Ethical Gothic Studies

Some exciting news, OGOM is going to be editing a special edition of Gothic Studies on Ethical Gothic. This will add to the issues we have already edited on the vampire 15.1. (2013) Undead Reflections: The Sympathetic Vampire and its Monstrous Other and the werewolf 21.1 (2019) Werewolves and Wildness. The new issue, 29.2 will appear in July 2027. We will be looking for essays on this theme for inclusion in the volume in the near future. We’ll also be hosting an Ethical Gothic Symposium to share ideas and develop papers for the issue. We look forward to finding out more about others whose research might address these concerns (including writers). Thank you to Emily Alder and the editorial team at Gothic Studies for this opportunity.

The OGOM Project extends to all narratives of the fantastic, the folkloric, and the magical, emphasising that sense of Gothic as enchantment rather than simply horror. Through this, OGOM is articulating an ethical Gothic, cultivating moral agency and creating empathy for the marginalised, monstrous or othered, including the disenchanted natural world.

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Shabnam Ahsan, ‘Skins and Cloaks: New Identities in 21st-Century Fairy Tales’

Cat Skin

We have rescheduled Shabnam Ahsan’s UH Research Seminar, ‘Skins and Cloaks: New Identities in 21st-century Fairy Tales’. It’s now on 13 March at 1.30 pm.

Join Zoom Meeting

https://herts-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/95049519796

Meeting ID: 950 4951 9796

Details of further seminars can be seen in the previous post here:

https://www.opengravesopenminds.com/events/uh-literature-research-seminar-series/

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UH Literature Research Seminar Series (January- March 2024)

OGOMERS are cordially invited to join me for the Literature Research Seminar series at the University of Hertfordshire. These take place online once a month on Wednesdays at 1.30. The papers are 35 mins and we have 20 minutes for discussion. The forum welcomes PhD students and MA students in related fields and is friendly and supportive. If you’d like to join us please follow the links. This semester we are having an excursion into folklore, fairy tale and the gothic. The programme up to Easter is as follows:

24 January 1.30

Kaja Franck, ‘Atavistic Trolls and Immorality in Nordic Ecogothic’

Join Zoom Meeting

https://herts-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/95157329165

Meeting ID: 951 5732 9165

13 March 1.30

 Shabnam Ahsan, ‘Skins and Cloaks: New Identities in 21st-Century Fairy Tales’

Join Zoom Meeting

https://herts-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/95049519796

Meeting ID: 950 4951 9796

17 April 1.30

Sam George, Shadow Worlds: The Dark Origins of the Victorian Fairy

Join Zoom Meeting

https://herts-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/99268565549

Meeting ID: 992 6856 5549

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OGOM News: January, 2024

We’d like to wish all our followers a happy and successful 2024. We were thrilled this month to see the book jacket for our latest OGOM publication The Legacy of John Polidori: The Romantic Vampire and its Progeny, which is out later in the year. Here’s a preview:

The Legacy of John Polidori cover

I’m excited to reveal too, that I will be working with St Pancras Old Church on a brochure and Gothic tour for the public which includes Polidori’s disturbed final resting place in the Churchyard. We will be launching this to tie in with the book. The mystery of Polidori’s supposed suicide and missing headstone is something I spoke about on BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time and it features in the afterword to the book. Sir Chris Frayling has written the preface and we hope that the book will go some way to redeeming ‘Poor Polidori’. It explores the genesis of Polidori’s vampire and tracks his bloodsucking progeny across the centuries and maps his disquieting legacy from the melodramatic vampire theatricals in the 1820s, through further Gothic fictions and horror films, to twenty-first-century paranormal romance. You can read more about the book and link to the table of contents on our publication pages here.

It is looking to be an exciting year for OGOM. We are currently completing our fairy collection and also our editorship of The Cambridge Companion to the Vampire. We also have 2 new funded PhD students who we’ll introduce in full shortly via updated contact pages. Our BAME scholarship student Shabnam is also active with regards to supporting the project. Suffice to say, we are looking forward to working with them and you’ll be able to read about their research in progress on the blog. At present, their topics are as follows:

  • Jane Gill: ‘The Monstrous Feminine: A Female Gothic Perspective on the Lamia and Soucoyant Archetypes in Literature, C. 1820-2000’
  • Harley Tillotson: ‘Ecology in YA Fairy Fiction: Eco-Gothic Approaches to Contemporary Environmental Issues’
  • Shabnam Ahsan: ‘From Coloniality to Postcoloniality in British Fairy tales: 1880-present’

We’d like to mention too that we are open to contributions for feature articles or reviews for the OGOM blog if you’d like to contact us. We have guidelines and also a books received list for reviews. For a wonderful example of the type of material we are looking for, see Stacey Abbot’s review of the Nosferatu at 100 exhibition.

