donald Gagnon, Western Connecticut State University
Chelsea Daggett (Boston University): “The Importance of Psychoanalytic Feminism to
Post-feminism: Sucker Punch”
Diana Direiter (Independent Scholar): “Pow! Right in the Kisser: Why is Violence Against
Women Entertaining?”
Zehui Dai (University of Arkansas): “Captivity Narratives and the Positions of Female
Captives in Soldier Blue and Dances with Wolves”
*David Tanner (Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences): “Cape Fear
and Cuckoo’s Nest: Cultural Discourse on Dangerous Men”
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History and Uses of the Past II
Chair: James Belpedio, Becker College
*Cynthia B. Ricciardi (Independent Scholar): “Genealogy in the 21st Century: The
Dramatic Potential of Lineage”
John Woolsey: “Picturing and Policing the Catastrophe: The Neohumanitarian Imaginary
and the Haitian Earthquake of 2010”
James R. Belpedio (Becker College): “Lux Presents Noir: The Presentation of Film Noir
Adaptation to Radio on ‘Lux Radio Theater’”
Thomas Grace (Erie Community College): “Kent State Revisited”
Music
Chair: Christopher Culp, University of Buffalo
*Christine A. Kelly (George Washington University): “‘A Link in a Chain:’ An Audiotopic
Analysis of Pete Seeger, 1955 – 1962”
Zachary Richter (Western Connecticut State University): “Revealing the Spectacle
Between Bass Drops: a Situationist Reading of Nero”
*Adam Szetela (University of Massachusetts Amherst: “‘Go to Obama Rallies Screamin'
Out McCain!’: An Exploration of Tyler the Creator, Post-Race Hip-Hop, and Minstrel
Performance in the 21st-Century”
Christopher Culp (University at Buffalo): “No-place Like Queer Utopia: Failed Optimism
in Musical Theatre”
Television
Chair: Carol Mitchell, University of Massachusetts
*Tom Gallagher (La Salle University): “Leverage and Alcohol Addiction”
*Andrea McClanahan (East Stroudsburg University of PA): “Is Prince Charming Still a
Prince?: A Critical Analysis of the Portrayals of Prince Charming and Masculinity in Current
Television Programming”
*Todd Sodano (St. John Fisher College): “The West Wing”
*Amos St. Germain (Wentworth Institute of Technology): “WOOF: Rin Tin Tin and the
Hero Dogs”
Visual Culture and Digital Media III:
Chair: TBA
*Jeremy Sarachan (St. John Fisher College): “’Missing Daddy’: The Exclusion of Fathers
in Mainstream Parenting Magazines”
Leah Shafer (Hobart and William Smith Colleges): “I Can Haz an Internet Aesthetic?!?
LOLCats and the Digital Marketplace”
*Don Vescio (Worcester State University): “Digital Memory Never Forgets”
*Diane Williamson (Independent Scholar): “Children’s Television and Emotional
Literacy”
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EXECUTIVE COUNCIL MEETING:
Executive Council Meeting: 4-5 pm, Location TBA at luncheon
NEPCA board members (unless chairing a panel) will gather at 4 to decide matters upon which
only board members can vote (as per NEPCA bylaws). A brief general meeting will be held at
the rise of the final session, which any NEPCA member is invited to attend and give input.
Issues will include:
 Election of new executive board members
 Initial assessment of the conference
 Updates on future conferences
 Vote to accept invitation of St. Michael’s College
 Vote to appoint program and arrangements chairs
 Treasury and membership report
 Development of a presentation template
 Does NEPCA need a policy on panel presentations? Should these count as papers?
NORTHEAST POPULAR CULTURE/
AMERICAN CULTURE ASSOCIATION
MEMBERSHIP AND REGISTRATION FORM
35th ANNUAL CONFERENCE:
St. John Fisher College, Rochester, NY
NAME ..................................................................................................
MAILING ADDRESS...................................................................................
………………………………………………………………………………
ZIP CODE
………………………
OFFICE PHONE NUMBER ……………………………………
CELL PHONE…………………………
E-MAIL……………………………………..
MEMBERSHIP:
NEW.......... RENEWAL......... (Check One)
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AFFILIATION....................................................................
RANK…………………………………
SPECIALIZATION.........................................................................................
FEES:
Please mail your personal check (payable to NEPCA) by October 10 (if not on the program) to:
Robert E. Weir. Ph.D.
NEPCA Executive Secretary
15 Woods Road
Florence, MA 01062
Please Note: Fees must be paid by either personal check or in cash. NEPCA cannot
process credit card or PayPal transactions.
NEPCA receives no membership fees from the Popular Culture Association of America or
the American Culture Association. We meet all operating expenses from our conference
revenue; hence presenters must join NEPCA in order to give papers.
(
) CONFERENCE and LUNCH REGISTRATION by mail............................$70
Fees for full-time faculty
(
) CONFERENCE and LUNCH REGISTRATION by mail............................$60
Fees for adjuncts, graduate students, independent scholars, retired
(
) CONFERENCE REGISTRATION in person..........................................$80/$70
(
) FRIDAY RECEPTION....................................................................Yes (
(
) ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP DUES
For full-time faculty………………………......................................$30
(
) ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP DUES
For graduate students, undergraduate, adjuncts, retired, independent scholars,
Emeritus faculty, part-time ..................................................................$15
(
) LIFE or INSTITUTIONAL MEMBERSHIP................................................$150
(
) NEPCA FUND CONTRIBUTION (tax deductible)..……………………….$............
) No ( )
TOTAL CHECK (IN US FUNDS)...........................................................$.............
Please note in which hotel/motel you made reservations:
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