Re-wilding the British Lynx and Other Animal Stories at Company of Wolves

Posted on 27th April 2015 by Sam George

lynxindex The BBC’s debate today about re-wilding the Lynx in the UK is quite pertinent to our Company of Wolves conference. There is a lot of tension around such stories which makes them ripe for discussion in relation to our strand on animality and re-wilding. Wild lynx have been extinct in Britain for more than 1,300 years. Some wonderful footage here of these beautiful and dangerous creatures and comments on the possibility of their re-introduction.  Am I the only person wondering how they will get along with our domesticate cats if they encounter them?!! lynximages

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Gothic in Birmingham: New Show

Posted on 22nd April 2015 by Sam George

This looks worth visiting if you are in the Midlands:

Gothic in Birmingham: Exhibition and Conference
Literature, film, architecture, art, Goth culture and more
Tuesday 7 April until Saturday 2 May 2015, Highlight, Level 3, Library of Birmingham
All Welcome

Gothic in Birmingham

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What do botany and vampirism have in common?

Posted on 19th April 2015 by Sam George

Literature and science is a field that has always interested me and Professor Martin Willis has just published Literature and Science: Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism. This will be of interest to Company of Wolves delegates as it has a very good chapter on animal studies which also covers botany and eugenics. My work on botany gets a good mention here which is very nice to see. Yes, eighteenth-century botany was my key research area before I was seduced over to the dark side! Joseph Pitton de Tournefort is a good way of showing the relationship between these seemingly diverse topics. When he voyaged to Myconos in the eighteenth century in search of botanical specimens he found instead a plague of vampires!! There are overlaps if you look hard enough. I would love to know if anyone has any other connections between botany and vampirism? Some pertinent images from Willis below.

books of blood and science co-mingle on my desk but this is the newest

books of blood and science co-mingle on my desk but this is the newest

20150419_113840_resized

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Great Day at Daughter of Fangdom: Women and Telvision Vampires Conference

Posted on 19th April 2015 by Sam George

Well done to Stacey, Lorna and Mike for their excellent conference at the University of Roehampton on women and television vampires on April 18th. You can view the programme here daughter-of-fangdom-programme-11-march. Stacey Abbott has contributed widely to OGOM and will be presenting at OGOM Company of Wolves Conference in September. You can follow the TV Fangdom project and find out more via their website: https://tvfangdom.wordpress.com. Television vampires can certainly generate lively discussion. Keep watching and sharing and look out for the book that is developing with details of research from both conferences!!

Hope to see you soon Stacey

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Vampires aren’t that bad

Posted on 15th April 2015 by William the Bloody

Dr Sorcha Ní Fhlainn, Gothic/Horror academic & lecturer at MMU, takes issue with the stance of some Roman Catholics who think that the allure of fictional vampires is dangerous (see previous post here).

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Vatican Wants Exorcisms for Teens Who Love Vampires

Posted on 14th April 2015 by Sam George

Thanks to Dr Beyer for forwarding the link to The Independent which today claimed that Exorcists Warn Vatican over Beautiful Young Vampires  


web-twilight

Perhaps Pope Francis would like to borrow our vampire slaying kit complete with crucifix bible and holy water. Seems he wants his very own Van Helsing figure to exorcise teens too enamored of the vampire.

vampire slaying kit

Imagine an alternative ending to Twilight where Bella is exorcised and Edward is staked, decapitated and burned to ashes. Would this be better than loving the vampire? Even Van Helsing knows that ‘the vampire live on and cannot die by the mere passing of time’. Love to know your responses to this……

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CFP Books of Blood: Collaborative Project and Funding Bid

Posted on 12th April 2015 by Sam George
parasites (yellow) infect neighboring cells (red). Photograph: A. Crick and P. Cicuta

parasites (yellow) infect neighboring cells (red). Photograph: A. Crick and P. Cicuta

*Extended Deadline – submissions by 1st November 2015*

All humans ‘are books of blood—wherever you open us, we’re red’ (Clive Barker). If our bodies are books of blood, then they can be read; we invite such readings and contributions where blood is the signifier. We are also interested in analyses and representations of the literal presence of blood in our culture, the importance of the actual material substance of life itself. This is the first stage of a funding bid and collaborative project on blood for the Wellcome Trust. Submissions will be chosen to contribute to an exhibition, a series of public talks, and an illustrated book. Initial contributions will be drawn from any of the following fields: science. technology, medicine, forensics, history of science, history of ideas, philosophy, theology, anthropology, myth, legend, folklore, literature, creative writing, painting, sculpture, performance, conceptual art film, TV, video games, song lyrics, popular culture. Topics may include but are not limited to the following:

