2nd Global Conference: Magic and the Supernatural

Thursday 17th March - Saturday 19th March 2011

Prague, Czech Republic

Bewitched. I Dream of Jeannie. The Exorcist. Charmed. Buffy. Dr. Who. Dracula. Dark Shadows. Twilight and The Twilight Zone. Sookie Stackhouse and Bill Compton. Dresden Files. Harry Potter. The fascination and appeal of magic and supernatural entities pervades societies and cultures. The continuing appeal of these characters is a testimony to how they shape our daydreams and our nightmares, as well as how we yearn for something that is "more" or "beyond" what we can see-touch-taste-feel. Children still avoid stepping on cracks, lovers pluck petals from a daisy, cards are dealt and tea leaves read.

A belief in magic as a means of influencing the world seems to have been common in all cultures. Some of these beliefs crossed over into nascent religions, influencing rites and religious celebrations. Over time, religiously-based supernatural events ("miracles") acquired their own flavour, separating themselves from standard magic. Some modern religions such as the Neopaganisms embrace connections to magic, while others retain only echoes of their distant origins.

This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary project seeks to examine issues surrounding the role and use of magic in a wide variety of societies and cultures over the course of human history. People with access to magic or knowledge of the supernatural will also be examined.

Papers, presentations, reports and workshops are invited on issues on or broadly related to any of the following themes:

• Magic as "paranormal", anything alleged to exist that is not explainable by any present laws of science
• the distinctions between "magic" and "religion" and "science"
• Magical thinking and the equation of coincidence with causality
• Folk magic and "traditional" systems of magic
• "Magick" and "Wicca" as religious systems in modern society
• Witchcraft in the European context
• "Witchcraft" and animism in African or Asian contexts
• Magic as illusion, stagecraft, sleight-of-hand
• Magic in modern literature (ex. Harry Potter, Harry Dresden, the saga of Middle Earth, the Chronicles of Narnia, etc.) and in traditional literatures (folk or fairy tales, legends, mythologies, etc.)
• Magic in art and the depiction of magical creatures, practices or practitioners
• the association of magic with the "monstrous" or "evil"; does one imply the presence of the other?
• the portrayal of magic, magical creatures, and magical practices or practitioners on television and in film
• the roles or uses of magic in video games, on-line communities, role-playing games, subcultural formations and identities
• the similarities and differences of magical creatures across societies and time periods
• the interplay of "magic" and "religion" as well as "science"
• the "sciences" of demonology and angelology
• the role of divination or prophecy in societies or religions
• the use of "natural" vs. "supernatural" explanations for world events
• Magic and the supernatural as coping mechanisms for individuals and societies

The Steering Group also welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 1st October 2010. All submissions are minimally double blind peer reviewed where appropriate. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 4th February 2011. Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to the 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

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). 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:

Stephen Morris
Hub Leader (Evil)
Independent Scholar
New York, USA

Sorcha Ni Fhlainn
Hub Leader (Evil)
School of English, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Network Leader
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Freeland, Oxfordshire, UK

The conference is part of the 'At the Interface' programme of research projects. It aims 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 will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers maybe invited for development for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s).

For further details about the project please click here.

For further details about the conference please click here.

Books We Like...

Hosting the Monster, ed. by Holly Lynn Baumgartner and Roger Davis (Rodopi, 2008)

A inter-disciplinary collection of essays exploring monsters, the monstrous, identities and boundaries. This collection grew out of the Fifth Global Monsters and the Monstrous Conference, held at Mansfield College, Oxford in 2007.

I'm sure eagle-eyed readers will spot the chapter on medieval werewolves written by yours truly!

For more information, click here.