Finally, a reminder that our book In the Company of Wolves is out in paperback and we couldn’t be prouder!! If you are an academic, please consider ordering it for your library or adopting it onto your Gothic modules. We’d love it to be widely read by students of the Gothic.

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Merry Christmas 2023

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to those who celebrate from all of us at the Open Graves, Open Minds Project

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CFPs: Sex and scandal, 1980s and sequels, Victorian popular fiction, Tolkien

Some more conference CFPs, with deadlines in February

1. Dark Economies: Sex, Scandal, and Sensation

Falmouth University, UK (in partnership with City University, Hong Kong), 2-4 July 2024
Deadline: 14 February 2024

Sex, Scandal, and Sensation is an interdisciplinary and global exploration of the role and impact of the sensational, the scandalous, and the sexual in literature, film, television, gaming, and other forms of cultural production. The conference is dedicated to the discussion of a broad range of genres and sub-genres, including Sensation Fiction and the Sensational Press; Crime Fiction and True Crime narratives; Shilling Shockers, Penny Dreadfuls and the Pulps; Romance, Erotica, and Pornographies; the Gothic in both traditional and modern forms; Thrillers on both page and screen; Bestsellers, Blockbusters, and Bonkbusters; Horror novels and films; Soap Operas and Shocking Theatre; RPG and Digital storytelling; and other genres and forms that both rely on the scandal, sensation, and sex for their effects, and explore its effects on us.

2. Return of the Gothic 1980s: Sequels, Trilogies, Multiverses & Beyond

Manchester Metropolitan University, 20–21 June 2024
Deadline: 23 January 2024

This two-day conference aims to re-evaluate the gothic proliferation, duplication, and industrial (over-)reliance on sequelisation that emerged from the 1980s studio system. [. . .]
The gothic mode informs many of the decade’s rich and iconic screen materials and aesthetics; thus, it serves as a significant starting point for the contemporary expansion (and occasional sentiment of exhaustion) with multiverse world-building and the overwhelming advancement of intra-textual material culture [. . .] This conference seeks to explore how sequels work, what rules and anomalies they produce, audience and fan expectations and exhaustion, the formulas, conventions, triumphs and failures, world-building and mythology through sequels, the industrial reliance upon sequels and franchises, and the uncanny notion that we may, still, be living in a historical sequel of the 1980s ourselves.

3. VPFA Annual Conference: ‘Places and Spaces in Victorian Popular Literature and Culture’

Victorian Popular Fiction Association, Canterbury Christ Church University (hybrid conference, in person and online with Zoom), 15-17 July 2024
Deadline: 29 February 2024

If ‘space’ is understood as an area that can be objectively measured or at least conceptualised, the construction of ‘place’ depends on a range of affective and cultural meanings at any given moment.
Victorian writing persistently maps both collective and individual experience onto fully realised ‘spaces’. But the boundaries are often permeable or unstable: actual colonial spaces becoming places of the imagination; the continuing negotiation of domestic space through ideologies of place; the growth of London changing the status of the suburbs; amateur botanists beginning to alter the ecosystem of coastal communities. [. . .]
We invite a broad, imaginative and interdisciplinary interpretation on the topic of ‘Place and Space’ and its relation to any aspect of Victorian popular literature and culture that addresses literal or metaphorical representations of the theme.

4. The Tolkien Society Seminar: Tolkien’s Romantic Resonances

The Tolkien Society, Hilton Leeds City (Free Hybrid Event), 6 July 2024
Deadline: 29 February 2024

As early as The Book of Lost Tales (1910s-1930s) Tolkien’s prose and poetry was infused with elements of the stylistics, aesthetics, and philosophies of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Romantics. Although it has been shown that Tolkien learnt about and read a range of Romantic works, his dialogue with Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief” in ‘On Fairy-stories’ has dominated the intersections between Romantic and Tolkien studies. This has overshadowed the role that Romantic influences played in the shaping of Middle-earth, as well as the Romantic legacies in Victorian literature and art that had a significant impact on Tolkien’s writing. While Tolkien clearly rejected certain forms of Romanticism, he worked within a literary tradition that was partially shaped by the Romantics.
This seminar seeks fresh and innovative readings of Tolkien’s Romantic Resonances that are in dialogue with modern scholarship on Romanticisms, Romantic aesthetics and Romantic-period histories. The seminar understands ‘Romanticism’ and the ‘Romantic’ as complex, nuanced terms that elude simplification, traditional historical markers, and solely Anglocentric readings.

