Wednesday 7th November – Friday 9th November 2012
Salzburg, Austria
Call for Papers:
What is the experience of war and what does it mean to us? Is war an extension of politics by other means? The locomotive of technology? Does a state of peace truly exist, or do we perpetually live in absentia bello? Is humankind at war in its most natural state; or is human society – despite perceptions and ongoing conflict around the world today – actually moving toward an aversion to war and toward a state of peace? Are Human Rights illusory and is the quest for Human Security achievable?
This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary conference seeks to provide a challenging forum for the examination and evaluation of the nature, purpose and experience of war, and its impacts on all aspects of communities across the world. Viewing war as a multi-layered phenomenon, this conference series invites committed academics, non-academic based professionals from all walks of life, including those from Military forces, serving or retired, Emergency, Aid and Development Organisations (IOs, International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs), NGOs and other Non-State Actors (NSAs) or Trans-National Social Movement (TNSMs), Commercial companies and corporate institutions, the public services, Faith based institutions, charities, the media, the medical professions, the arts and students in all related fields of interest, to explore the historical, legal, social, human, religious, economic, and political contexts of conflicts, and assess the place of nations, alliances, politics, the military, peace activism, science, academia, faith, the humanitarian sector, art, journalism, literature, music, the media and the internet in representation and interpretation of the experience of warfare. In particular papers, workshops, reports, formed panels and presentations are invited on any of the following themes;
1. How do we Talk about War? Portrayal, awareness, language and expression. How do we come to understand war in contemporary and historical cultures?
* The Language of modern contemporary warfare, the language of war in society, in the work space and popular culture; obscuration of conditions of being at ‘war’ and the condition of 'peace’.
* Militarization of society, propaganda, war toys, computer gaming; in fashion - ‘military chic’.
* Representing the realities of war versus ‘national interest’ – images of the heroism, glory, tacit and explicit justifications of war; the horror of war and societal responses.
2. Representations and Experiences Viewing War as a multi-layered social phenomena.
* The individual experience of war, the impact of war, in protest; in the alleviation of the impacts of war and in peace building.
* Nations, Communities and individuals recovering from war, trauma, rehabilitation and nation building.
* The experience of war; art, literature, music, poetry, cinema and the theatre; the role of the
media – journalism, radio, television, the internet; propaganda.
* The representations and experiences of protest.
3. History and Development of Warfare and War Fighting. How have we fought and why. Lessons learned, mistakes repeated.
* Warfare in human history, revisionism and post-revisionism.
* The sources, origins, and causes of war; why and how do wars begin?
* Means and methods in war – land, sea, air, space, nuclear, chemical, biological; terror and terrorism; conventional and guerrilla warfare; civil war; ‘total’ warfare’. Where are the new ‘battlespaces’?
* The nature of warfare; strategy and strategic thought; changes and the implications of changes in the ways wars are fought; the influenceand effect of technologies; nuclear deterrence/compellance; changes in the nature and role of military personnel; information and information warfare.
* New and perceived ‘Revolutions in Military Affairs’.
4. Extent, Conduct and Morality. Can war even be distinguished from peace, combatant from non-combatant, who are legitimate targets? The totalisation of war in modern society and culture.
* Where are we now? How has war pervaded our society and culture in everyday life?
* The extent of war; geo-political, physical; blockades, sanctions, defence expenditure and the impact on social and public policy; on social and human capital.
* The regulation and control of warfare; how is and should warfare be conducted? What are the limits of conflict? Are there any prohibitions in fighting a war?
* Globalization; the human, geographic, social and economic boundaries of war in the modern era.
* Resource warfare, food, water, oil and mineral wealth, challenges in the 21st century.
* International Humanitarian Law and Conflict.
5. Human Rights and Human Security. Have the means and methods in war, finally outpaced International law and norms of behaviour? What protection is available? If truth is the first casualty in war, is human rights the second?
* Human security issues; protection, shelter, economic security; public health.
* Human rights; protection, promotion and abuses; genocide, ethnic cleansing; terrorism; scorched earth; war crimes; crimes against humanity.
* The Humanitarian space in conflict.
* Armed non-state actors, roles, practices and regulation.
* Gender and Race in War and Peace.
