1) Project News: The EPOP Conference
On December 9, 2009, a study day and publicpresentation of the activities of the EPOPnetwork was organised in Bologna at theDepartment of Music, Film and Performing Arts. The project’s goals and outputs wereannounced to a public composed of students,scholars and the general public. From theproject conception to its potential futuredevelopments, the EPOP teams discussedtheir work from a theoretical, methodologicaland technical point of view. In the firstsession of the morning, after a generalpresentation of the project and theinstitutions involved, Farid Boumediène andLoïc Artiage (University of Limoges)explained in detail the guidelines used by theEPOP network in the creation of thedatabase and the virtual museum.After the coffee-break, threepresentations dealing with case studies takenfrom some of the virtual museum’s “rooms” were given by Matthieu Letourneux(University Paris X), Olivier Odaert and Jean-Louis Tilleuil (University of Louvain-la-neuve), and Federico Pagello (University of Bologna). Letourneux showed how theliterary genre of the “mysteries of cities” canbe read not only as a metaphor of modernity itself but also as the first transnational(European) genre born along with moderncultural industries. It was first created inFrance but immediately imitated in all parts of Europe as well as overseas. Odaert and Tilleuil explored the beginnings of Europeancomics, outlining their uneven developmentin different countries and the necessity toaddress this topic from the point of view of cultural history. They claimed that only anEuropean history of popular culture can helpus to study the evolution of this mode of expression in our continent. Pagello remindedthe audience that, thanks to
Nick Carter
by Victorin Jasset (1908), the first serial film wasEuropean, and that European serial cinema was a great international success until the endof the silent period – a success which it couldnot reclaim after the Second World War.After the lunch break, Natacha Levet(University of Limoges), Felice Pozzo (Italianindependent scholar) and Irène Langlet(University of Limoges) presented other case-studies they worked on for the realisation of the virtual museum. Levet discussed Sherlock Holmes’ transmedial and transnational career.From German dime-novels to Danish serialfilms, from French literary pastiches to American reprises, Holmes is probably one of the most paradigmatic characters in thisrespect. Pozzo talked about the largeinternational success obtained by EmilioSalgari during his life and long after. Finally,Irène Langlet analysed the difficulties sheencountered in editing the “room” on the
fantastique
because of theoretical and linguisticproblems connected with the polysemy of this term in the critical lexicon but also withthe different linguistic contexts involved inthe EPOP project.As a conclusion of the conference, around table dedicated to the conservation and valorisation of European popular culturetook place with the contribution of externalguests such as Prof. Paola Pallottino (Museumof Illustration, Ferrara, and University of Macerata), Prof. Claudio Gallo (Public Library of Verona, University of Verona) and Luigi Virgolin (Film Library Bologna). Theimpossibility to maintain an institution only devoted to the preservation of materials suchas drawing and illustrations (Pallottino), theexperience of Verona public library in thecreation and valorisation of a collection of popular literature and comics (Gallo) and thehistory of the Bologna film library (Virgolin)offered the chance to address larger issues. The possibilities of the Internet andtransnational projects were then discussed inan attempt to establish which initiatives theEPOP network could support to promotefurther development of this promising fieldof research.
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