Registration Open: Cannibals: Cannibalism, Consumption and Culture

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

Thursday 25th April – Friday 26th April 2013

Registration is now open for the Hic Dragones Cannibals: Cannibalism, Consumption and Culture conference. For information about how to register, please visit the conference website.

Conference Programme

Thursday 25th April

9.15-9.45am: Registration

9.45-10.00am: Welcome and Opening Remarks (Kanaris Lecture Theatre)

10.00-11.30am: Session 1: Cultural/Cannibal Encounters (Kanaris Lecture Theatre)
Chair: TBC
(i) Sarah-Louise Flowers (University of Manchester): Consuming Local Tradition: How Outsiders Have Left the Amazon’s Dead Cold and Lonely
(ii) Ruth (Meg) Oldman (Indiana University of Pennsylvania): Preying Upon Blood: Depictions of Catholics in Early Modern Literature
(iii) Michelle Green (University of Nottingham): The Wendigo Cannibal and the ‘Myth’ of Diabetes in Native American Groups

11.30-12.00am: Coffee

12.00-1.30pm: Parallel Sessions

Session 2a: Theorizing Cannibal Culture (Kanaris Lecture Theatre)
Chair: TBC
(i) Sandra Bowdler (University of Western Australia): ‘Cannibalism is Bad’
(ii) Kamil Łacina and Dagna Skrzypinska (Jagiellonian University, Krokow): Bon Appetit! A Concise Defense of Cannibalism
(iii) Suzanne Stuart (University of South Wales, Australia): A Very Particular ‘Consumer Culture’: Theorising Cannibalism in Cultural Discourse

Session 2b: Consuming Women (Conference Room)
Chair: TBC
(i) Jennifer Bowes (Leeds Metropolitan University): Devouring the Self: Eating Disorders as Cannibalism of the Psyche in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Universe and Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman
(ii) Nancy Schumann (Books With Bite): Pardon My Bite: Vampire Women Who Kill Children From Ancient Folklore to Post-Modern Literature
(iii) Carys Crossen (University of Manchester): Fine Young Cannibals: Cannibalism, Psychoanalysis and the Ethics of Consumption in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Series and Poppy Z. Brite’s Lost Souls

1.30-2.30pm: Lunch

2.30-3.30pm: Film Screening and Round Table: Babysitting and the Child Cannibal (Kanaris Lecture Theatre)
A screening of Babysitting (dir. Lucas Masson, 2012), followed by a round table discussion about children, horror and cannibalism
Chair: Hannah Priest
Panel: TBC

3.30-4.00pm: Coffee

4.00-5.00pm: Session 3: Cannibalism in Fiction (Kanaris Lecture Theatre)
Chair: TBC
(i) Abby Bentham (University of Salford): Let Us Prey: Cannibalism, Capitalism and Culture in Jim Thompson’s The Getaway
(ii) Nela Roxana Gheorghica (Independent Scholar): Faber’s Under the Skin and the Cannibal Within Us All

5.00pm: Sessions End

*****

Friday 26th April

9.00-10.30am: Parallel Sessions

Session 4a: Consuming Knowledge, Consuming Christ (Kanaris Lecture Theatre)
Chair: TBC
(i) Matthew Graham (Leeds Metropolitan University): The Devouring of Knowledge: Consumption and Philosophy in Blanchot’s Thomas the Obscure
(ii) Daisy Black (University of Manchester): ‘Smiting a Cake’: Preparing and Cooking Christ in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament
(iii) Sara Williams (Independent Scholar): ‘The Soul is Like an Infant That Still Nurses When at its Mother’s Breast’: Oral Fixation and Fantasies of Kleinian Cannibalism in Female Hagiography

Session 4b: On Serial Murder (Conference Room)
Chair: John Wallen
(i) Helen Gavin (University of Huddersfield): Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? Inside the Mind of the Cannibal Serial Killer
(ii) Emilia Musumeci (University of Catania): Love Me, Kill Me, Eat Me. Serial Killers, Sexual Behaviour, and Voluntary Cannibalism
(iii) David McWilliam (University of Lancaster): ‘Help Me, I am in Hell’: Necrophiliac, Necrophagic Serial Killer Jeffrey Dahmer and the Limits of Empathy

10.30-11.00am: Coffee

11.00-12.30pm: Parallel Sessions

Session 5a: Empire and Machine (Kanaris Lecture Theatre)
Chair: TBC
(i) Jessica George (Cardiff University): ‘The War Ate my Boy, Damn Them All’: Food Chain and Fantasy in Lovecraft
(ii) James Collinge (Leeds Metropolitan University): Rethinking the Martian: British ‘New Imperialism’ as a Cannibal Cyborg in H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds
(iii) Franziska E. Kohlt (Independent Scholar): Horrid King Besmear’d with Blood of Human Sacrifice: Man-Consuming Machinery and Moloch as Dystopic Metaphor in H.G. Wells’s Time Machine and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis

Session 5b: Cannibalism and Textuality (Conference Room)
Chair: TBC
(i) Barbara Laner (University of Innsbruck): Incorporating Media: Cannibalism in Film as a Metaphor for Intermediality
(ii) Ellie Dobson (University of Birmingham): Flesh-Eaters in London: Cosmopolitan Cannibals in Late Nineteenth-Century Fiction and the Press
(iii) John Wallen (University of Nizwa, Oman): The ‘Cannibal Club’ and the Roots of British Racism and Pornography

12.30-1.30pm: Lunch

1.30-3.00pm: Parallel Sessions

Session 6a: Cannibals and the Other (Kanaris Lecture Theatre)
Chair: TBC
(i) Savi Munjal (University of Leeds): ‘’Tis Human Flesh They Gnaw’: The French Revolution and Cannibalism in Gillray’s Un Petit Souper à La Parisienne
(ii) Joanne Ella Parsons (Bath Spa University): ‘Bone Soup’: Cannibalism, Civilisation, and Racism in The Frozen Deep and the Franklin Expedition

Session 6b: Of Aliens and Monsters (Conference Room)
Chair: TBC
(i) Matthias Stephan (Aarhus University, Denmark): How Other is the Cannibal? – Ontological Blurring in SF Cannibal Scenes
(ii) Franziska Burstyn (University of Siegen): Wicked Witches and Gruesome Giants: Parental Infanticide in Children’s Literature

3.00-3.30pm: Coffee

3.30-5.00pm: Session 7: Cannibals and Popular Culture (Kanaris Lecture Theatre)
Chair: TBC
(i) Karley Adney (ITT Technical Institute): A Carnivalesque Cannibal: ‘Mein Teil’ and Representations of Homosexuality
(ii) Hannah Priest (Hic Dragones/University of Manchester): ‘Killing for Sport… Eating All the Bodies’: Richard the Lionheart, Eric Cartman, Hollywood Superstar Shia Leboeuf
(iii) Edward Powell (University of Leeds): ‘SuperUndeadMassacreFPS!’: Cannibalism and Consuming Commodified Violence in Call of Duty: Zombies

5.00pm: Conference Close

To register for this two-day event, please visit the conference website or email the conference convenors.