6. The Boundaries of War. How far will humankind push the limits of acceptable behaviour and practice in war?
* The ‘morality’ and the ‘ethics’ of war; just war; deterrence; pre-emptive war; defence and self-defence; the influence of nationalism; the place of human rights; societies and the military; increases in moral sensibilities – qualms about carpet bombing, collateral damage; the status of combatants in warfare, the impact of civilians; neutrality.
* War and religion; the important role of religion, the church, and the intellectual elite in multi-ethnic conflict specifically and in war in general; just war, jihad and crusade.
* War and gender; women in war; impact, abuses, role in war as combatants and in peace building. Gender equality issues and peacebuilding, cultures of violence in society propagating conflict.
* Children and war, child soldiers, trauma, exposure, conditioning, propaganda, bereavement, expression though play, art and behaviour.
* Slavery and war; past, present and future; unwilling combatants, from janissaries to mamelukes, to conscripts and child soldiers.
* Resistance under occupation, where collaboration ends and resistance begins? Forms of resistance.
7. Prevention and Peacebuilding. Can we give peace a chance? Viewing war as un-natural, preventable within a variety of frameworks. The legal mechanisms and the trans-national social movements ‘waging peace’.
* Peace building; means and methods; negative peace and building apositive peace; war-termination and nation-building.
* The prevention of war; the role of conflict resolution; avoiding war; peace-keeping; the role and importance of law and international legal order; the rise and impact of non-violent movements.
* The effectiveness of Supra-National, Trans-National and International organsiations in conflict prevention, mediation and resolution.
* Peace and Balances of Power.
* Disarmament and Arms Control.
* Conscientious objection, alternative service.
* The Peace Movement.
8. The Role of Non-state Actors and NGOs in War and Post-conflict. Breaking the state conundrum, participation in relief from the depredations of war, alleviating the suffering, advocacy from theatres of war. Or compromising humanitarian Aid? Force multipliers?Abrogating combatants' responsibilities toward their populations.
* History: The Quakers to the Red Cross and beyond.
* NGOs, the ‘third space’ actors in the relief of the impact of warfare, aid and development programmes, refugees and IDPs, childsoldiers, landmines/cluster munitions; small arms light weapons (SALW/DDR), Depleted Uranium (DU), NGOs prolonging conflict by abrogating state and combatants responsibilities in time of conflict.
* Armed non-state actors. Terrorists? Freedom fighters? Private security companies and forces. Mercenaries in the modern world.
9. Future War: Revolutions in Military Affairs – Emerging Types of Warfare. Be afraid, be very afraid. Are there no limits to man's inhumanity to man?
* Cyber-war Virtual war; cyber-terrorism; cyber-power, cyber-war; computer technologies in the conduct of war.
* Technology leaps – acquiring WMD.
* Space war – fantasy or an emerging reality? Issue in the militarisation and weaponisation of space.
* Bio-warfare: gene warfare; the genetic codes of agriculture and livestock as targets in war
* Economic warfare in a Globalised world.
The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 4thMay 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 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: WAR 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.
Joint Organising Chairs:
Graeme Goldsworthy Webster
University and the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (HCSS),
The Netherlands
Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Leader,
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Freeland, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
The conference is part of the Probing the Boundaries 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.
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.
Saturday, 25 February 2012
CFP: 2nd Global Conference: Writing: Paradigms, Power, Poetics, Praxis
Saturday 10th November – Monday 12th November 2012
Salzburg, Austria
Call for Papers:
This global research and publications project on Writing will explore the many facets of writing from an interdisciplinary perspective. It seeks to explore the many intertextual and intersemiotic facets of writing as they exist in the digital age but also taking into account the historical forces, process and mechanisms, their relationships to contemporary writing forms, and the possibilities of future directions. ‘All writing comes from somewhere’ and with this axiom in mind this project will not only examine the pragmatic elements of writing but also the complex issues concerning the metafunctions of writing as a creative and purposeful process across various disciplines.
Papers, presentations, reports, workshops and pre-formed panels are invited on, but not limited to any of the following focus areas;
1. Writing as a Creative Process: Theory and Practice
* What are the origins and forms of creative writing?
* What are the personal and interpersonal relationship between creativity and writing?
* How is effective and creative writing developed and nurtured?
