She-Wolf Conference September 2010

A two-day interdisciplinary conference to be held at the University of Manchester, 9th-10th September 2010.

The figure of the werewolf has haunted art, literature and culture for millenia. While not as common as their male counterparts, female werewolves appear in a variety of texts, of different genres and different cultures. From transcripts of witchcraft trials to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the female werewolf, and her shapeshifting sisters, continues to challenge, excite and entertain.

This conference will explore the manifestations and cultural meanings of female werewolves and other female shapeshifters, and the perennial fascination of these creatures.

Conference Programme

Thursday 9th September

10.00-11.00 Registration

11.00-11.30 Opening Remarks

11.30-1.00 Session 1: Monstrous Sexuality (Chair: Carys Crossen)
Tim Snelson (University of East Anglia): 'Women Can Be Wolves Too': The Cry of the Werewolf (1944), the Female Monster and the Contested Bodies of Wartime Women

Kerstin Frank (University of Heidelberg): Angela Carter's Wolf-Girls: Power Struggles, Transformation and Gender in her Rewritings of 'Little Red Riding Hood'

Eva Bru-Dominguez (University of Birmingham): Reclaiming Desire: the She-Wolf in Merce Rodoreda's Death in Spring

1.00-2.00 Lunch

2.00-3.00 Museum Workshop: Monstrous Material Culture (led by Sam Alberti and Bryan Sitch)

3.00-3.30 Coffee

3.30-5.00 Session 2: Shapeshifting Sisters (Chair: Hannah Priest)
Linda McGuire (Independent Researcher): Magical Transformations: Owl Women and Sorcery in Latin Literature

Geoff Holder (Independent Researcher): Were-Cats, Were-Deer and Were-Whales: Female Shapeshifting in Scottish Witchcraft Narratives

Laura Wilson (University of Manchester): Dans Ma Peau: Shape-shifting and Subjectivity

5.00 Close

Friday 10th September

9.30-11.00 Session 3: Of Otherness and Conformity (Chair: Linda McGuire)
Brian Feltham (University of Reading): Imagined Identities - The Woman in the Wolf Suit

Shannon Scott (University of St. Thomas): Lycanthropic Representations of Native Americans in Henry Beaugrand's 'The Werewolves'

Carys Crossen (University of Manchester): 'The Complex and Antagonistic Forces that Constitute One Soul': Religious Conviction versus Feminist Principles in Clemence Housman's The Werewolf

11.00-11.30 Coffee

11.30-12.30 Keynote Address: Peter Hutchings (Northumbria University): The She-Wolves of Horror Cinema: Marginality, Transformation and Rage

12.30-1.30 Lunch

1.30-3.00 Session 4: Fantasy and the She-Wolf (Chair: Brian Feltham)
Nickianne Moody (Liverpool John Moores University): Supernatural Hierarchies: The Place of Werewolves in the Paranormal Romance and Contemporary Urban Fantasy

Hannah Priest (University of Manchester): I Was a Teenage She-Wolf: Boobs, Blood and Chocolate

Jacquelyn Bent and Helen Gavin (University of Huddersfield): An Uberwald Werewolf Howled in Patrician Square

3.00-3.30 Coffee

3.30-5.00 Session 5: Creating the She-Wolf (Chair: Nickianne Moody)
Jazmina Cininas (RMIT University): The Girlie Werewolf Hall of Fame: Historial and Contemporary Representations of the Female Lycanthrope

Chantal Bourgault du Coudray (University of Western Australia): 'You Should Write a Werewolf Screenplay': Meeting the Challenge

Allison Moon (Independent Researcher): Courting the Lunatic Fringe: Shapeshifting at the Vanguard of Queer Activism and Post-Gender Feminism

5.00 Close


For details of how to register for this conference, please go to our registration page

Coming soon: Details of our fabulous fringe events, including a 'Writing the Female Monster' discussion panel and a film screening.