Panels and Papers

* Each paper is numbered so that you can match it with the list of abstracts here.

4: 06 April 2018 11:00 – 12:20            Parallel Session 1

1    Urban Myths and Fairy Tales
Chair: Dr Ceri Houlbrook                              Seminar Room M015

36    Dr William Redwood (Supernatural Cities), Hell Finding Cabs Round Here: Taxi Rides through the Urban Weird

14    Dr Carina Hart (University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus), Fairy Tales of the Neoliberal Gothic City: Michael Cunningham’s The Snow Queen

35    David Powell (University of Birmingham), Mind the doors! Folk horror on the London Underground

2    Weird Victoriana
Chair: Dr Karl Bell                                           Seminar Room M021

5    Dr Joseph Crawford (University of Exeter), The Urban Turn: Gothic Cityscapes before The Mysteries of London

23    Rebecca Langworthy (University of Aberdeen), Beyond the Text: The influence of George MacDonald’s Robert Falconer upon the urban spaces of Huntly

24    Janette Leaf (Birkbeck, University of London), Big Bug in the Big City: Richard Marsh’s Beetle in Late Victorian London

3    Ghosts and Spectrality
Chair: Dr Sam George                                     Seminar Room M031

26    Dr Anastasia A. Lipinskaya (St Petersburg University,  Russia), The City That Was Not There: Space in British Ghost Stories

29    Dr Charlotte-Rose Millar (University of Queensland, Australia), The Urban Ghost: Spectres in Early Modern London

33    Dr Ivan Phillips (University of Hertfordshire), ‘That’s a hell of a lot of ghosts’: the haunting of Doctor Who

6: 06 April 2018 13:20 – 14:40         Parallel Session 2

4    China Mieville
Chair: Dr Carina Hart                                     Seminar Room M015

9    András Fodor (University of Szeged, Hungary), The space out of joint: haunted urban spaces in China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun

30    Sarah Neef (TU Dortmund University, Germany), ‘Up’s no longer out of bounds, and down’s nothing to fear’: Verticality and Locomotion in China Miéville’s Urban Fantasy

5    The Virtual Weird
Chair: Dr Kaja Franck                                     Seminar Room M021

17    Dr Madelon Hoedt (University of South Wales), ‘Welcome Home, Good Hunter’: The Gothic and Environmental Storytelling in From Software’s Bloodborne

20    Debbie  Kent (Goldsmiths, University of London), Ghosts of the Shadow City: adventures in the CGI dreamscapes of urban development

21    Prof. Tanya Krzywinska (Falmouth University) , ‘Everything is True’: A Weird Tale: Urban Gothic meets Urban Myth in Multiplayer Online Game, The Secret World

6    Nineteenth-Century Europe and the Weird
Chair: Dr Andrew Maunder                               Seminar Room M031

34    Dr Hannu Poutiainen (University of Tampere, Finland), The Esoteric Flâneur: Steps Towards a Theory of Initiatic Walking (and Reading)

11    Marine Galiné (University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne, France) Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘Spalatro’ (1843) and the remapping of the Gothic mode

10: 06 April 2018 16:20 – 17:40       Parallel Session 3

7    Paranormal Romance
Chair: Dr Sam George                                     Seminar Room M015

8    Meghanne Flynn (University of Cambridge), Betwixt and Between: (Sub)Urban Space in Young Adult Supernatural Romance

18    Dr Bill Hughes (OGOM), Tales of two cities: heteroglossia, heterogeneity, and decay in Aliette de Bodard and Kate Griffin’s urban fantasies of Paris and London

10    Dr Kaja Franck (University of Hertfordshire), The Troll in the City: Urban Fey, Environmentalism and Holly Black’s Valian

8    Killers of London
Chair: Dr Charlotte-Rose Millar                          Seminar Room M021

2    Dr Barbara Braid (University of Szczecin, Poland), ‘Here he is again, in flesh’: the haunted city in the Whitechapel series

13    Dr Siân Harris (University of Bristol), A Scottish Inspector in London: The uncanny city in Ian Rankin’s Tooth and Nail

40    Olivia Steen (University of Hertfordshire),  Lookout in the Blackout: Spatiality and the serial killers of WWII London

9    The Politics of Horror
Chair: Dr Justin Sausman                                      Seminar Room M031

6    Ralph Dorey (Northumbria University), Rotten Borough: the biological reterritorialization of urban space in horror texts as counter hegemonic resistance

28    Dr Simon Marsden (University of Liverpool), Tainted Cities: Adam Nevill’s Austerity Gothic

44    Jillian Wingfield (University of Hertfordshire), ‘Fucking yuppies are ruining my whole neighborhood’: the psychodynamic environment in Charlie Huston’s Already Dead (2005)

14: 07 April 2018 10:00 – 11:20       Parallel Session 4

10    The East and the Weird
Chair: Dr Bill Hughes                                      Seminar Room M015

22    Meriem Lamara (University of Northampton), Behind Gilded Walls: The Islamic Gothic in S. A. Chakraborty’s The City of Brass

37    Tania de Rozario (Lasalle College of the Arts, Singapore), Death Wears a Dress

41    Tom Sykes (University of Portsmouth), The City-as-Hell: Horror, Dystopia and Orientalism in Anglo-American Literary Constructions of Urban Manila 1852-2011

11    Weird London
Chair: Dr Karl Bell                                           Seminar Room M021

16    Dr Ruth Heholt (Falmouth University), Tracing the Supernatural City in E. F. Benson’s London Tales

7    Helena Esser (Birkbeck, University of London), ‘Funeral Theater’: The Whimsy and Weird Foundations of Steampunk London

1    Alison Baker (University of East London), Jonathan Stroud’s The Golem’s Eye: Magical class conflict in an alternative London

12    The Urban Weird in Fantasy
Chair: Dr Anna Tripp                                        Seminar Room M031

12    Dr Jessica George (Cardiff University), Gothic silence and urban Welshness in Mary Ann Constantine’s Star-Shot

43    Adam Teall (University of Hertfordshire), The spectral city, posthumanism and the blurring of human boundaries in Gustav Meyrink’s The Golem

25    Pascal Lemaire, Misty Bruges: the resurrected city that became a fantastic character

16: 07 April 2018 12:20 – 13:40       Parallel Session 5

13    Weird Archaeology 
Chair: Jillian Wingfield                                     Seminar Room M015

27    Dr Ken Lymer (Wessex Archaeology ), Cyclopean ruins and albino penguins – The weird urban archaeology of H. P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness

4    Daisy Butcher (University of Hertfordshire), ‘The Pharaoh-cious feminine’: Archaeologists and princesses in the city in Universal’s The Mummy (2017)

38    John G. Sabol (Interpretive Performance Excavation Research Center),    Wolvesey, Winchester, and Wolves: Multi-Species Cosmopolitics, the Unearthing of Urban Folklore, and Archaeological Perspectivism

14    The Weird Resistance
Chair: Prof. Owen Davies                                    Seminar Room M021

14    Kate Harvey (University of Stirling), It’s an Animal City: Johannesburg as Gothic Space in Lauren Beukes’s Zoo City

39    Dr Justin Sausman (University of Hertfordshire), ‘Whispers of witchcraft and haunting’: Haweswater, reservoir noir and the ghosts of Mardale

32    Eilís Phillips (University of Portsmouth), ‘Infernal Machine[s]’: Understanding Diabolical Depictions of Incendiarism in Nineteenth-Century Britain