* How do various disciplines understand the pragmatic elements of writing and the thought processes that underpin writing?
* What are the similarities/differences in understanding between the related research disciplines?
* How can creative writing be fostered in a world dominated by measurement, outcomes and benchmarks?
* How do authors actually write?
2. Writing across the Disciplines: Theory and Practice
* How do various disciplines define writing?
* The psychology, philosophy and pedagogy of writing of various fields of thought
* What is creativity in theory and practice in the business world?
* Can writing be taught?
* How do readers engage with writing?
* What does engagement with writing and the writing process mean for adults and for children?
* How does writing develop in all age groups or across age groups?
* What are the various forms of Inter-disciplinary approaches to teaching writing?
* Historical and contemporary representations of writing as art, in film and literature?
* The future role of writing?
* How will the visual media be related to writing in the next decade or beyond?
* The relationships between children’s engagement with television, film, visual literacy and writing?
* Traditional forms of writing: what are they and how do they fit in the visual age?
* The role and nature of learning theories and their view of writing
3. Critical and Cultural Thinking
* How is writing linked to critical thinking? Is it the same ascritical literacy?
* Where does this writing ability come from?
* What is the role of the 'significant other' in developing critical engagement with writing at home, school and beyond?
* What are the conditions that foster critical thinking and critical writing?
* How is writing engendered and produced in different contexts of cultural contexts?
* Developing writing as life skills, social issues and education for citizenship in the 21st century
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: Writing2 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
Phil Fitzsimmons
Faculty of Education,
Avondale College of Higher Learning
New South Wales, Australia
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.
Salzburg, Austria
Call for Papers:
This global research and publications project on Writing will explore the many facets of writing from an interdisciplinary perspective. It seeks to explore the many intertextual and intersemiotic facets of writing as they exist in the digital age but also taking into account the historical forces, process and mechanisms, their relationships to contemporary writing forms, and the possibilities of future directions. ‘All writing comes from somewhere’ and with this axiom in mind this project will not only examine the pragmatic elements of writing but also the complex issues concerning the metafunctions of writing as a creative and purposeful process across various disciplines.
Papers, presentations, reports, workshops and pre-formed panels are invited on, but not limited to any of the following focus areas;
1. Writing as a Creative Process: Theory and Practice
* What are the origins and forms of creative writing?
* What are the personal and interpersonal relationship between creativity and writing?
* How is effective and creative writing developed and nurtured?
* How do various disciplines understand the pragmatic elements of writing and the thought processes that underpin writing?
* What are the similarities/differences in understanding between the related research disciplines?
* How can creative writing be fostered in a world dominated by measurement, outcomes and benchmarks?
* How do authors actually write?
2. Writing across the Disciplines: Theory and Practice
* How do various disciplines define writing?
* The psychology, philosophy and pedagogy of writing of various fields of thought
* What is creativity in theory and practice in the business world?
* Can writing be taught?
* How do readers engage with writing?
* What does engagement with writing and the writing process mean for adults and for children?
* How does writing develop in all age groups or across age groups?
* What are the various forms of Inter-disciplinary approaches to teaching writing?
* Historical and contemporary representations of writing as art, in film and literature?
* The future role of writing?
* How will the visual media be related to writing in the next decade or beyond?
* The relationships between children’s engagement with television, film, visual literacy and writing?
* Traditional forms of writing: what are they and how do they fit in the visual age?
* The role and nature of learning theories and their view of writing
3. Critical and Cultural Thinking
* How is writing linked to critical thinking? Is it the same ascritical literacy?
* Where does this writing ability come from?
* What is the role of the 'significant other' in developing critical engagement with writing at home, school and beyond?
* What are the conditions that foster critical thinking and critical writing?
* How is writing engendered and produced in different contexts of cultural contexts?
* Developing writing as life skills, social issues and education for citizenship in the 21st century
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: Writing2 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
Phil Fitzsimmons
Faculty of Education,
Avondale College of Higher Learning
New South Wales, Australia
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.
