Epop Newsletter #3 - April 2009





 


Table of contents 1. PROJECT NEWS p. 1 2. THE LOUVAIN EPOP MEMBERS p.2 3. NEWS p.4 4. RECENT PUBLICATIONS ON POPULAR LITERATURE

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Editorial Welcome to the third issue of the EPOP Project Newsletter. Popular Roots of European Culture through Film, Comics and Serialized Literature is funded by the European Culture Programme 2007. Please send all contributions to: [email protected].





1) EPOP: a fully integrated project 
 As announced in the last newsletter, an online database meant to gather information about European popular culture has been designed and set by the Géomatique department of the University of Limoges and is currently being tested, so far successfully. The EPOP project members are about to meet in Bologna to start thinking about the best ways to fill this database and to use it in further scientific activities and research. However, the project has been deeply extensively discussed online during the last couple of months with by all the members and is now shaping into a fully integrated project.

As mentioned in the first newsletters, the EPOP project aims to deliver a diverse research output, including a virtual museum, a collection of essays, a website, a travelling




exhibition and an educational cd-rom. All of these products will be based on information collected in the database. What is new is that the members of the project have now

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decided that all the deliverables should appear as a consistent whole. The structure and content of this coordinated group will depend on the virtual museum, which will consist of 10 to 15 “rooms”, each one dedicated to an important theme in European popular culture or to a case analysis on transnational and/or transmedia culture phenomena. The exhibition, that is to be presented at least in Belgium and Italy, will show to visitors the content of a part of this Museum, along with explanations

specially devised for the general public. The educational cd-rom will also reflect a part of the museum and will be distributed to school teachers with a booklet suggesting didactical activities about Europe’s popular culture. Finally, a collection of essays will present a more academic view on those matters, set as a first scientific reflection on different important cases. It will later be followed by a more theoretical publication.

2) The Louvain EPOP Members The GRIT (Groupe de Recherche sur l’Image et le Texte) is a research group on Image and Text that was created back in 1997 by P. Massart. Conceived as a multidisciplinary team, it involves members of several departments of the Université catholique de Louvain (mostly the Romance Philology, the History and the Arts and Archeology departments), as well as Art and College teachers. Currently managed by Professor Jean-Louis Tilleuil, the team’s main objective is to consider the growing importance in our society of cultural productions involving both image and text: comic books, illustrated books, commercials, children’s literature and so on. Two perspectives are favoured in the study of these “mixed” messages :




a) A theoretical point of view, that consists in establishing a specific and applied semiology of the relationships between image and text and describing the thematic, stereotypic and symbolic imaginary of the multimedia messages ; b) A pedagogical point of view, that aims to build methodological and didactical tools to allow university teachers to efficiently approach multimedia. The GRIT’s website is regularly updated, so that everyone can stay informed of our activities. Moreover, this website offers a very large number of articles (more than 100) from all our members. Please visit http://grit.fltr.ucl.ac.be/.

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Texte, image, imaginaire Beside the EPOP project, the GRIT is currently involved in a large research program with another group from Louvain, the CRI (Centre de recherche sur l’imaginaire), but also with Figura, a research group out of the UQAM (Montreal, Canada) and with colleagues from the UMASS (Massachusetts, USA) and the Smith College (Northampton, USA). The outcomes of this programme are already numerous : several international conferences have been organized, 5 academic books have been published, and one international exhibition has been set. The next event to occur in this context is another international conference that will take place in march 2010 in Louvain-la-Neuve. The theme of this meeting will be the figurations d’auteurs, the representations of authors.

Des fictions qui construisent le monde The GRIT is currently organizing series of conferences on the theme Fictions qui construisent le monde, fictions that build the world. These conferences take place in the context of the post-graduate school ED3 (Langues et lettres). They will be later published on the GRIT’s website.

Collection « Texte-Image » The GRIT directs an academic series devoted to the study of text/image relationships at Academia-Bruylant in Belgium. Here are some of the last issues in this series : - Nicolas Lesire, Trois femmes pour un héros. Une analyse des personnages féminins dans la série « Thorgal », 2000 ; - Aude Vangeenderhuysen, Le Petit Chaperon rouge… entre peur et désir. L’ambivalence des sentiments de l’enfant à l’égard du loup dans le texte et l’illustration, 2001 ; - Jacques Carion, Georges Jacques et Jean-Louis Tilleuil (eds), Aventures et voyages au pays de la Romane. Pour Pierre Massart, 2002 (hors série) ; - Jean-Louis Tilleuil (ed.), Images, imaginaires du féminin, 2003 (out of print) ; - Jean-Louis Tilleuil (ed.), Théories et lectures de la relation image-texte, 2005 ; - Éric Lavanchy, Étude du Cahier bleu de Juillard. Une approche narratologique de la bande dessinée, 2006.

