Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Kapow! From Pulp Fiction to Google Books (with Comic Books in the Middle)

Hofstra University Library
Presents a 75th Anniversary Symposium
Kapow! From Pulp Fiction to Google Books
Celebrating the evolution of popular culture from 1935 to the present

Friday, October 22, 2010
Sponsored by the Joan and Donald E. Axinn Lecture Series

RSVP for the KAPOW! by October 15, 2010, to Jolene Collazo at 516-463-5952 or Jolene.Collazo@hofstra.edu.

Pulps were the successor to the penny dreadful, dime novels, and short fiction magazines of the 19th century. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term “pulp fiction” had its first documented use in the Washington Post in 1935, the year of Hofstra’s founding. The morning session of KAPOW! will examine pulps, cartoons, and popular culture. After a complimentary lunch with a guest speaker, the afternoon session will focus on fan fiction, copyright, re-mix culture and the Google Book settlement. Join us as we celebrate the evolution of popular culture through literature, art, and film from 1935 to the present.


9:00 - 9:45 a.m. Registration and Coffee
Guthart Cultural Center Theater, first floor, Axinn Library

9:45 a.m. – SESSION I: FROM PULP FICTION …
12:15 p.m. Guthart Cultural Center Theater, first floor, Axinn Library

WELCOME Daniel R. Rubey
Dean, Library and Information Services
Hofstra University

Keynote Speaker Michael Sharp, aka “Rex Parker,” SUNY Binghamton
Lurid Liberation: Sex and Social Change in American Paperback Cover Art, 1940-1970

Michael Sharp teaches English Literature at Binghamton University in Binghamton, NY. He has also taught literature classes in the New York State prison system, as well as continuing education classes for senior citizens in the Binghamton area. He has published articles on topics ranging from medieval literature to American crime fiction, and is the editor of the Encyclopedia of Popular Contemporary Writers (Marshall-Cavendish, 2006). Under the pseudonym "Rex Parker," he writes two blogs, one about the New York Times crossword puzzle, and the other about American paperback books of the mid-20th century. He has constructed crossword puzzles for the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, and is currently working on a book about the place of the crossword puzzle in contemporary American culture.

Hofstra Faculty Panel I
Moderator: William Caniano, Assistant Professor, Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library
Panelists:
Lisa Dresner, Assistant Professor, Writing Studies and Composition, ‘60s Pulp: The Cult of the Sexual Savior
Mary Ann Allison, Assistant Professor, Journalism, Media Studies and Public Relations, Picturing Pop Culture: New Media Academics
Richard Pioreck, Adjunct Associate Professor, English, Read a Few Books, Get More of the Jokes
Louis Kern, Professor, History, Uncle Sam, iconic embodiment of a nation
**
12:30 – 1:45 p.m. COMPLIMENTARY LUNCH
246 Axinn Library

Keynote Speaker: Bob Rozakis
“75 Years of Comic Books”


Bob Rozakis (BBA, ‘73) began his career in the comic book industry shortly before graduating from Hofstra and spent the next twenty-five years at DC Comics.

As a writer, Bob is perhaps best known as the co-creator of ‘Mazing Man, but his credits include more than four hundred stories featuring Superman, Batman and virtually every other DC character. He recently completed "The Secret History of AA Comics," an alternate history of the industry that appeared in Alter Ego and Back Issue magazines. Outside the comic book business, he has written storybooks for educational publishing projects and co-authored The Complete Idiot's Guide to Office Politics with his wife, Dr. Laurie Rozakis (BA, ‘73, MA ‘76).

During his seventeen years as head of DC's Production Department, Bob guided the company (and, eventually, the entire industry) into previously unexplored areas of computerized color separations and typesetting, electronic page preparation, and computer-to-plate printing. These efforts earned DC Comics over one hundred awards for printing excellence and resulted in Bob twice being profiled and cover - featured in Publishing & Production Executive.

Currently, Bob is the comptroller for Combined Resources Interiors, a drywall construction firm, utilizing the accounting degree he earned at Hofstra. He annually teaches a creative writing course for the Johns Hopkins University / Center for Talented Youth summer program for gifted students.
**
2:00 – 4:15 p.m. SESSION II: … TO GOOGLE BOOKS
Guthart Cultural Center Theater, first floor, Axinn Library

Keynote Speaker Kevin Smith, Duke University
Joseph G. Astman Distinguished Symposium Scholar
Copyright, Creativity and Incentive: the Problem of Fan Fiction

As Duke University’s first Scholarly Communications Officer, Kevin Smith’s principal role is to teach and advise faculty, administrators and students about copyright, intellectual property licensing and scholarly publishing. Kevin began his academic career with graduate studies in theology at Yale University and the University of Chicago, and then decided to move into library work. He holds a Masters of Library Science from Kent State University and has worked as an academic librarian in both liberal arts colleges and specialized theological libraries. His strong interest in copyright law began in library school and he received a law degree from Capital University in 2005. Before moving to Duke in 2006, Kevin served as the Director of the Pilgrim Library at Defiance College in Ohio, where he also taught Constitutional Law. He is admitted to the bar in Ohio and North Carolina.

Kevin serves on the Intellectual Property Board and the Provost’s Digital Futures Task Force at Duke, as well as on the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Scholarly Communications Committee and the faculty of the Association of Research Libraries’ Institute on Scholarly Communications. He has written several articles on copyright issues in higher education, and maintains a highly-regarded web log that discusses copyright and publication in academia, and he is a frequent speaker on those topics.

Hofstra Faculty Panel II
Moderator: Sally Glasser, Assistant Professor, Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library
Panelists:
Robert Leonard, Professor, Linguistics, Slang! What is it good for?!--The utility, motivation and poetry of slang in pulp fiction and other popular literary genres
Kathleen Wallace, Professor, Philosophy, Mashups, mixups, wikis, blogs – when is it creative use and when is it plagiarism?
Kevin Esch, Assistant Professor, Radio/TV/Film: Fan-Made Movie Trailers and the Power of Disappointment
Leon Friedman, Professor, Law, The Google Books Settlement

4:30 p.m. CLOSING RECEPTION
Ground Floor Lounge, Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library

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