Remnants of Resistance: Gender, Sex, and the Cosmos in Horror Pulps

October 06, 2023

As part of the One Institute's Circa Queer Histories Festival, CSUN's University Library and Queer Studies Program have partnered to produce a limited podcast series called Remnants of Resistance. Episodes will be hosted by Queer Studies faculty, and will delve into the unique and hidden stories in queer history contained within the Vern and Bonnie Bullough Collection on Sex and Gender and beyond.

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Gender, Sex and the Cosmos in Horror Pulps

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About the Episode

Gender, Sex, and the Cosmos in the Horror Pulps is for horror fans, young and old, who have interests in gender and sexuality and Gothic terror and horror. Associate Professor of English Dr. Colleen Tripp at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) is joined by script writer, memoirist, and podcaster Loreal Wimberly to discuss past and present cosmic horror narratives in pop culture and the presentation of gender and sexuality in these cosmic tales of terror. Colleen and Loreal ask today: what is cosmic horror, and what are its origins? Why are we today experiencing a renaissance of the cosmic horror genre? How do representations of gender and sexuality interact with cosmic horror? To answer these questions, Colleen and Loreal take a deep dive into CSUN’s special collections of 1930s magazine pulps, specifically the magazine Weird Tales and contributing horror author HP Lovecraft. They consider 1930s horror pulps in tandem with Christopher Pike’s beloved adolescent horror pulp paperbacks of the 1990s.

About the Hosts

Dr. Colleen Tripp Colleen Tripp is an associate professor of English at California State University, Northridge. Her teaching and research interests include 19th-century and contemporary print culture, form and genre, empire, globalization, ecology, diversity and equity, women’s writing, and public humanities. She has been published in Studies in American Fiction, Engaging the Age of Jane Austen: Public Humanities in Practice, the Journal of Transnational American Studies, and more.

Loreal Wimberley A self-proclaimed “unknown Scream Queen,” Loreal Wimberly grew up on Chicagoland’s Southside, watching and reading horror from R.L. Stine to Christopher Pike and Stephen King. During an introductory critical theory course, she discovered that there was so much more to horror than simply viewing it. Horror isn’t just something she loves— it is a part of her. She is currently an undergraduate at California State University, Northridge with hopes of earning her Ph.D. in Literature with a focus on applying critical theory through horror.