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CFPs: Conjuring Creatures and Worlds, Heavy Childhoods, Cannibal Consumption, late Shelley, Angela Carter

The deadlines for these are all in January–some very close indeed!

1. GIFCon 2024: Conjuring Creatures and Worlds

Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic, University of Glasgow (on line), 15-17 May 2024. Deadline: 5 January 2024 (11:59pm)

How do academics, creative practitioners, and fans conjure (and understand the conjuration of) fantasy, creatures and worlds? Fantasy and the fantastic have the capability to conjure the ephemeral and the horrific, the indefinable and the real, the Other and ourselves, but how do we understand these creations? And how do these encounters with creatures, magic, and worlds conform or challenge our understanding of the fantastic?

2. Heavy Childhoods Conference

University of Huddersfield (in person and on line), 10-11 February 2025
Deadline: 10 January 2024

Ingrained social constructs of the child and childhood as a time of innocence, imagination, and wonder limit our understanding of other aspects that constitute childhood’s representations and experiences. [. . .] “Heavy Childhoods Conference” February 2025 invites delegates to explore “heaviness”, broad y defined, in relation to childhood. We explicitly encourage contributions from outside the global north, as well as transcultural research. [. . .] Creative, short form, and other alternative methods of engagement with the topic are welcome.

3. HI PhD Conference 2024: ‘Cannibal Consumption: Culture, Capitalism, Critique’

UCD Humanities Institute, Dublin, 1 March 2024
Deadline: 12 January 2024

The term ‘cannibalism’ evokes images of horror, violence, and taboo. It is a provocative and unsettling theme, often eliciting fear, disgust and fascination. Historically, colonial and imperial projects deployed racialised discourses of cannibalism in order to legitimise violence on allegedly ‘savage’ or ‘primitive’ populations [. . .] However, the resurgence of cannibalism in contemporary fiction and film has subverted these traditional narratives, offering nuanced perspectives that challenge established norms, societal taboos, and questions of identity [. . .] Responding to the provocations raised by cannibalism today, the conference intends to expand the ways in which it can be conceptualised.

4. The Shelley Conference: ‘Posthumous Poems’, Posthumous Collaborations

Keats House Museum, London. 8-29 June 2024
Deadline: 29 January 2024

Two years after the death of Percy Bysshe Shelley in the summer of 1822, Mary Shelley, after a painstaking editorial process, published Posthumous Poems (1824). The volume contained much of Shelley’s major poetry, including the hitherto unpublished ‘Julian and Maddalo’, together with translations of Goethe and Calderón, and unfinished compositions such as ‘The Triumph of Life’ and ‘Charles the First’.
The Shelley Conference 2024 celebrates the first collected volume of Shelley’s poetry. Posthumous Poems is the product of collaborations. The most significant of these is between Mary Shelley as editor and Shelley as poet, but they also occur between Shelley and the guarantors of the volume, including Bryan Waller Procter (‘Barry Cornwall’) and Thomas Lovell Beddoes. The conference also addresses ideas of posterity and reception more generally in Shelley scholarship, the range of literary forms collected in a single volume, and the complex collaborative literary relationships that shaped Shelley’s life and endured after his death.

5. “Desire, Imagination and Dream” – Angela Carter in Portugal

Angela Carter Society, University of Lisbon, Portugal, 27-29 June 2024
Deadline: 31 January 2024

This international conference under the aegis of the Angela Carter Society seeks to explore the complex and multi-layered relationships between art, politics, place, and sexuality in the writings of Angela Carter. Taking place at the University of Lisbon, the conference takes inspiration from Carter’s visit to Portugal in the summer of 1977 [. . .]
This conference presents us all with an opportunity to reflect on the intersections of art, sexuality, politics and place in the writings of Angela Carter [. . .] 2024 is also an important year for Portugal, as it marks the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution which re-established democracy in the country. We therefore invite speakers to connect Carter’s writings about politics and place with the recent history of Portugal

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Literature Research Seminars 2023-4

All those associated with OGOM are cordially invited to join us online at the university for the first of our Literature Research Seminars. We are kicking off with an eco-gothic theme to appeal to one or two of our newly recruited PhD research students. We are also reaching out to colleagues in Creative Arts and the UH Centre for Climate Change Research, to foster some cross fertilisation of ideas. We are going to be pairing papers as we go through (to point to possible collaborations and shared ideas) and we will also be bringing in our Literature PhD students where possible.