CFP: 3rd Global Conference: Making Sense Of: Suffering
Tuesday 13th November – Thursday 15th November 2012
Salzburg, Austria
Call for Papers:
This inter- and multi-disciplinary conference seeks to explore if, or to what extent, meaning can be found in suffering. During the course of living our lives, we are invariably forced to stop and question why we suffer – be it through illness, pain, loss, grief or the multitude of distressing circumstances which we encounter. Problems arise in a variety of contexts and due to a bewildering variety of conditions. And because our lives are constant streams of experience, the nature of suffering and consequently the ‘meaning’ of such suffering continually varies and changes. The conference aims to raise and assess a variety of questions related to the nature of suffering, the origins of suffering, the ‘meaning’ of suffering, explanations for suffering and responding to suffering.
Papers, workshops, presentations and pre-formed panels are invited on any of the following themes:
I. What is Suffering?
• Defining ‘suffering’. What is ‘suffering’? How do we approach ‘suffering’?
• Is suffering unique or exclusive to human beings?
• Non-human suffering
• Categories of suffering. Suffering as – a problem; a condition; an expression; an experience; a position of powerlessness; a consequence of meaninglessness; a result of affliction.
II. The Roots of Suffering
• The origins of suffering
• Suffering as universal; as international; as national; as local; as particular
• Suffering and history
• The contexts and conditions of suffering
• Producing suffering
III. The Meaning of Suffering
• Suffering and meaning
• Suffering and language
• What is at stake when dealing with suffering?
• The ‘limits’ of suffering
• The dangers of suffering
IV. Explaining Suffering
• suffering and explanation
• theories of suffering: the work of the disciplines
• theories of suffering: the work of the professions
• theories of suffering: the work of the vocations
• silence and suffering
V. Suffering and Practice
• suffering, apathy and indifference
• alleviating suffering
• practices causing, prolonging, truncating, overcoming, relieving or resolving suffering
• suffering, hope and despair
VI. Suffering and Religion
• Suffering from the perspective of religious traditions
• Suffering and sacred texts
• Portraits of suffering and sufferers
• Suffering and ‘redemption’
• Suffering and atheism
VII. Representing Suffering
• suffering and representation
• suffering in literature
• suffering in the media
• suffering in tv, film, theatre and radio
• suffering in cybercultures
VIII. Confronting Suffering
• meaning, suffering and action
• overcoming suffering
• should suffering be overcome?
• case studies
• practice(s), resolution(s), settlement
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: Suffering 3 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
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.
Salzburg, Austria
Call for Papers:
This inter- and multi-disciplinary conference seeks to explore if, or to what extent, meaning can be found in suffering. During the course of living our lives, we are invariably forced to stop and question why we suffer – be it through illness, pain, loss, grief or the multitude of distressing circumstances which we encounter. Problems arise in a variety of contexts and due to a bewildering variety of conditions. And because our lives are constant streams of experience, the nature of suffering and consequently the ‘meaning’ of such suffering continually varies and changes. The conference aims to raise and assess a variety of questions related to the nature of suffering, the origins of suffering, the ‘meaning’ of suffering, explanations for suffering and responding to suffering.
Papers, workshops, presentations and pre-formed panels are invited on any of the following themes:
I. What is Suffering?
• Defining ‘suffering’. What is ‘suffering’? How do we approach ‘suffering’?
• Is suffering unique or exclusive to human beings?
• Non-human suffering
• Categories of suffering. Suffering as – a problem; a condition; an expression; an experience; a position of powerlessness; a consequence of meaninglessness; a result of affliction.
II. The Roots of Suffering
• The origins of suffering
• Suffering as universal; as international; as national; as local; as particular
• Suffering and history
• The contexts and conditions of suffering
• Producing suffering
III. The Meaning of Suffering
• Suffering and meaning
• Suffering and language
• What is at stake when dealing with suffering?
• The ‘limits’ of suffering
• The dangers of suffering
IV. Explaining Suffering
• suffering and explanation
• theories of suffering: the work of the disciplines
• theories of suffering: the work of the professions
• theories of suffering: the work of the vocations
• silence and suffering
V. Suffering and Practice
• suffering, apathy and indifference
• alleviating suffering
• practices causing, prolonging, truncating, overcoming, relieving or resolving suffering
• suffering, hope and despair
VI. Suffering and Religion
• Suffering from the perspective of religious traditions
• Suffering and sacred texts
• Portraits of suffering and sufferers
• Suffering and ‘redemption’
• Suffering and atheism
VII. Representing Suffering
• suffering and representation
• suffering in literature
• suffering in the media
• suffering in tv, film, theatre and radio
• suffering in cybercultures
VIII. Confronting Suffering
• meaning, suffering and action
• overcoming suffering
• should suffering be overcome?
