Monthly Archives: April 2017
Witches and Walpurgis Night
Happy Walpurgisnacht! Here’s an excellent article by Prof. Owen Davies of the University of Hertfordshire, ‘Witches and Walpurgis Night‘. He traces the folkloric origins of the supposed sabbat of witches through Goethe and Bram Stoker to contemporary popular culture.
Ring-a-ring-a Widdershins: It’s Walpurgis Night and Halfway to Hallowe’en!
It’s Walpurgis Night (Walpurgisnacht or Valborgsmässoafton), the night that marks the transition from winter to spring, falling on the eve of the first of May. It’s also halfway to Halloween!! Kaja will like that! In folk tradition, witches and … Continue reading
Gothicise and Supernatural Cities
I’m setting up a permanent link (in the Related Links column on the right) from the site to the art collaborative Gothicise, which was launched in 2010. Gothicise create site-specific performances that interrogate the relationship between site and narrative including the 2015 … Continue reading
Beauty and Beastliness: Intertextuality, genre mutation, and utopian possibilities in paranormal romance
We now have a repository where we hope to make talks and other research outputs available. I’ve uploaded my talk, ‘Beauty and Beastliness: Intertextuality, genre mutation, and utopian possibilities in paranormal romance‘, which I gave recently at the excellent ‘Damsels … Continue reading
The Works of H. G. Wells
This is an excellent blog devoted to reading through the work of H. G. Wells, with critical summaries of each text. I have added a permanent link in the Related Links section on the right-hand side of the Blog and … Continue reading
Fairy Tale Films and Gothic Forests at the Barbican, 3-25 May 2017
A season of films on fairy tale and Gothic forests, Into the Woods at the Barbican (including Neil Jordan’s adaptation of Angela Carter’s tales, The Company of Wolves, which inspired OGOM’s 2015 conference). Join us as we venture in to the … Continue reading
Conference review: Damsels in Redress: Women in Contemporary Fairy-Tale Reimaginings, Queen’s University Belfast, 7-8 April 2017
At last I’ve managed to review the ‘Damsels in Redress: Women in Contemporary Fairy-Tale Reimaginings’ conference at Queen’s University Belfast which I attended recently. My thanks to the organisers, Lisa Kennedy, Amy Finlay, and Christina Collins for such an inspiring … Continue reading
Fantastika Journal
The first issue of Lancaster University’s Fantastika Journal is now available here–it looks really good, with interesting critical essays and a substantial review section. There’s a link to it in the Journals category on the right-hand side of the Blog … Continue reading
Reading Lists
From a few responses by you (that is, visitors to the site), I thought it might be a good idea to provide reading lists for books we at OGOM recommend–for example, the best vampire or dark fairy YA novels, or … Continue reading