Discover how Pompeii’s last days begat modern disaster flicks

Head back in cinematic time this Friday, February 7, as Nipissing’s History Seminar Series presentsDisaster Begins: The Last Days of Pompeii, 1834-1935, a special lecture by Dr. Cameron McFarlane, assistant professor of English, 2:30 p.m. in room A252.Here’s an abstract on the discussion:Since the early nineteenth century, Pompeii’s last days have been represented on the page, stage, and screen in at least 40 different works – not counting numerous paintings, sculptures, panoramas, dioramas, and smoke-belching models.  The vast majority of these representations follow the 1834 publication of Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii and are, at least to some extent, adaptations of that highly successful novel.  This paper concentrates on RKO’s The Last Days of Pompeii (Cooper and Schoedsack, 1935), the first sound film with that title, positioning the film both at the end of a century of adaptation and at the beginning of something new: disaster as a modern cinematic genre.
The lecture is free of charge, and coffee and tea will be provided.