Contents:

Hosting the Monster: Introduction
Holly Lynn Baumgartner and Roger Davies

"I Live in the Weak and the Wounded": The Monster of Brad Anderson's Session 9
Duane Kight

The Monster as a Victim of War: The Returning Veteran in The Best Years of Our Lives
Amaya Muruzabal Muruzabal

Human Monstrosity: Rape, Ambiguity and Performance in Rosemary's Baby
Lucy Fife

The Monstrous and Maternal in Toni Morrison's Beloved
Inderjit Grewal

The Witch and the Werewolf: Rebirth and Subjectivity in Medieval Verse
Hannah Priest

It's Never the Bass: Opera's True Transgressors Sing Soprano
Holly Lynn Baumgartner

Joseph Merrick and the Concept of Monstrosity in Nineteenth Century Medical Thought
Katherine Angell

Herculine Barbin: Human Error, Criminality and the Case of the Monstrous Hermaphrodite
Jessica Webb

Literary Monsters: Gender, Genius, and Writing in Denis Diderot's 'On Women' and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Cecilia A. Feilla

Sweet, Bloody Vengeance: Class, Social Stigma and Servitude in the Slasher Genre
Sorcha Ni Fhlainn

It Cam from Four-Colour Fiction: The Effect of Cold War Comic Books on the Fiction of Stephen King
David M. Kingsley

The Monsters that Failed to Scare: The Atypical Reception of the 1930s Horror Films in Belgium
Liesbet Depauw

"a white illusion of a man": Snowman, Survival and Speculation in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake
Roger Davis

Updated Conference Programme

She-Wolf: Female Werewolves, Shapeshifters and Other Horrors in Art, Literature and Culture

Kanaris Lecture Theatre
Manchester Museum, Oxford Road, Manchester

Thursday 9th-Friday 10th September 2010

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

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

Willem de Blecourt (Meertens Institute, Amsterdam): The Case of the Cut-Off Hand. On Female Werewolves and Incest Metaphors

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 Addess: 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 Mores 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: Historical and Contemporary Representations of the Female Lycanthrope

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

5.00 Conference Close

To register for this event, please click here

Vampire Conference in London (November 2011)

Vampires: Myths of the Past and the Future

An interdisciplinary conference organised by Simon Bacon, The London Consortium in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory, Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, University of London

Deadline for submissions: 30 April 2011
Conference dates: 2nd-4th November 2011
Venue: Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London

Myths of vampires and the undead are as old as civilisation itself, wherever humans gather these 'dark reflections' are sure to follow. Whether as hungry spirits, avenging furies or as the disgruntled dearly departed, they have been used to signify the monstrous other and the consequences of social transgression. Embodying the result of a life lived beyond patriarchal protective proscription that quickly changes from dream to nightmare and from fairy tale to ghost story.
However their manifold and multifarious manifestation also provides a point of opposition and resistance, one that subverts majority narrative and gives agency to the disenfranchised and oppressed within society. This is seen most clearly in the late twentieth century where, in a plethora of filmic and literary texts, amidst a growing 'sympathy for the devil' the vampire is constructed as a site of personal and social transition. Here alternative narratives (e.g. feminist, ethnic, post-colonial discourses etc) find expression and ways in which to configure their own identity within, or in opposition to, the dominant cultural parameters revealing hybridity as the catalyst for future myth making.
In the course of the past century the vampire has undergone many transformations which now see them as a separate evolutionary species, both genetically and cybernetically, signifying all that late capitalist society admires and desires thus completing its change from an adhorational figure to an aspirational one; the vampire is no longer the myth of a murky superstitious past but that of a bright new future and one that will last forever.
This interdisciplinary conference will look at the various ways the vampire has been used in the past and present to construct narratives of possible futures, both positive and negative, that facilitate both individual and colelctive, either in the face of hegemonic discourse or in the continuance of its ideological meta-narratives.

Keynote speakers include:

Stacey Abbott
Milly Williamson
Catherine Spooner

We invite papers from a wide range of disciplines and approaches such as: anthropology, art history, cultural studies, film studies, history, literary studies, philosophy, psychology, theology, etc.

