From Barbie to Body Piercing
By Tom Carter
Herald-Leader Staff Writer
Jim Holler, left, and Jack Selegue of UK's Department of Chemistry will participate in a discussion on the influence of chemistry on comic book heroes.
Math, science and English will take a back seat to Batman, Barbie and, um, even the World Wrestling Federation this weekend as University of Kentucky graduate students delve into the world of pop culture."Connections," UK's second graduate student conference, begins today and continues through Sunday. Most of the events (at the UK Student Center today and Saturday and on the 18th floor of the Patterson Office Tower on Sunday), are free and open to the public.
So why tap into the psyche of Darth Vader and Elvis?
"Studying traditional texts, such as Melville and Hemingway, is beginning to seem a little old-fashioned to some people," said graduate student Geoff Dennes, one of the event coordinators.
"So by using the tools of the academic to study pop culture, we can be up-to-date and connect with our students more," he said.
Even subjects such as body piercing will be covered.
"It's another form of rebellion," Dennes said. "We study that to see what is going on that is reflective of things that have always been going on."
O.J., Batman and more
Graduate students from UK and other schools will participate in more than 30 seminars that will focus on three to five scholarly papers each, some with titles such as "Why the X-Files Is Only Occasionally Science Fiction: Looking at the Fantastic in the Postmodern Context."
Dennes, whose own doctoral thesis is on Clint Eastwood, said studying pop culture "lets us learn who we'd like to be."
"It's as with John Wayne and Clint Eastwood: The reason they are so popular is that they are the men all other men would aspire to be," he said.
Here are some of the pop culture subjects that will be explored. (An expanded, but not complete, list of the programs' content is at right.)
* Rush Limbaugh ("Rush Limbaugh: Spinning the Tale of Himself Into American Folklore") on the program "Telling Tales" at 1 p.m. today.
* O.J. Simpson ("Looking Back in a Post O.J. Simpson World: What's a Feminist to Do?") on the program "Pushing the Gender Envelope" at 1 p.m. today.
* Wrestling ("Let's Get Ready to Rumble!: The Theatricality of the World Wrestling Federation") at 2:30 p.m. today.
* Barbie ("Malibu Forever? Barbie, Ethnicity and American Identity") at 9 a.m. Saturday.
* Soaps ("Daytime Soap Operas: No Place For Homosexuality") on the program "The Vast Wasteland" at 9 a.m. Sunday.
* Batman ("Transforming Individual Identity to a Capitalist Icon in Batman") at 10:30 a.m. Sunday.
Chemistry and comics
One example of pop culture's role in academic study is the panel discussion that begins at 4 p.m. Saturday. It will show the influence of chemistry over the years on comic book heroes, from [the Flash] in the 1940s to the Fantastic Four of modern times.
"When comic books began to find their popularity in the 1940s, chemistry was a sort of new-frontier type of thing that people were kind of afraid of," said Jack Selegue of UK's chemistry department.
"In the 1940s, you saw characters that became supercharacters because of some kind of strange chemistry event. [The Flash,] for example, breathed the fumes from hard water, and it gave him these super-speed powers," Selegue said.
"Jump to the 1960s and continuing into the 1970s, the origins of these super types most likely involved some sort of genetics and mutations, such was in the case of the X-Men. Jump to the present and the origin, such as with the Fantastic Four, is cosmic radiation," he said.
"So what this shows is the frontier of how much science the comic book writers thought their audience knew, and what was the edge, or what the audience was in awe or afraid of," he said.
Other programs include the showing of the films Southern by the Grace of God, about people who participate in Civil War re-enactments (4 p.m. Saturday), and TLC: A Year With the Leather Club, about gay life and gay clubs and featuring the Lexington Colts, at 9 and 10:30 a.m. Saturday.
There will be a $2 charge to attend tonight's coffee house and poetry/fiction reading from 7:30 to 10 p.m. in the Student Center, featuring Gurney Norman and others.
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