By Whitney Hale and Mack McCormick
University
Press of Kentucky (UPK) author Brian
Taves has been named one of the winners of the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association’s
2016 John G. Cawelti Award for the Best Textbook/Primer in Popular Culture for
his book Hollywood Presents Jules Verne: The Father of Science
Fiction on Screen. The award will be presented to the author at
the 2016 PCA/ACA National Conference, which will be held March 23, 2016, in
Seattle, Washington.
Taves' book shares this
year’s award with Seeing Green: The Use and
Abuse of American Environmental Images by Finis Dunaway. The PCA/ACA is a
group of scholars and enthusiasts who study popular culture. The PCA/ACA offers
a venue to come together and share ideas and interests about the field or about
a particular subject within the field.
In Hollywood Presents Jules Verne, Brian Taves investigates the
indelible mark that the author has left on English-language cinema. Adaptations
of Verne’s tales have taken many forms, including early movie shorts, serials,
feature films, miniseries and television shows. They have been produced as both
animated and live-action films. Taves illuminates how, as these stories have
been made and remade over the years, each new adaptation looks back not only to
Verne’s words but also to previous screen incarnations.
Taves also examines how
generations of actors have portrayed iconic characters such as Phileas Fogg and
Captain Nemo, and how these figures are treated in pastiches such as Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012).
Investigating the biggest box-office hits as well as lower-budget productions,
this comprehensive study broadens our understanding of this seminal figure in
science fiction film.
The
John G. Cawelti Award was established to honor the work of the
retired University
of Kentucky English professor who has been a pioneer in the study of
popular and American culture. His books such as The Six-Gun Mystique and The
Spy Story helped establish popular culture as a subject worthy of academic
study.
Taves is the second UPK
author to win the Cawelti Award. Joseph
J. Foy received the award in 2008 for his book "Homer Simpson Goes to Washington: American Politics
through Popular Culture."
Brian Taves is a film
archivist with the Library
of Congress. He is the author of more than 100 articles and six
books, including The Romance of
Adventure: The Genre of Historical Adventure Movies and Thomas Ince: Hollywood’s Independent Pioneer.
Reprinted with permission
from UKNow.
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