About this exhibition and related events

WELCOME TO #LOVECRAFTCOUNTRY

This exhibition – inspired by HBO’s Lovecraft Country and Lovecraft Country Radio – highlights historical, literary and cultural events presented in the show with published and primary source materials from Penn State’s Special Collections Library.

We center #LovecraftCountry : primary sources and published materials at Penn State as a guide to American history, in the spirit of the Ida B. Wells Education Project and following the guidance of the Langston League #LovecraftCountry syllabi. This exhibition expands on these existing projects by referencing rare materials and community and research centers unique to Penn State, including the Paul Robeson Cultural Center, the Center for Black Digital Research, and the Charles L. Blockson Collection of African Americana and the African Diaspora. The Penn State University Libraries also provide a Guide to Black Lives Matter.

This site takes visitors through the show episode by episode. Each post focuses Black and LGBTQIA+ creators and experiences, connecting the episode’s major themes to materials in the Libraries’ collections and our Collection Development Plan. We’ve also created a one-page list of works referenced in the exhibit, which you can bookmark and use for future research.

Visit the exhibit

Materials at Special Collections libraries are often not available digitally. To support access during the COVID-19 pandemic, we include links to our Research Services access scans, digital collections, library guides, and materials that can be used through the HathiTrust Emergency Temporary Access program wherever possible.

Throughout this exhibition, we have capitalized “Black” but not “white” when referring to race. This decision echoes the July 2020 change in the Associated Press style guide. While capitalizing “Black” has become common in the last year, publications are more divided as to whether or not to capitalize “white.” We have elected not to.

As explained by Black linguist John McWhorter in the Lexicon Valley podcast, “white nationalists have gotten a handle on ‘White’ … the idea being to enshrine whiteness as something separate and, in their sense, something preferable to a great many other things, including Black.” In McWhorter’s words, “a critical mass of us would rather not do what [white nationalists] do.” Because of the usage by white supremacists and because white people have not faced the systematic oppression of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, we have elected to leave the word uncapitalized.

For more information or for questions about this exhibition, please contact Special Collections.

Credits and Preferred Citation

#LovecraftCountry : primary sources and published materials at Penn State was curated (Fall 2020 – Spring 2021) by:

Alex Bainbridge, Research Services Specialist, Special Collections Library, Penn State

Elizabeth Hobart, Special Collections Cataloging Librarian, Penn State

G. Johns, Metadata Specialist, Special Collections Library, Penn State

Ruth Tillman, Cataloging Systems and Linked Data Strategist, Penn State

with support of Special Collections and University Libraries employees

How to cite:

Episode number : Episode’s title, #LovecraftCountry : primary sources and published materials at Penn State – Accessed MM-YYYY. https://sites.psu.edu/lovecraftcountry/

Related Events and publications

“Frankenstein’s Digital Monster: an exploration of community-centered digital humanities projects in horror, Black studies, and gender studies,” by Nicole Huff, as published in Making Sense of Digital Humanities, transformations and interventions in technocultures, by Julian Chambliss and Ellen Moll (2023)

Studies in the Fantastic, a journal founded by Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi, seeks submissions for a special issue about Lovecraft Country (01 June, 2021)

Sheffield’s Centre for the History of the Gothic presents the online symposium Cults, Cthulus, and Klansmen: The (Hi)stories within Lovecraft Country (20 May, 2021)

The AERA (American Educational Research Association) Presidential Sessions Cinematic Intersection Series (April, 2021) featured ten sessions intersecting with the award-winning film Get Out and the ground-breaking HBO series Lovecraft Country, including:

Topsy, Bopsy & Black Girlhood : What Lovecraft Country Can Teach Us About How Black Girls Are Seen (And See Themselves) (10 April, 2021)

From the abstract, “Most research on Black girlhoods focuses on the experiences, needs, and outcomes of living Black girls, past and present. In this presentation, we focus critical and theoretical lenses on fictional characters Diana ‘Dee’ Freeman, Topsy, and Bopsy, presented in the HBO drama series Lovecraft Country, tracing the literature and media perception of Black girls from Uncle Tom’s Cabin to modern-day YA literature and teen TV.”

“I Am” : Black Feminist Futures and Possibilities in the Academy (11 April, 2021)

From the abstract, “Using Misha Green’s story of Hippolyta Freeman from the “I Am” episode of HBO’s Lovecraft Country as a jumping point, this panel explores educational responsibility through a deeper understanding of Black womyn navigating the academy using afro-futurist, Black feminist, and critical race feminist lenses.”