Out of the Past and Into the Night: The Noir Vision in American Culture

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Interdisciplinary Humanities: The Journal of Humanities Education and Research Association (HERA)
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Deadline for submission: Nov. 15, 2015

HERA is pleased to announce an upcoming issue of Interdisciplinary Humanities that focuses on noir visions in American culture (www.h-e-r-a.org).

When American movies made their way across the Atlantic after World War II, the French couldn't help but notice their dark and emotionally bankrupt quality, dubbing them noir. Classic noir texts by authors like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain feature moody, morally bankrupt characters that take on the big dark city as alienated, angst-ridden antiheroes.

Classic noir faded in the 1950s, but during the 1970s as noir made a comeback through neo-noir, it spawned new forms including tech-noir, a form set in the near future where a gloomy dystopia with an environmentally corrupt aesthetic reflects the characters' personalities as they question the essence of human nature. Tech-noir, in turn, spawned cyberpunk, retro-noir, and steam punk as aficionados still squabble over whether noir is a genre, style, or movement.

From classic to neo-noir to tech-noir, this issue of Interdisciplinary Humanities will examine the history, issues, and theories of the noir vision in American culture as exemplified by literary and mass cultural fiction (films, texts, art, pulps, comics) and its interactions with historical, social, political, psychological and literary-cinematic contexts.

The completed essays should be approximately 6,000 words.

The Humanities Education and Research Association, Interdisciplinary Humanities' parent organization, requires that authors become members of HERA if their essays are accepted for publication. Information on membership may be found at http://www.h-e-r-a.org/hera_join.htm.

For more information about Interdisciplinary Humanities, including guidelines, go to: http://www.h-e-r-a.org/hera_journal.htm

Please submit articles to Dore' Ripley (guest editor) at dore.ripley@gmail.com.