• case studies
• practice(s), resolution(s), settlement
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: Suffering 3 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
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.
CFP: 1st Global Conference: Immersive Worlds and Transmedia Narratives
Tuesday 13th November – Thursday 15th November 2012
Salzburg, Austria
* The Novel
* The Film
* The Television Series
* The Graphic Novel
* The Facebook Page
* The Tweets
* The Fan-Sites
* The Video Game
* The You-Tube Clips
* The Smart Phone
* The Convention
* The Theme Park
* The Merchandising
THE CALL
This call for papers is about where the story starts and where it ends, about who writes the story and who reads it and whether any of these definitions apply when we are in the story itself. This then is about world making and about the media, mediums and machinery that converge to make it possible. The rhizomic qualities of a smart phone that enmesh us into the real world also connect and implicate large parts of ourselves in imaginary and virtual spaces; with people we have never met and places we will never see other than through the app, the blog or the social networking site.
“In the final decade of the 21st Century, men and women in rocketships landed on the moon. By 2200 AD, they had reached the other planets of our solar system. Almost at once there followed the discovery of hyperdrive through which the speed of light was first obtained and later greatly surpassed. And so, at last, mankind began the conquest and colonization of deep space”
(The Forbidden Planet)
THE EXAMPLE
True Blood. Originally from Charlene Harris’ Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels. Now a hit television show. It has a facebook page and characters from the series produce You Tube videos (Jessica- Baby Vamp). The stars from the show share tweets with fans and each other but not as themselves but the characters they play. Viral marketing spreads adverts and teasers for products that come from the show, not just simple merchandising but items such as Tru-Blood, the synthetic blood substitute that bases the premise of the show where vampires can become part of society. The graphic novel,written by the television series creator Allan Ball and which extends storylines from the show. Fangtasia, the vampire bar from the series is recreated in actual real life venues and where people can dress as vampires. At each point of entry the “reader’ can choose which parts and to what level they want to engage, or participate, in the narrative enabling various levels of immersion and ways to influence and change the world that one is entering. Who writes the story and what story are they writing and who consumes what and who and is everyone welcome?
“Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will!”(Dracula)
But who can enter this world and how does it impinge on our own? Is it only for the wealthy, the westernised, the capital-ised? How does it purposely exclude and include certain groups and why? What is the future of the technologies and the types of narratives involved? Will it become a world that people never want to leave or one that will expand to consume our former notions of what constituted reality. Where does the story end and real life begin? (Keywords: Transmedia, Convergence, Participatory, Affinity, ReMix, Hypersociability, Technologies, Medium, Narrative, Story, Play, Interaction, Immersive, Virtual)
THE WHAT?
The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals, works in progress, performances, literary and visual presentations and practitioner case studies. Papers will also be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 4th May 2012. All other significant dates, please see Details page.
THE WHO?
Those that study, research or take part in transmedia narratives or convergence cultures, film and media studies, gaming and virtual worlds, literature and fandom, marketing and advertising, graphic novels and animation, artists, writers… SHOULD APPLY
THE HOW?
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: TM1 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:
Phil Fitzsimmons
Rob Fisher
Simon Bacon
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.
Salzburg, Austria
* The Novel
* The Film
* The Television Series
* The Graphic Novel
* The Facebook Page
* The Tweets
* The Fan-Sites
* The Video Game
* The You-Tube Clips
* The Smart Phone
* The Convention
* The Theme Park
* The Merchandising
THE CALL
This call for papers is about where the story starts and where it ends, about who writes the story and who reads it and whether any of these definitions apply when we are in the story itself. This then is about world making and about the media, mediums and machinery that converge to make it possible. The rhizomic qualities of a smart phone that enmesh us into the real world also connect and implicate large parts of ourselves in imaginary and virtual spaces; with people we have never met and places we will never see other than through the app, the blog or the social networking site.
