GUEST POST: Bryan Sitch

The Heronbridge Skeletons at The Manchester Museum

The human skeletons from Heronbridge near Chester have attracted a lot of interest recently. Some of this is thanks to Hannah with whom I discussed the remains last year. Within a matter of hours it seemed Hannah had arranged for me to speak about the discovery at a conference she was organising about Gender and the Middle Ages. In just over five weeks’ time on 29th March there will be another opportunity to explore what the bones mean when the Manchester Museum holds a day school on the Heronbridge skeletons. This is to coincide with a Manchester Anglo-Saxon Studies Colloquium which is being held on 28th March. Hopefully people will find it worthwhile to stay over. What is it that makes the skeletons so interesting?

The skeletons were found during excavations at Heronbridge during the early 1930s. Many of the finds were of Roman date and it was assumed that the skeletons were also of Roman date. In the excavation publication it was stated that the remains would be deposited at the Manchester Museum and that a detailed report had been presented to the university librarian. On the basis of this statement a number of enquirers had contacted the Museum to ask about the skeletons but no-one was able to find them. It was just over a year ago that the penny dropped.

As Curator of Archaeology I had gone through the human remains in the collection to find out what was known about them. I noticed that many of the bones had no associated information. Some, however, had distinctive labels on which Greek characters were written such as alpha, beta, gamma, delta and so on. At the time this meant nothing to me but it quickly became clear when I re-read the brief report about the Heronbridge skeletons published in 1933. In a table at the back of the report the skeletons were listed but half way across the table the numbering changed and the skeletons had dual numbering using Greek characters. On its own this might not be sufficient to tie down the provenance but the bone report also referred to wounds on the skulls. When I checked the skulls I saw large impact trauma, injuries made by long edged weapons. Dr Elwyn Davies who wrote the bone report speculated the injuries were caused by Roman cavalry swords. This conclusion was based on the presence of Roman finds on the Heronbridge site. However, in 2005 further archaeological work was carried out at Heronbridge and two of the skeletons were recovered and radiocarbon dated. The range of dates suggested a time somewhere around the early 7th century AD.

This was extremely interesting because in his 'Ecclesiastical History of the English People' Bede gave an account of the Battle of Chester. A Northumbrian army led by King Aethelfrith fought a smaller force of northern Welsh Britons and defeated it. Bede's account said that Aethelfrith, seeing British Christian monks praying for the defeat of the Northumbrians, ordered his men to cut them down. Many of the monks were killed. The Northumbrians retreated having suffered heavy casualties in their turn and with British reinforcements on their way.

Could the skeletons in the Manchester Museum be casualties of the Battle of Chester in or about 616 AD? None have been radiocarbon dated but they come from very similar contexts to the skeletons lifted in 2005. As the latter have been radiocarbon dated it seems reasonable to infer that the skeletons from the 1930s excavations are of the same date. As the dead were buried in significant numbers in pits (laid out respectfully like sardines in a tin), it must have been a significant battle. The wounds on some of the bones are very similar to those seen on skeletons from Anglo-Saxon cemeteries. And they are all men. I conclude that the skeletons in the Museum must be from the Battle of Chester. To have a sizeable group of human remains showing trauma from a 'Dark Age' battlefield together with an historical account is really exciting.

But who are the skeletons? Which side were they on? Could they be the remains of the monks? Perhaps tidied away respectfully by the Welsh reinforcements that arrived too late to take part in the battle? Prof. Nick Higham of the University of Manchester has argued that we must take what Bede has to say with a large pinch of salt. Bede isn't a reliable guide to events on the battlefield. He was writing providential history and trying to justify the slaughter of Christians by the pagan Anglo-Saxons who would later become Christian. Bede was serving a religious agenda. For instance no early medieval monastery in this country can have had the numbers of monks ascribed to it by Bede. Bu'Lock argued the monks were former warriors who had retired to the cloister to pass their twilight years only to be pressed back into military service in an emergency when the Northumbrians attacked Chester. Again this seems unlikely. Whether we can find out from isotopic studies which part of the world these men came from remains to be seen.

We will explore aspects of the story in the day school at the Manchester Museum on 29th March. Six speakers have confirmed their titles and it looks like a fascinating date.

Bryan Sitch
Deputy Head of Collections and Curator of Archaeology
The Manchester Museum

For more information about the Heronbridge skeletons, see the Ancient Worlds blog from The Manchester Museum.

CFP: 4th Global Conference: Bullying and the Abuse of Power

Sunday 4th November – Tuesday 6th November 2012
Salzburg, Austria

Call For Papers

Bullying is a global problem. Whether it takes place in the schoolyard; the board room; the corridors of academe; a detention centre for alleged terrorists; a government office, or cyber space; and whether it involves insult, physical assault or manipulation of the environment with the intention of making another person’s life intolerable, bullying involves the abuse of power. Everyone is affected by it, whether directly or indirectly.

All of us know people who are bullied, and all of us know bullies, though we may be unaware that we do. After all, bullies may seem, on the surface, to be kind, caring and supportive human beings, interested in nurturing others. And if they have been kind to us, we may fail to perceive their unkindness to others.

Bullying goes on at every level, often goes on behind closed doors; inside private emails, and in actions that might appear innocuous. It grows out of the ability that many (and perhaps most) people have, to find enjoyment and fulfilment in exerting power over others. It depends for its existence either on a lack of empathy and human feeling, or on the developed ability to suspend empathy. It can ruin lives, and it can end lives. We should not allow ourselves to believe that because it is not open to view, bullying is not present.

In the first three years of Bullying and the Abuse of Power, a number of themes have emerged. Two of these – bullying in schools and bullying in the workplace (including universities) are unsurprising and have featured strongly in both earlier conferences. Alongside these, and other themes with a practical focus, such as cyberbullying, participants have wrestled with the problem of saying exactly what is to count as bullying, and how far its boundaries extend.

Abstracts are now invited for Bullying and the Abuse of Power 4, for individual contributions or for symposia of three papers. Abstracts that illuminate and comment on more than one sphere in which bullying manifests itself, are especially welcomed, as are abstracts that draw together insights from more than one academic, professional or vocational area, or that draw from more than one cultural or theoretical perspective. Abstracts are also especially welcomed that focus on bullying in areas where the abuse of power is less commonly thought of in this way, including the ill treatment of elders; genocide; human trafficking, and bullying in international relations and international trade.

1. Bullying in School/in the Workplace
~ Bullying of older people/disabled people
~ Sexual bullying
~ Racial bullying
~ Religious intolerance

2. From Playground Bullying to Genocide/Bullying: How Far Can it Go?
~ Human Rights abuses
~ Genocide
~ The Holocaust
~ Human trafficking

3. International Relations
~ Cultural intolerance
~ Terrorism as a means of persuasion
~ Imposition of the wishes of the developed world on developing countries
~ Bullying of Indigenous people

4. Multinationals, Impoverished Nations and Corner Shops
~ The effects of globalisation on business
~ Changing patterns of shopping: corner shops vs superstores
~ Advertising and vulnerable consumers
~ Cut price goods and low pay for workers

Papers will be considered on any related theme. Abstracts should be written in simple language and for individual contributions should beno longer than 300 words, while for symposia they should include a 150 word overview for each contribution and a 200 word overview for the whole session (please take these word limits seriously). Abstracts should be submitted by Friday 4th May 2012. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 3rd August 2012. Abstracts should be submitted to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract,e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords.