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3) News Brussels 2009 BD Comics Strip year Various organisations in Brussels have decided to dedicate the tourist year 2009 to the theme of the comic strip. This is a logical choice for a city that plays host to numerous comic strip creators, one that has witnessed the birth of a number of legends of the 9th art: Hergé (Tintin), Franquin (Gaston Lagaffe) and Peyo (The Smurfs) are all from Brussels. A great number of events will take place in Brussels during the whole year. Among these, one of the most important is certainly the exhibition “Belgian Comics : Frames of References”. In the prestigious setting of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, it presents one hundred years of comic strip through the eyes of twenty contemporary Belgian authors, showcasing the links between the Belgian school and the major comic strip trends throughout the world. A trans-generational, multidisciplinary and international approach has been chosen. The exhibition will be open until June the 28th. More information on this exhibition and other interesting events around Belgian comics can be found at the web site http://www.brusselscomics.com/.




« Des 7 Boules de cristal au Temple du Soleil » A conference with Pierre FresnaultDeruelle The GRIT is pleased to announce it will be hosting Professor Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle (Paris I) in Louvain for a conference on Hergé’s most famous creation : Tintin. This conference will take place May 6th in the Forume des Halles of Louvain-La-Neuve, at 6 p.m.

International dessinée Conference

Bande Society

London, 19-29 June 2009
 The next international Bande Dessinée Society conference will take place on Friday 19 and Saturday 20 June 2009 at the Institut Français in South Kensington and at the Institute of Contemporary Arts on the Mall. The conference will mark the eightieth anniversary of Tintin and the fiftieth anniversary of Astérix, both of which occur in 2009, as well as continuing an interdisciplinary commitment to the exploration of innovative and nonmainstream BDs and BD-related forms.

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A conference on BD and teenagers literature Francis Marcoin’s center of research “Textes et Cultures” will be hosting a conference in Arras-Université d’Artois on June 12 dedicated to the representations of angels and superheroes in BD and teenagers literature (Bande desinée et littérature pour “adolescent”: imaginaire des anges et superhéros). More information on this conference can be found at http://www.univartois.fr/textes_cultures/ and http://www. fabula.org/actualites/article30607.php .

Science Fiction Across Media: Adaptation / Novelisation This interdisciplinary conference hopes to stimulate the discussion on science fiction and adaptation. It will take place in the Faculty of Arts of the K.U. Leuven, Belgium May 28-30, 200. Keynote Speakers will be Andrew M. Butler (Canterbury Christ Church University), I.Q. Hunter (De Montfort University), Peter Verstraten (Leiden University) & Peter Wright (Edge Hill University).

4) Recent publications on popular literature A new issue of Le Rocambole A brand new number or Le Rocambole (n° 46), the French review on popular literature, just appeared this month. It is dedicated to one single question: are actual TV Soaps the heirs of the nineteenth-century romanfeuilleton. Here is its very attractive table of content : « Séries et feuilletons à la télévision française » par Daniel Compère ; « Fondues au noir : les séries fantastiques !, par Isabelle Casta », « Les grands feuilletons de mystères » by Marc Georges; « L'évolution du personnage féminin dans les séries télés » by Hosseïn Tengour; « L'évolution des structures narratives dans les séries américaines » by Jacques Baudou; « Dallas :

célèbre rez-de-chaussée du petit écran » by Alfu; « Cape et télé. Le feuilleton historique à la télévision française » by Jean-Jacques Schleret; « Scénaristes de séries télévisées : table ronde avec Nicolas Kieffer et Hédi Tillette de Clermont-Tonnerre ». More information on this issue and Le Rocambole can be found at http://www.lerocambole. com and http://www.fabula.org/actualites/ article30708.php .

The pioneers cinema

of

Italian

DALL’ASTA, Monica (ed.), Non solo dive: Pioniere del cinema italiano, Bologna, Cineteca di Bologna, 2009.

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This book collects the proceedings of a conference devoted to the Women Pioneers of Italian Cinema, held in Bologna in December 2007 in the context of the ongoing activity of the Women and Film History International project. The goal of this network is to advance research on the often forgotten but yet very significant contribution made by women to the cinema of early years. The book focuses in particular on Italian silent cinema, discussing actresses, directors, producers, editors, critics (as well as women audiences), such as Francesca Bertini, Eleonora Duse, Diana Karenne, Elettra Raggio, Astrea, Elvira Notari, Matilde Serao, Gigetta Morano. Contributors include Jane Gaines, Christine Gledhill, Elena Dagrada, Maria Elena




D’Amelio, Cristina Jandelli, Elena Mosconi, Alberto Friedemann, Luca Mazzei, and many others.

Other publications DUNCAN, Alistair, Close to Holmes: A Look at the Connection Between Historical London, Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, London, MX Publishing, 2009, 224 pages. TURAI, Cecilia Simonics, Prime Detectives in English Literature: The Importance of the Development of Serial Characters. Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, Saarbrücken, VDM Verlag Dr Müller, 2009, 64 pages. Marginalia, hors-série 7 and 8, World bibliography of writings on Sherlock Holmes, download at http://www.pdfcoke.com/Marginalia

About this Newsletter: The EPOP Project Newsletter provides news about the development of the project activities and circulates information on research, initiatives and events concerning the history of European popular culture. The newsletter will normally be published monthly. To be removed from our mailing list, just click reply, and put ‘remove’ in the subject line. We will immediately remove your email address from our mailing-list. This publication reflects the views only of its authors, and the European Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.




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