Editorial

List of contents Welcome to the EPOP Project Newsletter. In this

number you will find the presentation of the EPOP
1. THE EPOP CONFERENCE Conference, which will be held in Bologna on December 9,
p. 2 2009, and the call for a special issue of this newsletter
entirely dedicated to presentations of groups, institutions,
2. CALL FOR A SPECIAL ISSUE associations, journals and websites working on the history
p. 5 of popular culture.
If you have any suggestions regarding the newsletter or
anything else relating to the project, please contact
federico.pagello@unibo.it.

With the best wishes,

EPOP Project Publication Committee

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1) The EPOP Conference. Bologna,
December 9, 2009

The EPOP Project.

Looking for the Roots of European Popular Culture

International Conference
Directors Monica Dall’Asta and Federico Pagello
Bologna, December 9, 2009
Dipartimento di Musica e Spettacolo, Università di Bologna

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Sherlock Holmes, Arsène Lupin, Rocambole, Fantomas, Belphégor, Lord Lister,
Maciste: between the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries these
immortal characters were the protagonists of an intense cultural exchange involving all European
countries. Serial literature, illustration, comics and cinema gave us sensational narratives and
unforgettable images, able to easily cross national boundaries and create a shared cultural heritage
long before the very idea of the European Union. To recognise the complexity and richness of
this phenomenon and improve our understanding of it is the principal goal of EPOP – Popular
Roots of European Culture through Film, Comics, and Serialized Literature (1850-1930),
an interdisciplinary project funded by the EU Culture Programme and developed by four
European universities (Bologna, Limoges, Louvain-la-Neuve, Leiden), under the coordination of
the Department for Culture of the Province of Pescara. 

The conference Il progetto EPOP. Alla ricerca delle radici popolari della cultura europea (The EPOP
Project. Looking for the Roots of European Popular Culture) will be held at the Department of
Music and Performing Arts of the University of Bologna on December 9, 2009. The several
initiatives planned by the EPOP scholarly team (a virtual museum, a database, an exhibition,
an exhibition catalogue, a series of seminars for high-school students and teachers, a periodical
newsletter, etc.) will be presented to the public for the first time. The scholars who
contributed to the project during its first year of activity will show the results of the work done
so far. In particular, the technical features and the scholarly and teaching resources of the
database and the virtual museum will be described by the Limoges team, which has supervised
their technical realisation. The design of these research (and popularisation) tools was inspired by
the project’s general goal of promoting cooperation among the European institutions working in
this particular field. A series of presentations devoted to a few case studies, and a round table
about the problems of preservation of this rare and vulnerable material, will try to assess the
results which can be achieved through the creation of an international network on European
popular culture. 

Conference Program:

9:30 Welcome

9:45 Project presentation

Monica Dall’Asta (University of Bologna), Jacques Migozzi (University of Limoges), Jean-Louis

Tilleuil (University of Louvain), Adriaan van der Weel (Universiy of Leiden)
Genesi di un progetto (Genesis of a project)

Loïc Artiaga, Farid Boumediène (University of Limoges)

Le musée virtuel et la base de données EPOP (The EPOP virtual museum and database)

ore 11.00 – Coffe break

ore 11.15 – Prospettive interdisciplinari (Interdisciplinary Perspectives)

Chair: Jacques Migozzi

Matthieu Letourneux (University of Paris X)

Les “mystères urbains”, une métaphore de la culture populaire moderne au XIXe siècle? (The “Urban
Mysteries”: A Metaphor for Nineteenth Century Popular Culture?)

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Jean-Louis Tilleuil, Olivier Odaert (University of Louvain)
Les origines européennes de la bande dessiné (The European Origins of Comics)

Federico Pagello (University of Bologna)

Le origini europee della serialità cinematografica (The European Origins of Serial Cinema)

Discussion

ore 14.30 – Studi di caso (Case-Studies)

Chair: Michele Fadda (University of Bologna)

Natacha Levet (University of Limoges)

Les vies pluriels de Sherlock Holmes à travers l’Europe (The Plural Lives of Sherlock Holmes across
Europe)

Felice Pozzo (Indipendent scholar )

Salgari in Europa (Salgari in Europe)

Irène Langlet (Université de Limoges)

Un problème technique avec l’anticipation (A Technical Problem with Science-Fiction)

ore 16.00 – Round Table

Problemi e prospettive della conservazione e valorizzazione della cultura popolare europea (Problems and
Perspectives of the Preservation and Valorisation of European popular culture)
Chair: Loïc Artiaga (University of Limoges)

With Claudio Gallo (Biblioteca civica di Verona), Paola Pallottino (University of Macerata),
Franco Spiritelli (Fondazione Rosellini, Senigallia), Luigi Virgolin (Cineteca di Bologna) and the
members of the EPOP teams.

Discussion

Alla ricerca delle

radici popolari della
cultura europea
Convegno a cura di 
Monica Dall’Asta e Federico Pagello
Promozione e comunicazione 
Fabio Acca, Marta Martina
Ufficio stampa
Laura Bernardini
Supporto logistico 
Michela Giorgi
Assistenza tecnica 
Stefano Orro
Traduzione simultanea 
Maura Vecchietti
Tirocinanti 
Simone Varriale, Mara Zanardi

www.epop­lab.eu
www.scribd.com/EPOP Project ­ Newsletter

Il presente progetto è finanziato con il sostegno della 
Commissione Europea. L’autore è il solo responsabile di questa 
comunicazione e la Commissione declina ogni responsabilità 
sull’uso che potrà essere fatto delle informazioni in essa contenute.

"Popular Roots of European Culture through Film,

Comics and Serialized Literature"
CULTURE PROGRAMME (2007-2013) CALL FOR PROPOSALS EACEA
N. 23/2007 - Strand 1.2.1

4
2) Call for a special issue
We will be glad to dedicate a whole number of our newsletter to a series of presentations of
research groups, institutions, associations, academic or fan/collector reviews or web-sites, etc.
working on European popular culture, possibly interested in joining the EPOP network. This
newsletter, as well as the whole project, is firstly a networking activity: our main goal is indeed to
enlarge the number of subjects involved in our network, in order to develop wider research
projects on the history of European popular culture after the end of the first phase of EPOP.
If you are interested in participating to this special issue please send us a short presentation,
including a description of your interests and activities, your contacts, and your ideas about a
European coordination of scholars, fans and collectors on the History of our popular culture.

About the Project:

The EPOP Project (Popular Roots of European Culture Through Film, Comics and Serialized Literature)
is a research and popularization project funded by the European Commission’s Culture
Programme 2007 and is promoted by the Department of Music and Performing Arts of the
University of Bologna, the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Limoges, the Pallas
Institute for Art Historical and Literature Studies of the University of Leiden, the GRIT
(Groupe des Recherche sur l’Image et le Texte) of the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve,
and the Department for Culture of the Province of Pescara. The project started on 24
November 2008 and will be completed on 24 May 2010.

About this Newsletter:

EPOP Project Newsletter provides news about the development of the project activities and
circulates information on research, initiatives and events concerning the history of European
popular culture. The newsletter will normally be published monthly. To be removed from our
mailing list, just click reply, and put 'remove' in the subject line. We will immediately remove your
email address from our mailing-list. This publication reflects the views only of its authors, and
the European Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the
information contained therein.