E-mails should be entitled: BULLY4 Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is planned for the end of the year. All accepted abstracts will be included in this publication. We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs

Gavin J Fairbairn
Professor of Ethics and Language
Leeds Metropolitan University
Leeds
United Kingdom

Rob Fisher
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Priory House,
Wroslyn Road,
Freeland,
Oxfordshire OX29 8HR

The conference is part of the Ethos Hub series of ongoing research and publications projects conferences, run within the Critical Issues domain which aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore innovative and challenging routes of intellectual and academic exploration. All papers accepted for and presented at the conference will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume.

For further details of the project, please click here.

For further details of the conference, please click here.

Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network andwe are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.

CFP: 9th Global Conference: Making Sense Of: Dying and Death

Saturday 10th November – Monday 12th November 2012
Salzburg, Austria

Call For Papers:

This inter- and multi-disciplinary conference explores dying and death and the ways culture impacts care for the dying, the overall experience of dying, and ways the dead are remembered. Over the past three decades, scholarship in thanatology has increased dramatically.This particular conference seeks a broad array of perspectives that explore, analyze, and/or interpret the myriad interrelations and interactions that exist between death and culture. Culture not only presents and portrays ideas about “a good death” and norms that seek to achieve it, culture also operates as both a vehicle and medium through which meaning about death is communicated and understood. Sadly, too, culture sometimes facilitates death through violence.

Submissions might be imagined in any (or none) of the following ways:“death” as an expression of doctrinal beliefs and/or core values,death and dying as an on-going movement between an individual or community and a larger socio-cultural matrix, or death as essentiallya cultural construction. Investigations that engage cultural studies from a variety of perspective are certainly encouraged. We also welcome perspectives that interrogate the stability of meaning(s)assigned to such terms (“culture,” “death,” “dignity,”“care,” etc.) and their complex inter-relations.

Specifically, submissions should be framed with at least one of the following four rubrics in mind: death/dying within culture, culture within death/dying, death/dying as popular culture (and vice versa), or death/dying in tension with culture.

We welcome submissions that produce conversations engaging historical, ethnographic, normative, literary, anthropological, philosophical, artistic, political or other terms that elaborate a relationship between death and culture. For example, submissions might investigate death and dying in relation to any of the following realms of culture:

* music
* literature
* film
* broadcast media
* religious broadcasting
* journalism
* athletics
* comic books
* novels / poetry / short story
* television
* radio
* print media
* internet / technology
* popular art / architecture
* sacred vs. profane space
* advertising
* consumerism
* new religious movements/religious subcultures

Papers will be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 4th May 2012. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 3rd August 2012. 300 word abstracts should be submitted to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this
order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract,e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords

E-mails should be entitled: DD9 Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics orunderline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is planned for the end of the year. All accepted abstracts will be included in this publication. We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs

Nate Hinerman
Nursing/Theology and Religious Studies
University of San Francisco
San Francisco, USA

Rob Fisher
Network Leader
Inter-Disciplinary.Net,
Freeland,
Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

The conference is part of the Making Sense Of: series of research projects, which in turn belong to the Probing the Boundaries programmes of Inter-Disciplinary.Net. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore discussions which are innovative and challenging. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into a themed ISBN hard copy volume.

For further details of the project, please click here.

For further details of the conference, please click here.

Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.

GUEST POST: Bryan Sitch (The Manchester Museum)

Monsters, the Museum and Sacrificial Theory

When Hannah contacted me about contributing a paper to a conference she is organising on the subject of Monsters, I immediately thought of the presentation I gave - or rather a colleague gave on my behalf - at a conference a year or so ago. In the paper I made a brief survey of objects in the Manchester Museum archaeology collection depicting monsters, including Odysseus in the Cyclops’ cave on an ancient Greek vase and figurines of the chimera or chimaera, the sirens and the sphinx.



At that time I was very interested in sacrificial theory, but I was only able to touch upon the topic in passing because most of the paper was devoted to monstrous objects in the Museum collection. One of the questions I posed was if, as has been argued by Adrienne Mayor in her fascinating book The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times (2001), some of the monsters in ancient Greek myths were inspired by discoveries of fossilised bones from long-extinct Mediterranean megafauna, then how do we explain weird composites or hybrids like the chimaera or the sphinx in which the bodies of completely different creatures are mixed together? The former animal had the body of a lioness with a snake for a tail and a goat’s head sticking out of its back. It's like one of those books for children in which you turn a page and the head of one person is superimposed upon the body of someone else who is in turn superimposed over the lower body of another person. Reading Rene Girard's books about sacrificial theory seemed to offer a solution. Girard is a French academic who has worked for many years in the USA

His argument goes something like this: in the distant past members of a community that facing a flood or a famine or pestilence might experience into a state of collective anxiety such that the members of that community become progressively more agitated to the point where a total break-down of order and respect for social distinction is threatened. Girard compares the situation to a pan of milk about to boil over. What prevents the pan boiling over and a collective descent into anarchy – what Girard calls the ‘sacrifical crisis’- is the selection of a victim or scapegoat who acts as a lightning rod, exorcising the communal frenzy and bringing about a return to normality. Typically the victim is accused of having committed horrendous crimes and suffers a violent death in which all the members of the community take part. The victim is selected on the basis of disabilities or blemishes (and sometimes being unblemished is the excuse). Think of the myth of Oedipus with his club foot for example. Once order has been restored the community rationalises its violent treatment of the victim, who undergoes a change of status. Girard calls this the ‘mythic crystallisation’. Instead of being held responsible for the break-down of social order the victim is seen as having brought about its resolution and becomes a sanctified figure.

There are a number of things here that are relevant. Firstly, people who suffer from a disability or a blemish can be perceived as monstrous as well as being accused of monstrous crimes by other members of the community. Think of Oedipus who murdered his father and married his mother. Secondly Girard characterises the descent into chaos as a lack of respect for order and degree and social hierarchies. The people involved become so agitated that they can no longer make sense of what they are seeing. In the collective madness their perceptions are confused, resulting in the mixing of different categories, such as animal and human, and the creation of monstrous compilations and hybrids.



Monstrosity, therefore, is an important part of Rene Girard’s work on scape-goating. This offers potentially a way of understanding monsters, of which hybrids like the chimaera and the sphinx in Greek mythology are such memorable examples.

Bryan Sitch
Deputy Head of Collections and Curator of Archaeology
The Manchester Museum

Images:

1. Bronze Figurine of a Sphinx
2. Terracota Depicting Medusa

Bryan Sitch will be speaking on 'Monsters, the Museum and Sacrificial Theory' at the Hic Dragones Monsters: Subject, Object, Abject Conference, to be held at the Manchester Museum on 12-13 April 2012. For more information about the conference, please visit the Hic Dragones website.

Heronbridge - an Early Battlefield Assemblage Rediscovered

Thursday 29 March 2012 10.00am – 4.30pm
Kanaris Theatre, The Manchester Museum, Oxford Road Manchester M13 9PL

10.30 - 11.15am Bryan Sitch ‘The Manchester Museum and a long lost collection’

11.20 – 12.05pm Nick Higham 'Bede and the Battle of Chester'

12.05 – 12.50pm Mark Zumbuhl ‘The Battle of Chester in Welsh and Irish Texts’

Lunch, Tea and Coffee provided

2.00 – 2.45pm Ian Uzzell of Vikingasaga ‘Re-enactment of early Medieval weapons and armour’

2.50 – 3.35pm David Mason 'Heronbridge Excavations 2002-05: The Battle of Chester Located (?)’

3.45 – 4.15 Bob Stoddart ‘Life, Violence, Death and Decay. The Identification of pathological information in battlefield remains’

The registration fee for this event is £20. For more information, or to book a place on the day school, please email Phyllis Stoddart.

