Message sent in behalf of Prof. Fred Botting
(please reply at (monstrousmedia /at/ lancaster.ac.uk))
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
(monstrousmedia /at/ lancaster.ac.uk) 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.
