Programme

Subject to change:

POLITICS AND HORROR

7 – 8 May 2021

All times listed at British Summer Time (UTC+1)/Edinburgh Time. To double-check your time zone conversion, you can use the following website: https://www.thetimezoneconverter.com/. Links to the conference presentations will be sent out via email 3 May 2021.

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

  • 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
    •  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)
    • 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
    • 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)
    • 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
    • Brontë Schlitz, 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • Hannah O’Flanagan, University of Lancaster
  • La Llorona as a symbol of protest
    • 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
    • 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
    • Dr Peter Dendle, Pennsylvania State University, Mont Alto
  • The Horror of Capitalism’s Necropolitics – What is scarier than Biopower?
    • 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

  • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • Kate Harvey, Independent Researcher
  • ‘Eat the Rich’: Decadence, Decay, and the Political Anatomy of Gothic Luxury
    • Maximilian Curtis, Trinity Hall, Cambridge
  • Vaporwave and Signalwave: A Theory of Political Crisis
    • 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
    • M. C. Zendejas, University of Massachusetts Amherst
  • TITLE FORTHCOMING: Manifestations of Policing in 1980’s Horror Films
    • Dr Joseph Hendryx, Mount Mercy University
  • The Miracle is the Thing: Old Age in David Lynch’s Cinema
    • 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