The Monster Mash

Friday 13th April 2012
Sachas Hotel
Manchester, United Kingdom
8pm-late

A deliciously decadent and moreishly monstrous costume ball.

Dress code: formalwear, smart Goth, steampunk, cyberpunk, Victorian, fancy-dress

Ticket price: £25 - follow this link for TICKET INFORMATION.










For more information, see the Hic Dragones website. This event is part of a weekend of monster and horror-themed events in Manchester, see the Hic Dragones website for more info.

Monsters: Subject, Object, Abject

Kanaris Lecture Theatre and Conference Room
Manchester Museum, Oxford Road,
Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom

Thursday 12th April – Friday 13th April 2012

Conference Programme

Thursday 12th April

9.00-9.30am: Registration

9.30-11.00am: Opening Remarks (Dr. Hannah Priest, University of Manchester) and Session 1: Monsters in Popular Culture (Kanaris Lecture Theatre)
Chair: TBC
(i) Matthew Freeman (University of Nottingham): Who’s Monster?: Monsters, Subjectivity, and the Figure of the Child in Doctor Who
(ii) James Campbell (University of Stirling): ‘Welcome to the Madhouse’: The Conflation of Monstrosity, Madness and Mental Illness in DC Comics’ Batman Franchise
(iii) Christina Wilkins (University of Southampton): Transatlantic Differences and the Importance of Religion in Post-9/11 Monsters

11.00-11.30am: Coffee

11.30-1.00pm: Parallel Sessions

Session 2a: Literary Monsters (Kanaris Lecture Theatre)
Chair: TBC
(i) Lisa Tagliaferri (The Graduate Center, CUNY): S’el fu sì bel com’elli è ora brutto: Dante’s Vision of Lucifer
(ii) Imke Heuer (University of Southampton): ‘A brood of monsters like myself’: Joshua Pickersgill’s The Three Brothers, Byron’s The Deformed Transformed and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
(iii) Giulia I. Sandelewski (Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham): Vengeful or Revenger? Renaissance Drama as a Lens for Vallgren’s Hercules Barefoot

Session 2b: Making Monsters (Conference Room)
Chair: TBC
(i) Lisa Temple-Cox (Independant Researcher): Making Myself a Monster: Self-Portraiture as Teratological Specimen
(ii) Rosie Garland (Independent Researcher): ‘The Girl You Never Loved But Always Looked For’: Occupational Therapy and the Development of the Performance Persona Rosie Lugosi the Vampire Queen
(iii) Susanne Hamscha (FU Berlin): “Gaga, Ooh La La”: Lady Gaga and the Pleasures of Being a Freak

1.00-2.00pm: Lunch

2.00-3.30pm: Parallel Sessions

Session 3a: Embodying Monstrosity (Kanaris Lecture Theatre)
Chair: TBC
(i) Tracy Fahey (Limerick School of Art and Design, LIT): Invisible Monsters: Gothic and the Diabetic Body
(ii) Michel Delville (University of Liège) and Andrew Norris (Institut Supérieur des Traducteurs et Interprètes): Monstrosity, Hunger and Resistance
(iii) Lorie Hamalian (California State University): Swans and Prawns: Monster Metamorphoses and Hybrid Identities in Aronofsky’s Black Swan and Blomkamp’s District 9

Session 3b: Monsters of Literature (Conference Room)
Chair: TBC
(i) Jessica George (Cardiff University): Celtic Subject and Racial Other in Arthur Machen’s ‘The White People’
(ii) Kay Lint (University of Hertfordshire): ‘Mangy fur and red, smouldering eyes’, The Monstrous Dog in Graham Masterton’s Charnel House
(iii) Rick Hudson (Bath Spa University): ‘Their Hand Is At Your Throat, But Ye See Them Not’: Monstrous Absence in the Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft

3.30-4.00pm: Coffee

4.00-5.00pm: Parallel Sessions

Session 4a: Folk Monsters (Kanaris Lecture Theatre)
Chair: TBC
(i) Carla Bascombe (University of the West Indies): Monsters of the Caribbean: A Portrait of the Traditional Torturer in the Untraditional Tale
(ii) Alexandra McGlynn (Independent Researcher): Kappa: Buttocks-Ball Eating Monsters of Shintõ Suijin

Session 4b: Monsters of Cinema (Conference Room)
Chair: TBC
(i) Michael C. Bongiorno (CUNY, College of Staten Island): Another One for the Fire: Spectatorship, Apparatus and Recognition in Night of the Living Dead (1968)
(ii) Joshua Peery (Independent Researcher): Fear the Ma(SHE)ne: Monstrous Female Machines in Sci-Fi Cinema

5.00pm: Close

7.30pm: Conference Dinner at Felicini

*****

Friday 13th April

9.30-11.00am: Parallel Sessions

Session 5a: Old Monsters, New Faces (Kanaris Lecture Theatre)
Chair: TBC
(i) Rachel Mizsei Ward (University of East Anglia): Munchkin Cthulhu, My Little Cthulhu and Chibithulu: The Transformation of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu from Horrific Body to Cute Body
(ii) Carys Crossen (University of Manchester): ‘The loup-garou has a duty: justice’: The Law, Justice and Vigilantism in Contemporary Lycanthropic Fiction
(iii) Kim Wilkins (University of Queensland): Writing the Medieval Monstrous

Session 5b: Spaces of Monstrosity
Chair: TBC
(i) Ersi Ioannidou (University of Brighton): Dismembered Domesticity: the House as Monster
(ii) David Allen (Midland Actors Theatre): Expedition Everest
(iii) Garfield Benjamin (University of Wolverhampton): Virtual Monsters: Becoming Death and the Quantum Immortal

11.00-11.30am: Coffee

11.30-1.00pm: Parallel Sessions

Session 6a: Of Monstrosity and Humanity (Kanaris Lecture Theatre)
Chair: TBC
(i) Maria Chatzidimou (Aristotle University of Thessaloni): I am not an elephant! I am not a man! I am a colonized abject! : Re-viewing David Lynch’s The Elephant Man
(ii) Ian Pettigrew (University of Miami): The Monster’s Choice to Be Human: Guillermo del Toro’s Incarnations of a Hitchcockian Theme

Session 6b: More Literary Monstrosity (Conference Room)
Chair: TBC
(i) Martyn Colebrook (University of Hull): ‘The Last Banned Book in Britain’: David Britton, Michael Butterworth, Lord Horror and Monstrosity
(ii) Eva Bru (Independent Researcher) The Spectacle of the Monstrous: Enforcing Normalcy in Mercè Rodoreda’s Death in Spring
(iii) Kristy Butler (Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick): Breaking the Frame: Alternative Histories, Monstrous Ideologies and the Political Gothic

1.00-2.00pm: Lunch

2.00-3.00pm: Monsters, the Museum and Sacrificial Theory: Workshop with Bryan Sitch (Manchester Museum) (Kanaris Lecture Theatre)

3.00-3.30pm: Coffee

3.30-4.30pm: Session 7: The Monstrous Human (Kanaris Lecture Theatre)
Chair: TBC
(i) Abby Bentham (University of Salford): The Monster in Me: On Cultural Fascination with the Fictional Psychopath
(ii) David McWilliam (Lancaster University): Demystifying the Folk Devil: The Humanization of Aileen Wuornos in Patty Jenkins’s Monster (2003)

4.30-5.00pm: Closing Remarks

5.00pm: Conference Close

This conference is being run by Hic Dragones, and information on registration can be found on the Hic Dragones website. The registration fee is £75 (including refreshments) or £97 (including a 3-course conference dinner on Thursday 12th), and the deadline for registration in 30th March 2012. Following the conference, there will be a series of public events with a horror/monstrous theme. For more information about the public events, please click here.

