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Ninth Biennial Conference of the International Gothic Association:
monstrous media/spectral subjects
21-24 July 2009, Lancaster University, UK
Confirmed plenary speakers:
Elisabeth Bronfen, Tanya Krzywinska, Marina Warner
(Further plenary events to be confirmed.)
CALL FOR PAPERS
Gothic forms and figures have long been bound up with different media,
from the machinery of Walpole’s modern romance to Robertson’s
phantasmagorical shows in the eighteenth century; from uncanny automata
to ghostly photographs and monstrous kinetograms in the nineteenth; from
cinematic shocks to digital disembodiments in the twentieth. More than
merely exploiting new technical developments in cultural production and
consumption, gothic modes, in adopting and adapting new media, engage
with excitements and anxieties attendant on cultural and technological
change.
Examining conjunctions of literary, visual, spatial and digital texts in
relation to spectral and visceral effects and affects, the conference
aims to stimulate discussions of the relationship between gothic
fictions and other cultural forms, media and technologies. Doubling
monstrosity and spectrality, it sets out to explore the cultural
production and consumption of monsters and ghosts from the eighteenth
century to the present.
This interdisciplinary, international conference will be hosted by the
Department of English and Creative Writing and supported across the
University by colleagues in English, Film, Media and Cultural Studies,
Gender Studies and the Contemporary Arts. It is hoped that international
scholars from diverse fields will participate.
Topics which may be covered include, but are not limited to:
· Early visual technologies (phantasmagoria/ magic lantern shows/spirit
photography)
· Gothic embodiments (staging, smoke and mirrors, automata and
mechanical curiosities)
· Gothic on screen
· Digital Gothic (web, video games, hypertext)
· Visualising Gothic narrative (graphic novels, comics and illustration)
· Monstrosities (subjects, texts, bodies, forms)
· Media monsters
· Spectralities (subjects, spaces, environments, images)
· Transgeneric crossings (cyborgs, science, fictions)
Send queries and 250-word abstracts to Dr Catherine Spooner and Prof.
Fred Botting at [log in to unmask] by 5 January 2009.
Suggestions for panels and for sessions which break the traditional
academic mould are warmly welcomed.
Further information to follow shortly at www.monstrous-media.com.
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