Presentation Title
Hebrew Pulp Westerns: Themes, Publishers, (Pseudo)translators, and Readers, 1930s-1990s
Abstract
Hebrew popular literature is relatively young, appearing in Tel Aviv of the early 1930s together with the first native speakers of Modern Hebrew. Western stories were not the first genre to flourish on the Hebrew pulp scene, but by the 1960s they became the most popular one, with hundreds of serialized and stand-alone stories and novels. The presentation will follow the history of Hebrew pulp by focusing on Hebrew westerns; it will report on the publishers and authors engaged in this mass-produced print culture and discuss the languages that these westerns were translated from or pretended to be translated from—indeed, many of them were originally written in Hebrew but distributed as translations. Lastly, the presentation will describe distinctive sub-genres of westerns and their perspective readerships in correlation with their sensationalism, as they had to compete with other popular genres, including pornographic pulps. The presenter will accompany the discussion with images from the IsraPulp Collection, a special collection that she established in 2004 at Arizona State University.
Hebrew Pulp Westerns: Themes, Publishers, (Pseudo)translators, and Readers, 1930s-1990s
Hebrew popular literature is relatively young, appearing in Tel Aviv of the early 1930s together with the first native speakers of Modern Hebrew. Western stories were not the first genre to flourish on the Hebrew pulp scene, but by the 1960s they became the most popular one, with hundreds of serialized and stand-alone stories and novels. The presentation will follow the history of Hebrew pulp by focusing on Hebrew westerns; it will report on the publishers and authors engaged in this mass-produced print culture and discuss the languages that these westerns were translated from or pretended to be translated from—indeed, many of them were originally written in Hebrew but distributed as translations. Lastly, the presentation will describe distinctive sub-genres of westerns and their perspective readerships in correlation with their sensationalism, as they had to compete with other popular genres, including pornographic pulps. The presenter will accompany the discussion with images from the IsraPulp Collection, a special collection that she established in 2004 at Arizona State University.