Interview with Graeme Reynolds

Graeme Reynolds' first novel, High Moor (a werewolf novel set in the North East of England), came out in November 2011. I’ll be reviewing the book soon, but, in the meantime, I caught up with Graeme to talk writing, werewolves and publishing…

She-Wolf: Hi Graeme. Thanks for talking to us. Why don’t you start by telling us a little bit about yourself…

Graeme Reynolds: I’m originally from the North East of England, but moved to the Bristol area when I was 18, with the RAF. After a brief military career that lasted a whole year and a half, I stayed in the area. These days I break computers for money, and I moved into an isolated smallholding in Wales last year, in readiness for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. I’ve been writing for just over three years, and some people even like my work. My first novel, High Moor, came out in November.

SW: Tell us a bit about High Moor – what’s the book about?

GR: The book is split into three parts. The first part is very much a coming of age story, set in North East England in 1986 and also conforms more closely to the “classic” werewolf tale. The children in the first part have to deal with some pretty traumatic events, and that sets things up for the rest of the book.

Part 2 is very much about coming to terms with change. In this instance, it’s about how the characters deal with loss, and how their lives change as a result of the events in the first part of the novel. Specifically, how a family reacts to the fact that their ten year old son is now a werewolf. I like to think of part 2 as being the “what happened next?” part of the book.

SW: Sounds intriguing. What about the third part?

GR: The last section takes place in 2008, and the theme is how your past actions can have unforeseen consequences, sometimes years later. John, the main character returns to High Moor after a long absence, when he hears reports of what could be another werewolf in the town. He races against time to find the beast before the next full moon, when he will turn into a werewolf himself.

SW: So how did you get started in writing?

GR: Writing is something that I always wanted to do, but never really got around to. I used to write horror based role-playing games in my teens and twenties, and had a couple of false starts where I would write a chapter of a novel then consign it to the bin because I wasn’t happy with it. Then, in 2008 I discovered flash fiction and wrote about 30 or so short stories that were published in a few electronic and print venues. I started High Moor not long after I started writing shorts, but it sat gathering dust for a while. All things considered, that wasn’t a bad move in the end, because it gave me time to learn the craft, try different styles on and develop my own voice.

SW: Where do you get your inspiration from?

GR: High Moor was inspired by events in my childhood. There were reports of a big cat in the area, attacking livestock in fields. There were some sightings, and even a photograph of “The Durham Beast”, and we had the police coming into schools, warning us not to go into the woods alone. I was around the same age as the characters in the book at the time, and it left a lasting impression on me.

SW: So is High Moor a bit autobiographical then?

GR: There is an awful lot of autobiographical stuff mixed in with part 1, in terms of what the kids get up to. My mother has already chastised me for a scene involving the school VCR.

SW: So there are a few stories from your childhood then?

GR: One scene in particular – the climax of part 1, has been with me for years. I remember being at a scout camp and being told around a campfire, under a full moon, about a book that had a werewolf attacking a cub scout camp. I got so scared that I packed my stuff and walked home at 2 in the morning. It turned out later, when I read the actual book, that none of that stuff happened, and it was just kids being nasty. That mental image of that scene stayed with me though, and that was in many ways, the starting point for me when I sat down to write High Moor. It’s been a story that I’ve wanted to tell since I was ten years old.

SW: Tell me a bit about the werewolves in High Moor. Did any particular traditions inspire you?

GR: I started off with the standard, common and garden wolf man stereotype, and found in many ways, the twist to the mythology that I came up with grew organically from the story. I’ve always loved the fact that werewolves very much represented man’s struggle with the bestial part of his nature. I tried to really build on that, so while there is only one “curse” as such, depending on the mindset of the individual, they become a different type of monster.

SW: So what sort of werewolves do they become?

GR: The classic wolf man is called a moonstruck in the story. These are the people that fight against the wolf and keep it suppressed. When the moon is full, the wolf becomes too powerful and they change, but because they fight it, they end up caught between man and beast. All pain, rage and instinct.

The afflicted that accept the wolf side of them become more fully wolf, and retain their personality and intellect. The two sides work in harmony, although even in human form, they have strong wolfish instincts as they are in a symbiotic relationship with their animal side.

The last type is somewhere between the two. When a victim gives themselves over to the wolf. They retain their intelligence to an extent, and can change at will, but even in human form, they are more animal than person.

SW: There’s been a bit of a boom in werewolf fiction lately, why do you think they’re so popular?

GR: I think that werewolves have always been popular. A great deal of the recent interest comes from the paranormal romance genre, where the werewolves are considered primarily as a love interest for a human character. The same thing happened with vampires, and while it may make for a nice teenage fantasy, it gets away from what is interesting and frightening about the monster, taming it, if you like.

There are more horror themed werewolf stories coming out as well, though. Maybe with vampires and zombies saturating the market, people are turning back to the werewolf as another option. I can only hope that it continues, and we get some real quality werewolf fiction coming out. There are not that many truly great werewolf novels, when compared to other sub genres. Not that I have found anyway. It’s about time there were more.

SW: You have some female werewolves in your book – tell me a bit about writing them.

GR: I have a couple, but the main female werewolf character was very different to write than the others. She’s probably the most assured character in the book – certainly the most comfortable with herself. She has a playful, tender and quite mischievous side to her, but has her own agenda and won’t think twice about making a mess of anyone that gets in her way. By the time I finished the book, she was probably my favourite character. She’s almost certainly going to be the main protagonist in the second book.

SW: Was she any harder to write than the male werewolves?

GR: In some ways, she was the easiest to write, but also the most frustrating. She had an uncanny knack for turning my plot on its head and ruining my chapter plans, because she would go off and do something that I’d never even considered. It’s strange when things like that happen, but also great.

SW: Outside of your own (of course), who’s your favourite female werewolf?

GR: While I’ll always have a soft spot for Kelly Armstrong’s Elena, my favourite she-wolf has to be Laura Greenacre, from Thomas Emson’s brilliant Maneater and Prey novels. She’s smart, withdrawn in many respects, but is absolutely loyal and vicious when she needs to be. Both books are among my favourite pieces of werewolf fiction, and Laura’s character is a big part of that.

SW: Let's talk about publishing. Once you’d finished writing High Moor what happened next?

GR: When I started High Moor, I was intending to go down the traditional publishing route. Unfortunately, the more I saw of traditional publishing, the less I liked the idea. I’ve met people who have sold 100,000 copies of a book and made almost no money from it. I’ve also spoken to people who have been given a dreadful cover by the publisher that has hurt their sales. I wanted to retain creative control over the book. I’m proud of it and didn’t want an editor chopping out the interesting parts to make it fit a niche.

SW: You started your own small press to publish your novel. Tell me a bit about that decision.

GR: The decision to form Horrific Tales Publishing came fairly easily. I understood enough of the market to know broadly what else I needed to do once the book was finished (little things like paying a cover artist and getting a professional editor involved). As I started getting these things done, the costs started mounting up and it occurred to me that, as I’m intending to start a business (albeit with one product) I might as well run it like a business. That way I can put things down as a business expense, for example. Also, while people will read something that a small press has put out, they won’t always consider something that’s “self published”. There is still a great deal of stigma attached to the term, and people who submit their first draft to Amazon without so much as proof reading it are not helping.

It could all go horribly wrong, of course, and I may have to eat my words and go crawling to a traditional publisher if no one buys it, but for now, I’m happy with my choices.

SW: Will Horrific Tales be publishing any more titles?