“In the final decade of the 21st Century, men and women in rocketships landed on the moon. By 2200 AD, they had reached the other planets of our solar system. Almost at once there followed the discovery of hyperdrive through which the speed of light was first obtained and later greatly surpassed. And so, at last, mankind began the conquest and colonization of deep space”
(The Forbidden Planet)
THE EXAMPLE
True Blood. Originally from Charlene Harris’ Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels. Now a hit television show. It has a facebook page and characters from the series produce You Tube videos (Jessica- Baby Vamp). The stars from the show share tweets with fans and each other but not as themselves but the characters they play. Viral marketing spreads adverts and teasers for products that come from the show, not just simple merchandising but items such as Tru-Blood, the synthetic blood substitute that bases the premise of the show where vampires can become part of society. The graphic novel,written by the television series creator Allan Ball and which extends storylines from the show. Fangtasia, the vampire bar from the series is recreated in actual real life venues and where people can dress as vampires. At each point of entry the “reader’ can choose which parts and to what level they want to engage, or participate, in the narrative enabling various levels of immersion and ways to influence and change the world that one is entering. Who writes the story and what story are they writing and who consumes what and who and is everyone welcome?
“Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will!”(Dracula)
But who can enter this world and how does it impinge on our own? Is it only for the wealthy, the westernised, the capital-ised? How does it purposely exclude and include certain groups and why? What is the future of the technologies and the types of narratives involved? Will it become a world that people never want to leave or one that will expand to consume our former notions of what constituted reality. Where does the story end and real life begin? (Keywords: Transmedia, Convergence, Participatory, Affinity, ReMix, Hypersociability, Technologies, Medium, Narrative, Story, Play, Interaction, Immersive, Virtual)
THE WHAT?
The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals, works in progress, performances, literary and visual presentations and practitioner case studies. Papers will also be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 4th May 2012. All other significant dates, please see Details page.
THE WHO?
Those that study, research or take part in transmedia narratives or convergence cultures, film and media studies, gaming and virtual worlds, literature and fandom, marketing and advertising, graphic novels and animation, artists, writers… SHOULD APPLY
THE HOW?
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: TM1 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:
Phil Fitzsimmons
position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.
CFP: Journal Announcement: Monsters and the Monstrous
Volume 2, Number 1, Special Issue on Monstrous Memory
The Editors welcome contributions to the journal in the form of articles, reviews, reports, art and/or visual pieces and other forms of submission on the following or related themes:
Monstrous Memory
Sethe: "It's so hard for me to believe in . Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it was my rememory. . . But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place - the picture of it - stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world".
Denver: "If it's still there, waiting, that must mean that nothing ever dies."
Sethe: "Nothing ever does." (Morrison, Beloved)
Monsters of memory, monstrous memories, monsters as memories.
Keywords: memory, remembrance, history, trauma, the past, undead, re-memory, undying, haunting, unheimlich, spectres, monsters, ghosts.
Call for Articles:
This special issue of Monsters and the Monstrous is looking for articles and reviews that are based around the idea of Monstrosity and Memory.
Memories of the past, whether individual, societal or national constantly invade our everyday lives. Sometimes as the remembrance of monstrous past events that can, and should, never die or be forgotten but also as disruptive and destructive presences that upset, intrude and invade our equilibrium and sense of self.
EXAMPLES:
Monstrous events and people that live on today:
-the holocaust and national geneocides, hiroshima etc.
-natural disasters, tsunamis, eartquakes and volcanic eruptions.
-monstrous figures from the past such as Rasputin, Jack the Ripper, Stalin.
-the national and cultural disparities in the conceptions of all of the above.
Monstrous entities from the past in fiction and film:
- Manifestations of the national past and political extremism, The Grudge, Godzilla, Dead Snow, Frostbite
- Representation of monsters that lived before humans, Cthulhu (Lovecraft), Jurassic Park, Starship Troopers, Priest.
Ghosts and Spirits that Haunt the Present:
-Popular series such as Medium, The Ghost Whisperer, Supernatural, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
-Discontented figures that want justice or revenge, Woman in Black, Death Watch, Ringu, Nightmare on Elm Street
- traumatic events that cannot be escaped, Silent Hill, Triangle, Inception
Whether Proustian flashbacks or actual embodiments , metaphorical, psychological, or phantasical the monsters of the past will not relinquish their hold on our times, lives and imaginations.
