Americana

Matzke, B.S. (2022). “A Hidden Race of Monstrous Beings”: Richard Wright’s Revision of H.P. Lovecraft’s Ecological Horror. Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture (1900-present), 21.1.

This paper argues that Richard Wright’s stories “Down by the Riverside” and “Silt” revise the ecological horror depicted in H.P. Lovecraft’s stories such as “The Shadow over Innsmouth” and “The Whisperer in Darkness”. The paper first examines how pulp fiction shaped discourse around the 1927 Mississippi River flood, then considers ecological themes in Lovecraft’s work, before turning to Wright, an avid reader of pulp magazines. Both authors employ the aesthetics of pulp horror to represent how a “civilized” notion of humanity, and specifically of whiteness, depended on the stability of a nature/civilization binary that the 1927 floods had revealed to be far more tenuous than previously assumed.

Systematic Reflections

Farrington, K., Hanford, D., Hansen, J., Kruy, M., Matzke, B.S., Maynard, J., Slaga-Metivier, S. Vickrey, R. (2022). The (Once) Remote Librarian: Reinventing Our Role in the Face of a Pandemic. Systematic Reflections 2: 51-67.
COVID-19 created an urgent need for the Elihu Burritt Library to adapt their traditional library services to the “new normal.” Librarians from all departments worked together to find creative ways to maintain a high level of service while respecting safety protocol and work-from-home conditions. At the heart of every decision was a strong desire to continue serving faculty, students, and staff to the best of their ability. As a result, library staff provided quality service to the CCSU community, incorporating the many lessons learned from the pandemic into present day library service.

EBLIP

Bradley, D.R., Oehrli, A., Rieh, S.Y., Hanley, E., & Matzke, B.S. (2020). Advancing the Reference Narrative: Assessing Student Learning in Research Consultations. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 15.1: 4–19.
As reference services continue to evolve, libraries must make evidence based decisions about their services. This study seeks to determine the value of reference services in relation to student learning acquired during research consultations, by soliciting students’ and librarians’ perceptions of consultation success and examining the degree of alignment between them. Study findings suggest that research consultations remain a valuable element in a library’s service model and an efficient use of human resources.

Foundation 126

Matzke, B.S. (2017). “‘The Weaker (?) Sex’: Women and the Space Opera in Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories.” Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction 126: 6-24.
Histories of science fiction often assume that women were absent from the genre’s early years in pulp magazines, or that their contributions took the form of more romantic or sentimental stories. This paper analyzes Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories (1926-1929) and argues that while women were underrepresented, they were crucial in moving the genre towards action and adventure stories. By examining letters by women as well as fiction by Clare Winger Harris and Lee Hawkins Garby, the magazine’s first two female authors, it becomes apparent that, in a real way, women invented the space opera.

Popular Culture

Matzke, B.S. (2017). “Hardboiled Feminism: Vera Caspary’s Laura as an Interrogation of the Detective Genre.” The Journal of Popular Culture 50.1: 109–126.
Laura holds a privileged place in detective fiction and film noir, yet Vera Caspary’s novel has received little critical attention. This paper asserts that Caspary’s novel, written within a context of a hypermasculine culture, constitutes a significant feminist revision of the genre that disrupts the hardboiled/scientific binary. By self-reflexively reworking the tropes of the hardboiled detective and using a casebook format associated with scientific detectives, the author crafts a narrative free from the strictures of a male-centered genre, creating a noir novel that boldly breaks from its hardboiled contemporaries.