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The Evolution of Cthulhu
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In 1933, Howard Phillips (H.P.) Lovecraft published the story “At the Mountains of Madness,” creating a world that has captured imaginations. It is the looming ancient god of the story, Cthulhu, who gives the Cthulhu Mythos its name, both of which have spawned countless works (and nightmares) since.
Stories, films, songs and more have been written within the Cthulhu Mythos, characterized by creeping dread, disgusting creatures and cosmic horror. Its abundant cultural presence lends the mythos the ubiquity of an inside joke among science fiction, fantasy and weird fiction aficionados, and resonance far beyond.
Charting the Cthulhu Mythos through time is akin to charting plant and animal evolution: environmental adaptation is necessary to survival — and cultural relevance. It is important to note that the constant appropriation of Lovecraft’s work has allowed the mythos to move away from its racist origins. As flora and fauna develop tougher bark and thicker coats to adapt to changes in climate, so too have the themes, places, figures and creatures of the Cthulhu Mythos taken new shapes to suit modern understanding and culture.
The Library’s extensive H.P. Lovecraft Collection includes extensive holdings of manuscripts, letters, editions of Lovecraft‘s works in all languages, periodicals, biographical and critical works, and many supportive collections of manuscript and printed materials of Lovecraft‘s friends and associates. There are more than 1,000 books and magazines in 20 languages containing material by or about Lovecraft plus over 2,000 original letters and manuscripts of his essays, fiction and poetry. Many of the papers were given to the Library a few months after his death in 1937.
In honor of Necronomicon Providence, here is a sample of items held by the Library that demonstrate some of the ways that the Cthulhu Mythos has been adapted, remixed and changed from the mythos of Lovecraft’s time.
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Winners of the Undergraduate Prize for Excellence in Library Research
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Brown University Library is pleased to announce that Paulina Gąsiorowska and Amira Haileab are the recipients of the 20th annual Undergraduate Prize for Excellence in Library Research, supported through the Center for Library Exploration and Research. This award, established in partnership with the Office of the Dean of the College, recognizes undergraduate projects that make extensive and creative use of Brown University Library’s collections, including print and primary resources, databases, and special collections.
The winning projects are honored with a $1,000 prize each and will be recognized at an awards ceremony on Wednesday, April 29 at 3 p.m. in the Racial Justice Resource Center on the second floor of the Rockefeller Library.
Winners
Paulina Gąsiorowska ’27
“On Re-Painting and (Self-) Primitivizing in Mela Muter’s Maternity Cycle”
Paulina Gąsiorowska’s research project, “On Re-Painting and (Self-)Primitivizing in Mela Muter’s Maternity Cycle,” takes up the life and work of early 20th century Polish-Jewish painter Mela Muter, who made her mark on French modernism by painting and re-painting maternity scenes across the aesthetic modes associated with the great (male) artists of the Western European avant-garde. Turning to exhibition catalogs and artist emigration archives, as well as frameworks of feminist, cultural, and art historians and theorists, the project posits a critical recognition of Muter’s pictorial surfaces as not constituting sites of pure radical subjectivity, but rather as staging dynamic negotiations of her ambivalent positionalities and complicities in modernist discourses of repetition and derivation, cosmopolitanism and primitivism, origin and originality.
Amira Haileab ’26
“A Black Red Sea: Understanding the Red Sea in Black Geography through the Conscript”
This paper is the introduction to Amira Haileab’s larger honors thesis project for AFRI 1970 with the supervision of Professors Kim Gallon and Jennifer Johnson. The project seeks to answer how The Conscript: A Novel of Libya’s Anticolonial War, by Dr. Abba Gebreyesus Hailu, understands and reimagines the Red Sea as a racialized space, and the significance of Black geography, the study of the relationship between Blackness and space, for understanding the role that the Red Sea plays in the novel. Written in 1927, published in 1950, and translated from Tigrinya to English in 2013, The Conscript is a fictional retelling of the experiences of Eritrean soldiers, known as the ascari. From 1889 to 1941, the ascari were conscripted by Italy to battle anti-colonial nationalist forces across African countries, including Sudan, Ethiopia, and Libya. The fraught journey of the ascari in The Conscript locates the region’s geography as a site of transformation, remembrance, and grief, highlighting the role that geography plays in informing identity. By analyzing two critical geographies in The Conscript — the coast and the desert — Amira’s paper works toward classifying the Red Sea as a particular lens through which the characters begin to understand their conscription and subjugation in relation to other African people.
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Revolutionary Communication: Printing Independence and the Birth of the American Stamp
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Revolutionary Communication Exhibit Poster Before the first musket was fired, the American Revolution was sparked by messages.
This spring, the John Hay Library at Brown University invites you to explore our latest exhibition, Revolutionary Communication: Printing Independence and the Birth of the American Stamp, bringing together original maps, newspapers, and artifacts that show how communication became our nation’s first act of sovereignty.
Discover the story of William Goddard — a Providence printer who founded The Providence Gazette and established The Constitutional Post. This independent postal network bypassed British surveillance and carried revolutionary ideas across the colonies. The simple act of sending a letter became a radical act of defiance for American liberty. As we celebrate the upcoming 250th anniversary of American independence this year, join us to witness where the Revolution truly began.
The event will feature the first official commemorative stamp cancellation event in Rhode Island since 1990, with Jeanne Jackson, the first female postmaster in Providence. Bring your own envelope — or collect our customized-designed postcard on-site — to receive a unique, limited-edition cancellation stamp from Jeanne: a tangible piece of American postal history and a testament to the enduring power of free, open communication.
Exhibit Opening & Stamp Cancellation Event
Opening Reception: April 30th, 2026
Time: 2:00pm – 4:00pm EDT
Location: Room 321, John Hay Library, 20 Prospect Street, Providence, RI
Co-sponsor: Brown University Library, David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown Arts Institute, Brown 2026
Cost: Free
MUST RSVP Here