GR: There is a chance that I’ll expand into publishing other people’s stuff. I have a couple of writer friends that have some great books in progress, and it may be that, because I’ve dealt with a lot of the paperwork and other business parts, that they may want me to put their stuff out through the imprint as well. It all costs money, though, and takes a lot of time, that will invariably take me away from my writing. I’ll have to see how it goes.

SW: And what about a sequel to High Moor?

GR: I’ve already started on the sequel, and there is an “in continuity” short story out in an enhanced eBook anthology called Tooth and Claw through Liquid Imagination Publishing. I’m hoping to have the sequel out by the end of 2012, and at the moment, I’ll probably publish that one through HTP as well. There are going to be at least three books in the High Moor series, maybe more. I’ll have to see where the story takes me after the first three.

SW: What sort of books do you enjoy reading? Any favourites from the last year?

GR: I’ve had a very werewolf centric year. I started off with Wolfen, by Whitley Streiber, which scared me as much a second time around as it did when I first read it as a child. Then I read the fantastic The Wolf’s Hour by Robert McCammon. It’s an amazing novel – especially the parts dealing with Michael’s life in the forest as a newly turned werewolf. It’s not really horror, but it’s one of my favourite reads of the year. This week I finished The Last Werewolf, by Glen Duncan. Parts of the book blew me away. Other parts went on a bit, I thought, and I wasn’t keen on the ending. Finally, today, I finished a book called The Squirrel who Dreamt of Madness. It’s a very odd book, but hilarious in places and quite thought provoking in others.

SW: How about films? Any favourite werewolf films?

GR: Decent werewolf films are few and far between. American Werewolf in London and The Howling remain the all time classics. I loved Dog Soldiers and liked a few of the Ginger Snaps series - especially the one set in the Middle Ages [ed. – Ginger Snaps Back, actually set in 19th-century Canada]. Other than that, I would struggle to think of any really good ones, although I did enjoy The Wolfman remake. I just wish that they’d stuck to practical effects instead of the CGI.

SW: I always ask this question…vampires or werewolves?

GR: Do you have to ask? Werewolves all the way. I mean, what is scarier – some angst-ridden walking corpse that seduces teenage girls, or a seven foot tall mass of muscle, claws and primal rage? No competition really.

SW: Thanks for chatting to us Graeme. Best of luck with the book.

High Moor is out now for Kindle (UK and US) and in paperback in the US. The UK paperback is planned for early 2012, as are other eBook formats.

The first five chapters of the book are available for free on Graeme’s website.

OUT NOW: Variant Spelling by Hannah Kate

My debut poetry collection is now available from Hic Dragones and Amazon, priced £6.99.

Here's what the publisher has to say about me:

Hannah Kate is a North Manchester-based poet, author and editor. Her work has appeared in a number of local and national magazines, as well as an anthology published by Crocus Books. She is a freelance teacher of English, Maths and Creative Writing, and reviews genre fiction and academic writing for a number of organizations. This is her first full-length collection of poetry.

And here's what the blurbs say:

“Delicate and strong, Hannah’s words beautifully communicate the impossibilities of communication. She explores the subtexts of what we do with our language in ways that will resonate with anyone who finds their own feelings and intents too big for semi colons.” Dominic Berry, Poet

“The poems in Variant Spelling evoke a North in revolt; a place of abandoned dyeworks, soot, winter, granite and grease. Through the ‘shifting vowels’ of the title poem they celebrate a world at odds with the imposed culture of the South. It is at its most rebellious in Praise God, where Hannah ‘praises the God of the North’, a place where the ‘air hangs with burning witches’.” Rosie Lugosi, Poet and Performer

I've blogged about the collection on my creative blog, and there's a sample poem up there. But here's another one - hope you enjoy!

Sir Ywain

On the wood on the bracket
of a cathedral seat,
there’s a picture of a knight
dressed for battle.

On second thoughts

he looks as if he’s already been fighting
for a long, long time.
He looks like he’s wounded his foe.

But the knight isn’t going to win this one,
because a portcullis has fallen,
missing his body
but carving his horse in half.

Poor knight.

Without a horse he won’t be able to fight.
Without a fight he won’t be able to win.
It looks like
he’s going to lose this battle.

But then again

the picture of the knight
on the wood on the bracket
of a cathedral seat
is just a picture of a man
sitting on half a horse.

Variant Spelling is available now, from Hic Dragones.

CFP: Insular Books: Vernacular Miscellanies in Late Medieval Britain

Location: The British Academy
Dates: 21-23 June 2012
Organizers:
Dr Raluca Radulescu (Bangor University) and Dr Margaret Connolly (University of St Andrews)

Funded and hosted by the British Academy, this conference brings a new and multi-disciplinary focus to the late medieval miscellany, a little-investigated and poorly understood type of manuscript. The main aim of the conference is to foster academic interest in vernacular manuscript miscellanies from the period 1300-1550 written in a mixture of medieval languages (English, Anglo-Norman, Welsh, Scots). Attention will be paid to the interactions between literary and non-literary texts in miscellanies, and to evidence of exchange between different communities, including dialogue across the Welsh and Scottish borders. A main objective is to achieve agreement in the area of taxonomy; at present there is no agreed definition of the medieval miscellany which is treated variously by specialists in different disciplines and by
cataloguers. The discussion will thus address four main inter-related concerns:

• how to achieve a definition for the miscellany which distinguishes it from other mixed-content manuscripts (anthologies, collections, composite volumes);
• how to make manuscript miscellanies and their textual contents accessible to modern readers, including scholars, students, archivists, and general readers;
• how to develop a coherent scholarly methodology for dealing with volumes whose contents are intrinsically multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary;
• how to understand and represent the complex relationships between manuscript miscellanies.

The list of confirmed speakers includes: Prof. Derek Pearsall, Dr Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan (Universities of Cardiff and Bangor), Prof. Wendy Scase (University of Birmingham), Dr Helen Deeming (Royal Holloway, University of London), Prof. Ad Putter (University of Bristol), Prof. Diane Watt (Surrey University), Dr Sue Niebrzydowski (Bangor University), Dr Phillipa Hardman (University of Reading), Dr Marianne Ailes (University of Bristol), Dr Tony Hunt (St Peter’s College, Oxford), Dr Dafydd Johnston (Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, Aberystwyth), Dr Anne Parry (Aberystwyth University), Dr Sara Elin Roberts (Bangor University), Dr William Marx (University of Wales, Trinity St David’s), Dr Carrie Griffin (Queen Mary University of London), Dr Andrew Taylor (Ottawa University), Dr Carol Meale (University of Bristol), Dr Deborah Youngs (Swansea University), Dr Katherine Olson (Bangor University), as well as the two co-organizers.

The organizers are happy to receive additional proposals for 20 minute papers which focus on any of the four areas of interest outlined above. Please send an abstract (maximum 150 words) to the organizers by 15 January 2012.

Some bursaries will be made available to doctoral students and early career researchers in financial need (an application form will become available on the conference website at the British Academy).

