Dr. DAVIES Ffion Mary Rose2025-09-032025-09-032022Davies, F. M. R. (24 Oct 2022). Pulp frictions: Orientalising the homme fatal in early twentieth-century American crime fiction. Research Seminar, City University of Hong Kong.http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11861/24926The figure of the homme fatal has remained shrouded in obscurity owing to insufficient research and eclipsed in the presence of the femme fatale. This lacuna is in part attributable to a lack of substance and depth in previous definitions, which all too often offer a simple transference of tropes between the two subjects and overlook the political and cultural significance of sexual difference. While many authors have interrogated a wide range of deviant masculinities that appear in this early American crime fiction, but few have conceptualised them as a direct counter to the femme fatale. This research seeks to reconfigure the figure of the homme fatal through analysing representations of the 'yellow peril' in early twentieth century American pulp fiction using examples from popular magazines such as Dime Detective and Black Mask. I will be arguing that through the process of orientalism, these representations both codified cultural anxieties of the interwar period as well as reifying hegemonic masculinities.enPresentation