Subject to change:

POLITICS AND HORROR

7 – 8 May 2021

Links to recorded events will be sent out to attendees in the week following in the conference. Recorded papers are marked with an (R) after the title of the presentation. Recordings may take a few hours to appear in the private YouTube channel, so please be patient if you do not see a paper that is listed as being recorded on the channel right away. Thank you for attending the Politics and Horror Conference. It was a pleasure and a privilege to host such a wonderful group of speakers!

Feel free to Tweet about the conference! Be sure to tag us @politicshorror and use the hashtag #pohocon21

Day 1 – 7 May 2021

9:00 – 9:05 Welcome and Conference Organisation

• Madelyn Marie Schoonover, University of Stirling

9:05 – 10:05 Keynote: Decolonising Gothic (R)

• Dr Rebecca Duncan
  • Linnaeus University, Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies

10:05 – 10:15 Break

10:15 – 11:35 Panel 1: EcoGothic and the Othered Body

• Cabbages and Kings: Plant Horror and the political response to climate change (R)
  •  Dr Lauren Barnett, Independent Researcher
• Born on the Wrong Side of the Wall: Horror Imagery and the Construction of the Immigrant Other in Game of Thrones (2011-2019) (R)
  • Louise Coopey, University of Birmingham
• Is Our Fate Sealed?: examining the treatment of Othered bodies during the twenty-first-century climate crisis and the consequence of Anthropocentric detachment in Naomi Booth’s eco-horror novel, Sealed (R)
  • Kristy Strange, Independent Researcher
• Chair: Dr Rebecca Duncan

11:35 – 11:45 Break

11:45 – 1:05 Panel 2: Commodities and Objectification: Global Capital and the Occult

• Satan is a Woman: Feminist Activism and the Occult in Britain 1995-2020
  • Katie Liddane, Northumbria University
• ‘Love in a chair’: Industrialisation and Exploitation in Edogawa Rampo’s ‘The Human Chair’ (1925) (R)
  • Leonie Rowland, Manchester Metropolitan University
• ‘Horror Without End’: Capitalism and Consumption in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho and Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (R)
  • Brontë Schiltz, Manchester Metropolitan University
• Chair: Madelyn Marie Schoonover, University of Stirling

1:05 – 2:05 Lunch

2:05 – 3:25 Panel 3: The Empire’s Gaze: Racial Politics in Film and Print

• The Fin De Siècle Gothic and Twenty-First Century Racial Politics: Dracula In Neo-Victorian Adaptation (R)
  • Theadora Jean, Royal Holloway, University of London
• Eastern Time: Temporality and the Othering of Eastern Europe in Contemporary Horror Cinema
  • Dr Barbara Plotz, London College of Communication
• Fascism in Patrick McGrath’s The Wardrobe Mistress: How Anti-Semitism Tries to Invade Post-War London (R)
  • Tatiana Farjado, University of the Basque Country
• Chair: Bethany Webster-Parmentier

3:25 – 3:35 Break

3:35 – 4:55 Panel 4: Indigenous Resistances and the Pan-American Imperial Machine

• Voices, Visibility and Violence: Societal Apathy in Mariana Enriquez’s Things We Lost in the Fire (R)
  • Hannah O’Flanagan, University of Lancaster
• La Llorona as a symbol of protest (R)
  • Mariana Esquivel Súarez, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada
• ‘as long as there are dreamers left, there will never be want for a dream’: Escaping the Horrors of Canada’s Indian Act in Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves (R)
  • Bethany Webster-Parmentier, Europa-Universität Flensburg
• Chair: Valeria Villegas Lindvall

4:55 – 5:05 Break

5:05 – 6:05 Panel 5: Criticism in Focus: Necropolitics and the Undead

• Ideologies of Zombie Cinema (R)
  • Dr Peter Dendle, Pennsylvania State University, Mont Alto
• The Horror of Capitalism’s Necropolitics – What is scarier than Biopower? (R)
  • Christian Schirmer, Philipps-Universität Marburg
• Chair: Dr Rebecca Duncan

Day 2 – 8 May 2021

9:00 – 9:05 Welcome

• Madelyn Marie Schoonover, University of Stirling

9:05 – 10:05 Keynote: ‘Queer-Wolves and Wolf-Girlz and Were-Bears, Oh My!’: Queering the Wolf in New Queer Horror Film and TV (R)

• Dr Darren Elliott-Smith
  • University of Stirling

10:05 – 10:15 Break

10:15 – 11:35 Panel 6: Nationalisms, Power, and the Gothic

• Haunting Histories: Embodying Gothic sensibilities as a reaction to Greek history and politics (R)
  • Alkisti Chatzinikolaou, Independent Researcher
• Horrorism in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing
  • Dr Sladja Blazan, Universität Würzburg
• ‘Think and Doubt and Hate’: Irvine Welsh’s Devolutionary Scottish Gothic (R)
  • Oliver Robinson-Sivyer, Independent Scholar
• Chair: Madelyn Marie Schoonover

11:35 – 11:45 Break

11:45 – 1:05 Panel 7: Social Media and Soundscapes: Political Horror in (Mixed) Media

• Apocalypse, Beeped: Political Afterlives of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (R)
  • Kate Harvey, Independent Researcher
• ‘Eat the Rich’: Decadence, Decay, and the Political Anatomy of Gothic Luxury (R)
  • Maximilian Curtis, Trinity Hall, Cambridge
• Vaporwave and Signalwave: A Theory of Political Crisis (R)
  • Dr Stuart Lindsay, University of Stirling
• Chair: Dr Darren Elliott-Smith

1:05 – 2:05 Lunch

2:05 – 3:25 Panel 8: Film and the Failures of North American Imperial Infrastructures

• Cronenberg’s Scanners, Propaganda and the Medical Industrial Complex (R)
  • M. C. Zendejas, University of Massachusetts Amherst
• Cannibalism Fact and Fiction: Anthropological Record versus Romantic Imperialism in 21stCentury Frontier Gothic (R)
  • Madelyn Marie Schoonover, University of Stirling
• The Miracle is the Thing: Old Age in David Lynch’s Cinema (R)
  • Taylor Thornburg, Independent Researcher
• Chair: Dr Vicki Madden

3:25 – 3:35 Break

3:35 – 4:35 Neoliberalism, Decolonialism, and the Academy: A Roundtable Discussion on the Current State and Possible Futures of Horror Studies

• Dr Sam Hirst, Manchester Metropolitan University
• Valeria Villegas Lindvall, University of Gothenburg
• Dr Vicki Madden, University of Edinburgh
• Madelyn Marie Schoonover, University of Stirling
• Chair: Dr Rebecca Duncan

4:35 – 4:40 Thank You and Closing Statements