These seminars will be held on Zoom in the first instance to be accessible for all (including external invitees and students). There will be 40 mins for the presentation and 20 mins for questions. Please find below the dates for your diary. Thanks to Kaja and Justin for starting us off.

Times and links below. Hope to see you there. All welcome.

1.30 Wed 13th December 

Dr Justin Sausman, ‘Reservoirs, Ecogothic and Climate Crisis: The skeleton of a drowned community arises’.

Join Zoom Meeting

https://herts-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/99834262576

Meeting ID: 998 3426 2576

1.30 Wed 24th January

Dr Kaja Franck, ‘Atavistic Trolls and Christian Immorality in Nordic Ecogothic’

Join Zoom Meeting

https://herts-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/95157329165

Meeting ID: 951 5732 9165

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Gothic Yuletide: A Journey Through Dark Christmas Folklore, Sat 9th December    

Join me for a dark journey through Christmas folklore and seasonal mythology at Guy’s Hospital Chapel, Saturday the 9th December 2023 at 3:00.

Booking: Tickets £12 including a delightful gin cocktail and 20% donation to Guy’s and St Thomas.

This event is part of London Month of the Dead’s Gothic Christmas!!

DESCRIPTION:

In this illustrated talk, ‘coffin boffin,’ Dr Sam George, journeys through the twelve days of Christmas engaging with the wonders of Gothic Advent from the pranks of Jack Frost to the terrifying misdemeanours of Krampus (the horned Yuletide figure from Austro-Bavarian folklore). During the Christmas season in Norway, for example, a Julebukk, or man-goat goes door to door carolling and trick or treating; and in Iceland, parents warn children of the monstrous Jólakötturinn, a terrifying feline who knows who has been naughty or nice. Greece has a demon, uncannily referred to in English as ‘the Christmas Vampire’.  Confined to the underworld, it emerges for 12 days over the Christmas season from 25th Dec to 7th Jan. In Austria, the uncanny Schnabelperchten, folklore figures with long beaks, equipped with baskets on their backs and large pairs of scissors, make their way through town on the 5th of January, on the eve of Epiphany.

The characters that make up Europe’s winter folk festivals, are far from cosy, despite their association with Yuletide, but they do testify to humanity’s need for myth. This gloriously dark introduction to the holiday season celebrates seasonal mythology, demonstrating its unique intersection between folklore and the Gothic.

Sam George is Associate Professor of Research at the University of Hertfordshire and the Convenor (with Dr Bill Hughes) of the Open Graves, Open Minds project.

TIME & VENUE:

3.00 p.m. GMT.

Guy’s Hospital Chapel, Courtyard Entrance. St Thomas Street, London SE1

TICKETS here

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Halloween Fairies

Halloween is supposedly a time when the veil between our world and the shadow world is extremely thin. A time when you are more likely to hear stories of encounters between humans and fairies. Fairies are said to reside in a shadowy spirit world and on the eve of Hallowe’en, on the old Celtic festival of Samhain, the dead and the fairies were thought of as mingling in their revels.

Alan Lee, The Faery Ring, ‘ in Faeries‘ by Brian Froud & Alan Lee, 1978

This eerie revelry of the spirits of the dead manifesting as fairies is referred to by many early fairyologists:

In the minds of our pagan ancestors, there was very little distinction between the dead and the fairies, who were perhaps only the spirits of an earlier race. All the demons at the fairy raths are dead human folk who are out for their Hallowe’en revels, after which they must go back to their graves for another year (Lewis Spence, British Fairy Origins, 1946).

If this Halloween you go seeking winged friends, they might not be as sweet as you think. I for one regret the lack of fairies on Halloween cards; there are some vintage ones that suggest that fairies once featured as frequently as today’s witches and vampires.

Thanks to all those who have attended our calendar of OGOM Halloween events; we hope you have enjoyed the spooky season as much as we have. I was delighted to bring my events programme to a close with a fairy themed talk: Winged Fiends: The Dark Origins of the Fairy at the London Month of the Dead Festival. Keep an eye out for future events including the launch of the next OGOM book: The Legacy of John Polidori: The Romantic Vampire and its Progeny. And remember, if you have saved your revels for tonight, we believe ‘there’s a little witch in all of us’! (Practical Magic).

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