GUEST POST: Laura Vivanco

From the Middle Ages to Harlequin/Mills & Boon Romance

The publication of For Love and Money: The Literary Art of the Harlequin Mills & Boon Romance marks a significant stage in my transformation from a medievalist into a scholar of popular culture. My time spent with medieval literature has, however, shaped my approach to, and my expectations of, literature. As a result, I was unconvinced by many of the criticisms I encountered of Harlequin/Mills & Boon romances. In the face of Ann Barr Snitow’s confident statement that descriptions of clothing are “the number one filler in Harlequins” (249), for example, and Janice Radway’s opinion that

The clothes described [...] almost never figure significantly in the developing action. Instead, the plot is momentarily, often awkwardly, delayed as the narrator accidentally notices seemingly superfluous details for the reader. The details, however, are not really superfluous at all. They are part of an essential shorthand that establishes that, like ordinary readers, fictional heroines are “naturally” preoccupied with fashion. (193)

I was unavoidably reminded of the importance of colour symbolism in many medieval works. As Harriet Goldberg has observed,

In sentimental romances and other courtly works, architectural marvels, banners, shields, gowns, tunics and hose are colourful embellishments. Their colour was often the bearer of extra meaning. [...] Although some authors explained their chromatic imagery, others did not, relying on a chromatic awareness shared with their readership. (221)

It therefore occurred to me that perhaps the critics’ low opinion of modern romances was based on a lack of understanding of the conventions which modern romance authors “shared with their readership.” And so, instead of accepting that “Any history of the romance will in one sense be a record of decadence. The works now popularly called ‘romances’ are usually sub-literature” (Beer 1), I began to look at them more closely. As I did so, I discovered topoi such as the locus amoenus and the hunt of love, familiar to me from reading medieval texts. There were also explicit and implicit references to chivalric romances which support Peter Swirski’s argument that

popular literature created for the mass enjoyment of mass readership may be as true a medium of literary artistry and aesthetic continuity as the canon, circulating and recycling plots, narratives, and characters that have proven their enduring worth. [...] Its predilection for well tried formulas and its penchant for recycling may, at the end of the day, be a good way to preserve the great motifs of literature for new generations of readers. (64)

I’d like to think that one can take both a scholar and romances out of the Middle Ages, but you can’t entirely remove traces of medievalism from either of them.

------

Beer, Gillian. The Romance. The Critical Idiom, 10. 1970. London: Methuen, 1977.

Goldberg, Harriet. “A Reappraisal of Colour Symbolism in the Courtly Prose Fiction of Late-Medieval Castile.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 69.3 (1992): 221-37.

Radway, Janice A. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. 1984. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1991.

Snitow, Ann Barr. “Mass Market Romance: Pornography for Women is Different.” Radical History Review 20 (1979): 141–61. Rpt. in Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality. Ed. Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell and Sharon Thompson. New York: Monthly Review P, 1983. 245–63.

Swirski, Peter. From Lowbrow to Nobrow. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005.

CFP: 1st Global Conference: The Graphic Novel

Friday 7th September 2012 – Sunday 9th September 2012

Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

“Behind this mask there is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea… and ideas are bulletproof.” - Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

Call for Papers:

This inter- and multi-disciplinary conference aims to examine, explore and critically engage with issues in and around the production, creation and reading of all forms of comics and graphic novels. Taken as a form of pictographic narrative it has been with us since the first cave paintings and even in the 21st century remains a hugely popular, vibrant and culturally relevant means of communication whether expressed as sequential art, graphic literature, bandes dessinees, tebeos, fumetti, manga, manhwa, komiks, strips, historietas, quadrinhos, beeldverhalen, or just plain old comics. (as noted by Paul Gravett)

Whilst the form itself became established in the 19th Century it is perhaps not until the 20th century that comic book heroes like Superman (who has been around since 1938) became, not just beloved characters, but national icons. With the globalisation of publishing brands such as Marvel and DC it is no accident that there has been an increase in graphic novel adaptations and their associated merchandising. Movies such as X-men, Iron man, Watchmen and the recent Thor have grossed millions of dollars across the world and many television series have been continued off-screen in the graphic form, Buffy, Firefly and Farscape to name a few.

Of course America and Europe is not the only base of this art form and the Far East and Japan have their own traditions as well as a huge influence on graphic representations across the globe. In particular Japanese manga has influenced comics in Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, China, France and the United States, and have created an amazing array of reflexive appropriations and re-appropriations, in not just in comics but in anime as well.

Of equal importance in this growth and relevance of the graphic novel are the smaller and independent publishers that have produced influential works such as Maus by Art Spiegleman, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, Palestine by Joe Sacco, Epileptic by David B and even Jimmy Corrigan by Chris Ware that explore, often on a personal level, contemporary concerns such as gender, diaspora, post-colonialism, sexuality, globalisation and approaches to health, terror and identity. Further to this the techniques and styles of the graphic novel have taken further form online creating entirely web-comics and hypertexts, as in John Cei Douglas’ Lost and Found and Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl, as well as forming part of larger trans-media narratives and submersive worlds, as in the True Blood franchise that invites fans to enter and participate in constructing a narrative in many varied formats and locations.

This projects invites papers that consider the place of the comic or graphic novel in both history and location and the ways that it appropriates and is appropriated by other media in the enactment of individual, social and cultural identity.

Papers, reports, work-in-progress, workshops and pre-formed panels are invited on issues related to (but not limited to) the following themes:

* Just what makes a Graphic Novel so Graphic and so Novel?:
~Sources, early representations and historical contexts of the form.
~Landmarks in development, format and narratology.
~Cartoons, comics, graphic novels and artists books.
~Words, images, texture and colour and what makes a GN
~Format, layout, speech bubbles and “where the *@#% do we go from here?”

* The Inner and Outer Worlds of the Graphic Novel:
~Outer and Inner spaces; Thoughts, cities, and galaxies and other representations of graphic place and space.
~ Differing temporalities, Chronotopes and “time flies”: Intertextuality, editing and the nature of Graphic and/or Deleuzian time.
~ Graphic Superstars and Words versus Pictures: Alan Moore v Dave Gibbons (Watchmen) Neil Gaiman v Jack Kirby (Sandman).
~Performance and performativity of, in and around graphic representations.
~Transcriptions and translations: literature into pictures, films into novels and high/low graphic arts.

* Identity, Meanings and Otherness:
~GN as autobiography, witnessing, diary and narrative
~Representations of disability, illness, coping and normality
~Cultural appropriations, east to west and globalisation
~National identity, cultural icons and stereo-typical villains
~Immigration, postcolonial and stories of exile
~Representing gender, sexualities and non-normative identities.
~Politics, prejudices and polemics: banned, censored and comix that are “just plain wrong”
~Other cultures, other voices, other words

* To Infinity and Beyond: The Graphic Novel in the 21st Century:
~Fanzines and Slash-mags: individual identity through appropriation.
~Creator and Created: Interactions and interpolations between authors and audience.
~Hypertext, Multiple formats and inter-active narratives.
~Cross media appropriation, GN into film, gaming and merchandising and vice versa
~Graphic Myths and visions of the future: Sandman, Hellboy, Ghost in the Shell.

Papers can be accepted which deal solely with Graphic Novels. This project will run concurrently with our project on Fear, Horror and Terror – we welcome any papers considering the problems or addressing issues on Fear, Horror and Terror and Graphic Novels for a cross-over panel. We also welcome pre-formed panels on any aspect of the Graphic Novel or in relation to crossover panel(s).

Papers will be accepted which deal with related areas and themes. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 16th March 2012. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 22nd June 2012. 300 word abstracts should be submitted to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords

E-mails should be entitled: GN1 Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs

Nadine Farghaly
Paris-Lodron University, Salzburg,
Austria

Rob Fisher
Network Leader
Inter-Disciplinary.Net,
Freeland, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

The conference is part of the Education Hub series of research projects, which in turn belong to the At the Interface programmes of Inter-Disciplinary.Net. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore discussions which are innovative and challenging. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into a themed ISBN hard copy volume or volumes.

For further details of the project, please click here.

For further details of the conference, please click here.

Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.

Conference Round-Up 2011

Since 2011 is coming to a close, and everyone is writing their reviews of the year, I thought I’d offer a round-up of the academic conferences I’ve attended this year. It’s been a good year for conferences, and I’ve been to some fantastic events. This post is a taste of my year in conferences.