Possible themes include, but are not limited to:

• Myths, fairy tales and urban legends
  
• Cross cultural colonisation, vampiric appropriation and reappropriation
  
• Cinema, Manga/Anime and gaming


• Fandom, lifestyle, 'real' vampires and identity configuration


• Minority discourse and the transcultural vampire


• Genetics, cybernetics and the post human


• Blood memory, vampiric memory and the immortal archive


• Dracula vs. Nosferatu; Urban vs. Rural


• Globalisation, corporations and 'Dark' societies


• Immortality, transcendence and cyberspace


• Old World/New World and vampiric migration


• From stakes to crosses to sunlight


• Blood Relations and the vampiric family


• Abjection, psychoanalysis and transitional objects

Papers will also be considered on any related themes. Abstracts of 300 words should be submitted to Simon Bacon no later than April 30th 2011.

Books We Like...

Rosie Garland, Things I Did While I Was Dead (Flapjack Press, 2010)

A powerful new collection of poetry by Rosie Garland (known to many as Rosie Lugosi the Vampire Queen). Garland moves between childhood, gender, sexuality, religious iconography, relationships, with characteristic flair and exuberance. The poems in this collection reveal a love of, and dexterity with, language that amuses and moves.

"I braid my hair in snakes with fingers sugar sticky.
Hang necklaces of breasts beneath my chin.
Turn women to butter, men to stone.
When I dance, the sky drops water, the earth moans."
(from 'Lilith')

"I take your hand, wait
for the magic: some old god's
shoulder turning over in the dirt;
a raven come to omen the stones;
a black dog flicker at the corner
of eyeshot."
(from 'The Promise of Ghosts')

A highly recommended collection. Rosie will also be taking part in the She-Wolf discussion panel on Wednesday 8th September 2010 - more details on this to follow.

See Flapjack Press for more details.

Registration Extended

We have moved the deadline for registration at the She-Wolf Conference to Friday August 20th. Click on the links on this page to go directly to the registration page.

I'll be posting an updated conference programme on here shortly - it's going to be a great event, and we'd love to see you all there.

Register Online for She-Wolf

Our online payment page is now up-and-running, so you can click here to register and pay for the conference.

Registration is open until August 6th.

The Girlie Werewolf Project

Here's a very interesting project, that we're quite excited about at She-Wolf. Those of you who saw our details on The F Word or on one of our posters will already have seen some of Jazmina Cininas's artwork...

The Girlie Werewolf Project is the Facebook page for Melbourne based artist printmaker Jazmina Cininas, who has been exploring representations of the female lycanthrope for over a decade. On this page you can find images by the artist with artist statements, as well as reviews and catalogues, upcoming exhibitions and links to galleries.

Oxfam Manchester Sci Fi/Horror/Fantasy Event

The lovely people at Oxfam Manchester have sent me details of an event they are running that might be of interest to some. Funnily enough, it's being held at the shop that I used to manage before I left the world of charity retail for academia. Sometimes, it's a very small world.

Manchester Oxfam is holding a FREE science fiction/fantasy/horror event at the
Oxfam Emporium, 8-10 Oldham Street, on Thursday, July 8, from 6-8pm. We have debut Manchester horror novelist Tom Fletcher, Dr. Who writers Paul Magrs and Steve Lyons and and feminist sci-fi writer Gwyneth Jones all reading, there will be a sci-fi quiz, music, drinks and refreshments, and an informal Q&A. Cos play is encouraged with a prize for the best costume. For more information email Emma Cooney or call 0161 273 2019.

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.

Welcome!

Welcome to She-Wolf: Female Werewolves, Shapeshifters and Other Horrors in Art, Literature and Culture.

This site has been designed to pass on information about the She-Wolf conference and events that will be happening on 8th-11th September 2010, in Manchester (UK). I'll be posting details of the conference, discussion panel and film screening soon, as well as all the information you'll need to register for any of these events.

But that's not all this site is for... during the work for the conference we have built up quite a network of supporters, partners and other people of interest - so we'll also be using this blog to give details on other female werewolf related stuff that you might find interesting.

If you've got any links or events that might be of interest, get in touch and let us know about it.