W. Scott Poole is a writer and an associate professor of history at the College of Charleston. He’s the author of Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and Haunting (October 2011), a work where he uses the monster to explore American anxieties over race, sex, gender and religious belief. He’s the author of five previous books dealing with race, religion and popular culture. He’s very proud of his record and comics collection and would get a Bride of Frankenstein tattoo if he were not scared of needles and his mom. His website is monstersinamerica.com. Follow him on twitter @monstersamerica.
Features
Monday, October 11 2004
Place as Burden: Please Do Not Vacation in Charleston, South Carolina
In contemporary South Carolina, people seem willing and eager to evoke, rather than to exorcize, the ghosts of the past. Yet if you mention its uglier aspects, you will be told, perhaps by someone dressed in a hoop-skirt and getting ready to lead a tour of a 'two hundred yar old plantation', to 'stop living in the past'.
Columns
Friday, September 30 2011
Chuck Eddy Will Piss You Off with 'Rock and Roll Always Forgets'
Buy this infuriating and brilliant book. But get it in softcover. You'll be throwing it against your wall.
Tuesday, June 28 2005
Do White Folks Get the Blues?
If white folks don't really get the blues, they certainly preserve it, record it, and put together and attend festivals where the music is rightfully celebrated.
Wednesday, April 27 2005
Superman in the Cotton Fields: Comics in Black and White, Mostly White
A racist society is one in which significant political and social capital rests in white hands, even if that society gives lip service and official tribute to the ideals of 'tolerance' and 'diversity'. At least in the marginal art form of comics, African American representations are changing.
Wednesday, March 2 2005
Captain Confederacy: The South in Living Color
The creators of the 'tights and cape' crew that have dominated the comics form for much of its history knew the streets of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn well, but the rural South proved beyond their imagining. 'Captain Confederacy' changed all that.
Wednesday, December 29 2004
Goodbye, Lady in Black
Poole writes of the last Southern 500, Republicans in blue collars, and why it's still the economy, stupid.
Reviews
Wednesday, May 16 2012
Kate Beckinsale Shoots, Stabs and Blows Up Things in 'Underworld: Awakening'
Even Selene's icy blue stare can't hypnotize us into having fun with this one.
Wednesday, May 2 2012
Art and Open Wounds: 'This Will Have Been'
The '80s became a cultural moment in which a conversation about boundaries and their instability acquired sharp teeth. Beautifully designed, an objet d’art in itself, this book explores art from a time period that had a deeply ambivalent attitude toward art.
Thursday, March 22 2012
Iraq-Naphobia: 'Roger Corman Presents: Camel Spiders'
If you're used to Roger Corman’s wild subversive craziness, the way his best films reveled in their own absurdity, this leaden affair will disappoint in the extreme.
Friday, February 24 2012
These 'Vampires' Don't Sparkle
Angry parents, rebellious sons and sulking daughters sit down to dinner... and dinner just happens to be a prostitute they refer to as "the meat". Tonight she's flavored with ravioli.
Friday, February 3 2012
Grave Robbing, Murder and a Few Laughs: 'Burke and Hare'
I wish I could say this was the triumphal return of a great director rather than just a decent rental.