January

6-9 Jan: Gender and Medieval Studies: Gender, Time and Memory
University of Swansea
My first conference of the year was the annual Gender and Medieval Studies conference, held this year at the University of Swansea. The keynote speakers at the 2011 conference were Diane Wolfthal (Rice University), who spoke on serial marriage in the Middle Ages, and Elizabeth Robertson (University of Glasgow), who spoke on gender and the translation of empire. My own paper was entitled: Reading Marie de France’s Muldumarec: Blood, Masculinity and Devotion. The 2012 Gender and Medieval Studies Conference will be hosted at the University of Manchester on 11-13 January 2012. I’m on the organizing committee for the 2012 event, along with my former PhD supervisor (Anke Bernau) and one of her current PhD students (Daisy Black).

February

March

7-8 Mar: Before Man and God: Sin, Confession, Forgiveness and Redemption in the Anglo-Saxon World (MANCASS Postgraduate Conference)
John Rylands Library, Deansgate, Manchester
In 2011, the annual MANCASS postgraduate conference explored sin, penance and forgiveness in the Anglo-Saxon world, and was organized by PhD student, Chris Monk (University of Manchester). I didn’t speak at the conference, but I chaired a session on the second day, with papers on the Old English Martyrology and male sexuality in the Anglo-Saxon penitentials. As always, the postgrad conference coincided with the annual Toller Lecture, which was given this year by Professor Barbara Yorke (University of Winchester), who spoke on ‘King Alfred and the traditions of Anglo-Saxon kingship’. The 2012 MANCASS postgraduate conference will focus on domestic life and lifestyle in the Anglo-Saxon period.

After the conference closed on 8 March, a number of us headed over to the International Anthony Burgess Foundation for the launch of In Strange Countries: Middle English Literature and its Afterlife (ed. by David Matthews), a collection of essays in memory of J.J. Anderson.

11-12 Mar: ‘The Ideal Woman’: Interrogating Femininity Across Disciplines and Time
Queen’s University, Belfast
This interdisciplinary conference, exploring representations and constructions of femininity across different time periods, was organized by QUB postgraduate students to celebrate International Women’s Day. My paper was entitled: Gothic Lolitas: Infantilization and Idealization in Contemporary Teen Fiction.

17-19 Mar: Perspectives on Evil and Human Wickedness
Prague
This was the 12th annual Perspectives on Evil conference, organized by Inter-Disciplinary.Net. My paper was Her Husband’s Goods: Women, Shopping and Evil in the Later Middle Ages, and was part of a panel on women, evil and shopping I organized with independent reasearcher, Linda Maguire. I originally met Linda a few years ago at an ID.net conference on monsters, and we came up with the idea for the shopping panel at a 2010 conference on Magic and the Supernatural in Salzburg. Having spent a lot of time emailing each other about evil and shopping, it was really great to eventually bring everything together and present our papers. Unfortunately, the third member of our panel wasn’t able to make the conference, but Linda and I really enjoyed the way the session turned out. The 2012 Perspectives on Evil conference will be held on 15-17 March 2012, in Prague.

April

May

13-15 May: Evil, Women and the Feminine
Warsaw
My second ID.net conference of the year was the third annual Evil, Women and the Feminine conference. My paper was entitled: Watch Out Boy, She’ll Chew You Up: Werewolf Mouths and the Vagina Dentata. It was great to catch up with people I’ve met at previous ID.net events, especially Sorcha Ní Fhlainn and Ann Marie Cook (who is currently organizing a conference on the TV show Skins and popular culture). I also got to catch up with Simon Bacon, who I met at the De Montfort Vegetarians, VILFs and Fang-Bangers conference in 2010. EWF was also where I met Gráinne O’Brien for the first time, who is organizing the Magic is Might 2012 conference at the University of Limerick (23-24 July 2012), and Eileen Pollard, who went on to work with me on organizing the Hic Dragones Afterlife of Alice conference. The fourth Evil, Women and the Feminine conference will run 6-8 May 2012, and will be held in Prague.

I’m currently in the process of editing a dialogic collection of essays that have developed out of this conference, to be published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2012.

16-18 May: The Gothic: Exploring Critical Issues
Warsaw
I stayed on in Warsaw for a second ID.net conference, this time on the Gothic. My paper for this conference was: Glitter Gothic: Uses of the Past in Contemporary YA Fantasy Fiction.

Following this conference, I was asked to be guest blogger on the University of Stirling’s Gothic Imagination website.

28 May: Thought this date was worth mentioning. In June, I mark GCSE papers for one of the exam boards (something has to pay for all my conference travel, after all). Before beginning the marking, I attended the standardization meeting in Birmingham, and this year decided to combine this with meeting up with someone I’d been chatting to on Twitter, whose sister attended the She-Wolf conference in 2010. We went for dinner, fell in love, and have been together ever since.

June

4-5 Jun: Trailtrekker
Skipton
Not an academic event, but an Oxfam one. I’ve been volunteering for Oxfam since I was 16, and usually run one of the checkpoints at Trailtrekker, a sponsored 100km hike for teams of four that takes place around Skipton in Yorkshire. My role involves supervising volunteers, checking teams in as the arrive at our checkpoint and generally standing in a field for 27 hours making sure things run smoothly. I’ve stewarded at music festivals for Oxfam since 1997, but got involved with Trailtrekker when it started in 2009, as I fancied trying something a bit different.

6-7 Jun: Education and Ignorance: The Use of Knowledge in the Medieval World
John Rylands Library, Deansgate, Manchester
This was the third annual University of Manchester Postgraduate Medieval Studies conference. I chaired the first session, which was oddly ‘Katherine’ themed, with papers from Katherine Frances (on Saint Margaret of Antioch), Katherine Harvey (on episcopal elections) and Emily Dalton (on Capgrave’s ‘Life of Saint Katherine’). This was followed by the keynote paper by Carolyn Muessig (University of Bristol), who spoke on scholasticism and women’s religious education. This conference was organized by three postgraduate students from the University of Manchester: Robert Mitchell, Stephen Gordon and Daisy Black.

26-28 Jun: Can’t Buy Me Love? Sex, Money, Power and Romance
Fales Library and Special Collection of New York University
This month, I made my first ever trip to the US to attend the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance conference in New York. My paper for this conference was entitled: ‘Hit Cost a Thousand Pound and Mar’: Love, Sex and Wealth in the Fourteenth-Century Sir Gawain and the Carl of Carlisle. This was also the only conference of the year where I received some funding, getting a small travel grant from the Romance Writers of America. The conference keynote was given by Laura Kipnis. I also enjoyed papers by Ann Herendeen (author of Pride/Prejudice), who spoke on ‘The Upper-Class Bisexual Man as Romantic Hero’, and a panel by Katherine E. Lynch, Ruth Sternglantz and Len Barot (of Boldstokes Books), who spoke on contemporary lesbian romance and the queer female hero. Len Barot writes paranormal romance under the name L.L. Raand, and her alpha (Sylvan Mir) recently won ‘Best New She-Wolf’ on this site. It was also nice to catch up with Jonathan Allan, who I first met in 2010 at the ID.net Monsters and the Monstrous conference.

29 Jun: After the conference finished, I had a spare half-day to myself (not really a lot of time, since it was my first trip to New York!), so I decided to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for few hours before I headed off to the airport.

30 Jun: I landed in Manchester at 9am, and headed straight off to the station to catch a train to London. A couple of us had tickets for the British Museum’s Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe exhibition. This was a really stunning display of reliquaries and devotional objects, with some breath-taking pieces. Also, I can now say that I went to both the New York Met and the British Museum within the same 24-hour period... I’m quite proud of that.