Submissions for this Issue are required by 31st March 2012 at the latest.
Contributions to the journal should be original and not under consideration for other publications at the same time as they are under consideration for this publication. Submissions are to be made electronically wherever possible using either Microsoft® Word or .rtf format.
Length Requirements:
Articles - 5,000 – 7,000 words.
Reflections, reports and responses - 1,000 – 3,000 words.
Book reviews - 500 – 4,000 words.
Other forms of contributions are welcome.
Submission Information:
Send submissions via e-mail using the following Subject Line:
‘Journal: Contribution Type (article/review/...): Author Surname’ and marked "Monstrous Memory".
Submissions E-Mail Address
Submissions will be acknowledged within 48 hours of receipt.
Contributions are also invited for future issues of the journal which will include: "Twilight and Teaching the Monstrous", "Monstrous Spaces".
We also invite submission to our special features on Non-English Language Book Reviews, and Monstrous Pedagogy. Please mark entries for these topics with their title.
For more information about the journal, please click here.
The Editors welcome contributions to the journal in the form of articles, reviews, reports, art and/or visual pieces and other forms of submission on the following or related themes:
Monstrous Memory
Sethe: "It's so hard for me to believe in . Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it was my rememory. . . But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place - the picture of it - stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world".
Denver: "If it's still there, waiting, that must mean that nothing ever dies."
Sethe: "Nothing ever does." (Morrison, Beloved)
Monsters of memory, monstrous memories, monsters as memories.
Keywords: memory, remembrance, history, trauma, the past, undead, re-memory, undying, haunting, unheimlich, spectres, monsters, ghosts.
Call for Articles:
This special issue of Monsters and the Monstrous is looking for articles and reviews that are based around the idea of Monstrosity and Memory.
Memories of the past, whether individual, societal or national constantly invade our everyday lives. Sometimes as the remembrance of monstrous past events that can, and should, never die or be forgotten but also as disruptive and destructive presences that upset, intrude and invade our equilibrium and sense of self.
EXAMPLES:
Monstrous events and people that live on today:
-the holocaust and national geneocides, hiroshima etc.
-natural disasters, tsunamis, eartquakes and volcanic eruptions.
-monstrous figures from the past such as Rasputin, Jack the Ripper, Stalin.
-the national and cultural disparities in the conceptions of all of the above.
Monstrous entities from the past in fiction and film:
- Manifestations of the national past and political extremism, The Grudge, Godzilla, Dead Snow, Frostbite
- Representation of monsters that lived before humans, Cthulhu (Lovecraft), Jurassic Park, Starship Troopers, Priest.
Ghosts and Spirits that Haunt the Present:
-Popular series such as Medium, The Ghost Whisperer, Supernatural, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
-Discontented figures that want justice or revenge, Woman in Black, Death Watch, Ringu, Nightmare on Elm Street
- traumatic events that cannot be escaped, Silent Hill, Triangle, Inception
Whether Proustian flashbacks or actual embodiments , metaphorical, psychological, or phantasical the monsters of the past will not relinquish their hold on our times, lives and imaginations.
Submissions for this Issue are required by 31st March 2012 at the latest.
Contributions to the journal should be original and not under consideration for other publications at the same time as they are under consideration for this publication. Submissions are to be made electronically wherever possible using either Microsoft® Word or .rtf format.
Length Requirements:
Articles - 5,000 – 7,000 words.
Reflections, reports and responses - 1,000 – 3,000 words.
Book reviews - 500 – 4,000 words.
Other forms of contributions are welcome.
Submission Information:
Send submissions via e-mail using the following Subject Line:
‘Journal: Contribution Type (article/review/...): Author Surname’ and marked "Monstrous Memory".
Submissions E-Mail Address
Contributions are also invited for future issues of the journal which will include: "Twilight and Teaching the Monstrous", "Monstrous Spaces".
We also invite submission to our special features on Non-English Language Book Reviews, and Monstrous Pedagogy. Please mark entries for these topics with their title.
Wednesday, 22 February 2012
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tuesday, 21 February 2012
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.
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.
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)
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.
Monday, 23 January 2012
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.
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.
Friday, 20 January 2012
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).
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).
Thursday, 5 January 2012
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.
------
Saturday, 24 December 2011
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.
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.
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