[ecrea] Frankenstein 2018 conference

The deadline for abstracts for the forthcoming conference Frankenstein 
2018: two hundred years of monsters, at the ANU and National Film and 
Sound Archive, has been extended to 6 April. Details below.


*Frankenstein 2018: two hundred years of monsters*

**

*12-15 September 2018*

*The Australian National University, and National Film and Sound 
Archive, Canberra *

**

Nearly two centuries after its anonymous publication on 1 January 1818, 
Mary Shelley’s /Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus/ remains as 
topical as ever. Its core story—of a recklessly ambitious and naïve 
scientist whose artificial human-like creature arouses only horror and 
disgust, and escapes control to seek revenge on his creator—has become, 
for better or worse, /the /techno-scientific fable of modernity. First 
adapted for stage by Richard Brinsley Peake in 1823, and for film by 
Edison Studios in 1910, the story has inspired more theatre, film, 
television and other adaptations than any other modern narrative, with 
more than 50 screen adaptations appearing in the 2010s alone. From Fritz 
Lang’s /Metropolis/ to Alex Garland’s /Ex Machina/, and /The Rocky 
Horror Picture Show/ to /The Addams Family/, the Frankenstein myth 
reaches into every recess of high and popular culture.

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers or 3 x 20-minute panel sessions 
from scholars across the humanities, sciences and social sciences that 
respond in interdisciplinary ways to this most interdisciplinary of 
novels, including, but not limited to:

  * Literary studies, especially of the long eighteenth century,
    Romanticism, Victorian and neo-Victorian literature
  * Re-tellings and re-imaginings of the Frankenstein story in various
    modes and genres, e.g. SF, steampunk, speculative fiction, slash
    fiction, etc.
  * Film, television, theatre and performance, and visual studies
  * Digital humanities, reception studies, histories of popular culture
    and media ecologies
  * Gender studies, queer theory and the history of sexuality
  * Disability studies and posthumanism
  * The history of medicine, especially reproductive technologies
  * Science and technology studies; images and imaginaries of science
    and scientists
  * The history and philosophy of biology, especially in relation to
    vitalism
  * Ecocriticism and the Anthropocene
  * Affect theory and the history of emotions
  * Frankenstein and race, colonialism, empire
  * Global and local Frankensteins, e.g. Australian Frankensteins
  * Frankenstein and material history
  * Cyborgs, robots, artificial intelligence and machine learning
  * Synthetic biology, genetic engineering and artificial life
To maintain order among this menagerie of monsters, we propose the 
following four overarching themes, each of which will be addressed by 
one of our keynote speakers:

*Frankenstein in 1818: historicising the monster*

(Professor Sharon Ruston, Lancaster)

*Frankenstein as scientific fable: from grave-robbing and galvanism to 
synthetic biology and**machine learning *

(Professor Genevieve Bell, Australian National University)

*Adaptation and experimentation: Frankenstein in film and other media *

(Assistant Professor Shane Denson, Stanford)

*Frankenstein’s queer family: gender, sexuality, reproduction and the 
work of care*

(Professor Julie Carlson, University of California, Santa Barbara)

Please send proposals for papers or sessions—including a title, 250-word 
abstract, and brief author biography—to Dr Russell Smith at 
(russell.smith /at/ anu.edu.au) <mailto:(russell.smith /at/ anu.edu.au)>.

The deadline for proposals is *Friday* *6 April 2018*. Proposals will be 
reviewed by a committee comprising scholars from the humanities, 
sciences and social sciences, and we will endeavour to inform applicants 
of the outcome within two weeks of the submission deadline. Please note 
that we will endeavour to notify overseas applicants earlier if they 
submit proposals before the submission deadline.

For further information and updates, as well as information about the 
Humanities Research Centre’s annual theme for 2018, *Imagining* *Science 
and Technology 200 Years after Frankenstein*, see: 
http://hrc.anu.edu.au/2018-annual-theme. Please direct any inquiries to 
Penny Brew at (hrc /at/ anu.edu.au) <mailto:(hrc /at/ anu.edu.au)>.

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