July

5-6 Jul: Wounds in the Middle Ages
John Rylands Library, Deansgate, Manchester
This was an invite-only workshop on wounds and wounding in the Middle Ages, organized by Cordelia Warr and Anne Kirkham from Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Manchester. I spoke on Christ, Wounds and Romance. This was, without doubt, one of my favourite academic events of the year. The range of papers was fantastic, and speakers covered early and late medieval culture, European and Arabic medicine, literary and historical sources, religious and secular material. Every paper was fascinating, but I particularly enjoyed Anthony Bale’s presentation on the circumcision of Christ.

27-31 July: Camp Bestival
Dorset
And now I took a little break from conferences to do some more volunteering for Oxfam, this time as a festival steward. My first festival of 2011 was Camp Bestival. As a side note, one of the people I was working with performs as Dolly Delicious with the Ooh La Las, who I’m hoping to book for one of the 2012 Hic Dragones events.

August

2-7 Aug: Big Chill
Eastnor Castle
After Camp Bestival, and a night’s stopover in Stroud, I headed up to Big Chill for a bit more stewarding.

24-29 Aug: Leeds Festival
Leeds
My third and final festival with Oxfam for 2011.

September

October

6 Oct: A Journey Through Wonderland: Alice in Multimedia
Portico Library, Manchester
No conferences in October, but I did attend the preview evening of the Portico’s Journey Through Wonderland exhibition, which featured various illustrations and interpretations of Lewis Carroll’s Alice novels. The exhibition was launched by Vanessa St Clair, the great-granddaughter of Alice Liddell, and was curated by librarian Emma Marigliano, who worked with me to co-promote this event with the Hic Dragones Afterlife of Alice conference (which ran the day after the exhibition closed). As well as the exhibition, the Portico also hosted a series of talks on Alice in Wonderland and its legacy, including a brilliant talk on 12 October from John Reppion and Leah Moore on their Complete Alice in Wonderland.

26-31 Oct: Bram Stoker Film Festival
Whitby
Not really a conference, but I went spent four lovely days in Whitby, and attended the Bram Stoker Film Festival. You can read my review here.

November

2-4 Nov: Vampires: Myths of the Past and the Future
IGRS, University of London
This conference, organized by Simon Bacon, explored the various manifestations of vampire myths in literature, film, history and folklore. My paper was entitled: Vampires in Those Days: Interrogating Master Narratives. This conference was quite intense, with long days filled with lots of excellent papers. It was also notable for offering the most amazing list of keynote speakers: Milly Williamson, Catherine Spooner, Ken Gelder and Stacey Abbott. I was particularly pleased to be able to meet Catherine Spooner, as her work (especially Contemporary Gothic and Fashioning Gothic Bodies) has been really influential on my own. Catherine is currently involved in organizing the Capturing Witches: Histories, Stories, Images (400 Years After the Lancashire Witches) conference, to be held at the University of Lancaster on 17-19 August 2012. As well as the four keynote papers, this conference incorporated the annual Coffin Trust Lecture (an unintentional pun), which this year was given by Sir Christopher Frayling, who spoke on ‘The Nightmare of Bram Stoker’. As well as listening to some great papers, it was nice to meet Jim Doan and Barbara Brodman (who are currently working on a two-volume collection of essays entitled The Universal Vampire) and Clemens Ruthner (who is organizing a ‘Vampires and/as Science’ conference, to be held 5-6 July 2012 at Trinity College, Dublin). And I got chance to catch up with Gráinne and Sorcha.

18-20 Nov: The Monster Inside Us, The Monsters Around Us: Monstrosity and Humanity Conference
De Montfort University
This was a three-day interdisciplinary conference, exploring monsters and monstrosity across different time periods and cultures. My paper was titled: Battle Not With Monsters: Slayers from Beowulf to Buffy, the beginning stages of a new project that I’m hoping to write up as journal article at some point in 2012. The conference was organized by Deborah Mutch (De Montfort University), and had keynote papers from David Punter (University of Bristol) and Andy Mousley (De Montfort University). Andy has recently set up an interactive website called SageBites, which offers reflections on quotations for life.

December

1 Dec: Further Adventures in Wonderland: The Afterlife of Alice
Hic Dragones, Manchester
My final conference of the year was the one I was most nervous about, as it was the first event organized by my publishing and events company, Hic Dragones. The conference was held at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, and explored the various representations and interpretations of Alice in Wonderland that have come after Lewis Carroll’s novel. My paper was entitled: Steampunk, Cyberpunk, Whimsy: Generic Definition and Jeff Noon’s The Automated Alice. Our keynote paper was given by Will Brooker (Kingston University), author of Alice’s Adventures: Lewis Carroll in Popular Culture, and other papers covered books, films, computer games, Disneyland rides and pop music. We were also happy to have Mark Richards (of the Lewis Carroll Society) and Emma Marigliano (of the Portico Library) in attendance, as both were very supportive of the conference. I was also assisted in the organization of the event by Eileen Pollard, a PhD student at Manchester Metropolitan University.

I am planning a collection of essays based on this conference, which will expand on the topics discussed during the day.

CFP: 1st Global Conference: Skins: Exploring Critical Issues

Tuesday 25th September 2012 – Thursday 27th September 2012

Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Papers

Now in its sixth series on E4 in the UK and first series on MTV in the US, the brainchild of father-son writing team Bryan Elsley and Jamie Brittain has gained popularity and critical acclaim for the honesty, authenticity and humour of its no-holds-barred depiction of the teenage experience. In a reflexive turn, Skins has become a cultural phenomenon whose influence is registered through its status as essential teen viewing, the Skins party craze and the tendency among fans to perceive their own identities and experiences in relation to characters and situations from the show. The richness of Skins as a televisual text supports wide-ranging explorations of the show’s aesthetic, thematic, ideological, social and technological implications.
We therefore invite papers and preconstituted panels that address any aspect of Skins, such as:

■Representations of teenage life and teen culture
■Identities: gender, class, race, sexualities (hetero-, homo-, bi-, fluid, queer, etc.)
■Death and the concept of mortality
■Mental illness/psychology/psychoanalysis
■Fandom
■Transnational reception
■Analysis of fanvids, fanfics, fanart
■Assessments of the meaning/cultural significance of specific storylines (c.f. the Naomily phenomenon)
■Plotline controversies and moral panics
■Adapting Skins for the American market
■Narrative and storytelling
■Creator/showrunner as author
■Genre analysis
■Modes of comedy
■Defining the ‘Skins aesthetic’
■Uses of inter-textuality/pop culture allusions
■Fashion
■Music
■Space and place: Bristol on screen
■Skins novels
■Acting and performance
■Cameos and guest stars
■Fame and celebrity
■Production process studies
■Technologies of production, distribution and reception in the post-broadcast era
■Skins and Channel 4/E4/MTV
■Comparative analyses of Skins and other television shows

For 2012, the Skins and Contemporary Culture project will meet alongside our project on Gender and Love It is our intention to create cross-over sessions between the two groups – and we welcome proposals which deal with the relationship between gender and love and Skins and contemporary culture. Papers will also be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 16th March 2012. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper of no more than 3000 words should be submitted by Friday 22nd June 2012. Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords

E-mails should be entitled: SKINS Abstract Submission.

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is planned for the end of the year. All accepted abstracts will be included in this publication. We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs

Ann-Marie Cook
Visiting Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation,
Queensland University of Technology,
Australia

Dr Rob Fisher
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Priory House, Wroslyn Road,
Freeland, Oxfordshire OX29 8HR

The conference is part of the Critical Issues series of research projects. The aim of the conference is to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into a themed ISBN hard copy volume.

For more information, please click here.