changing scientific notions of blood in their context
Harvey and the circulation of the blood;
blood lust: vampirism, bloodsucking
consuming blood and its virtues
Landsteiner and blood groups
bloodlines: pure blood, blue blood, bad blood identity; race, genealogy, degeneration; haemophilia; blood libels and racial purity
blood letting, medical practices
blood economy: circulation, exchange; wealth as vampirism
vital fluids: the four humours, creative juices; blood and metonymy with other bodily fluids; blood and semen
true blood, synthetic blood, fake blood
the blood of Christ; the Eucharist and the meaning of transubstantiation
the blood is the life: taboos and rituals; menstrual blood, churching; blood letting, kosher and halal
blood, religion, and sexuality
the bleeding boughs of Virgil and Dante
blood crimes and punishments: retribution; forensics
coughing up blood: consumption and Romantic sensibility
the blood of the body politic
medical practices: blood letting, leeching
blood lust: the appeal of blood; vampirism, bloodsucking; splatter movies, the current vampire vogue
blood disorders: blood poisoning, infection, contagion; tuberculosis, AIDS, CJD
blood money: the economy of blood: circulation/exchange/transfusion; blood tanks/ blood reserves
blood as gift: martyrdom, sacrifice; blood pacts, blood brother ritual; blood donation; the ethics of transfusion and exchange

Please send abstracts of 1,000 words describing how your current research/practice fits the remit of the project and what you would offer in relation to the various outcomes (i.e. exhibition, talks and book). Submissions should be sent by August 31st 2015 as an email attachment in MS Word document format to the following: Dr Sam George, s.george@herts.ac.uk; Dr John Rimmer, johnrimmer62@googlemail.com You should also include a 250 word biographical statement.

Please use your surname as the document title. The abstract should be sent in the following format: (1) Title (2) Presenter(s) (3) Institutional affiliation (4) Email (5) Abstract (6) Biog.

herts.academia.edu/SamGeorge
www.opengravesopenminds.com
http://vimeo.com/johnrimmer

download CFP Pdf below:

BooksofBloodCFPApril2015c

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OGOM Company of Wolves- Prof. Garry Marvin completes our programme

Posted on 8th April 2015 by Sam George

nakedwoman-and-wolf

Thank you to everyone who has sent in abstracts for the OGOM Company of Wolves conference. We have enjoyed reading through the wonderfully varied and pertinent responses and today began to write to those who have been accepted so far. The CFP has been extended until 30th April so there is still time to contribute if you have not got your abstract in yet. We have added some new categories (re-wilding; changelings and werelings; the last wolf; eco-criticism) into the mix to solicit an even broader response. After this deadline we will go live with the registration and programme.

I have been working on perfecting things behind the scenes and today had confirmation that Professor Garry Marvin will be our final plenary speaker. Garry Marvin is a social anthropologist and Professor of human-animal studies at the University of Roehampton, London. He is author of Wolf (Reaktion Books) and has been profiled in The Guardian. His research will really make our programme complete. Garry will give something of an anthropological overview of the cultural images of the wolf and link this to the present-day issues of wolves re-emerging in different places in Europe. Our other plenaries are the film director Neil Jordan ‘Company of Wolves’ and Sir Christopher Frayling on ‘Angela Carter’, Dr Catherine Spooner on ‘Wearing the Wolf’, Dr Stacey Abbott on ‘The Sound of the Cinematic Werewolf’, and the novelist Marcus Sedgwick, whose wolf children are some of the most remarkable in fiction,

9781861898791

Delegates will have the opportunity to visit unique places associated with our theme, such as the grave of Hertfordshire’s very own wolf child Peter-the -Wild-Boy and the UK Wolf Trust to learn about rewilding and to actually ‘walk with wolves’. There will be werewolf games and theatricals and David Annwyn Jones will entertain us prior to the conference dinner with a lycanthropic lantern-of-fear show projected from an antique magic lantern.

In the tradition of OGOM the event is looking very, very special indeed.  I cannot wait for werewolf time!!.

jordanindex

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Defect: A New Vampire Musical -good luck Clare!

Posted on 7th April 2015 by Sam George

OGOM follower Clare Prenton has a new musical venture called ‘Defect’. ‘Defect’ is a contemporary musical with a ‘Romeo and Juliet’ vampire twist.

Defect_Web3_420_585

Booking opens at 2pm on Friday 24th April 2015.

Music, Lyrics & Book: Craig Adams, Book & Lyrics: Clare Prenton, Director: Ned Bennett, Choreographer: Tom Jackson. Greaves Music Director: Stuart Morley, Location: The Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation Theatre

Further details and booking here

Best of luck Clare!!

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OGOM Company of Wolves Conference: Extended Call for Papers

Posted on 5th April 2015 by Sam George

OGOM: ‘The Company of Wolves’: Sociality, Animality, and Subjectivity in Literary and Cultural Narratives—Werewolves, Shapeshifters, and Feral Humans

Conference, University of Hertfordshire, Sept 3rd-5th 2015

wolves

Extended Call for Papers and Panels

OGOM is extending its call for papers for its third conference until 30th April 2015 so there is still time to contribute to this unique event. The programme features Neil Jordan and plenary talks from Sir Christopher Frayling on ‘Angela Carter’, Dr Catherine Spooner on ‘Wearing the Wolf’, Dr Stacey Abbott on ‘The Sound of the Cinematic Werewolf’, Dr Sam George on ‘Wolf Children’ and Dr Bill Hughes on ‘Werewolves and Paranormal Romance’. OGOM’s intrepid researchers Kaja Franck and Matt Beresford, will present papers on their current research involving wolves/werewolves and there will be a special contribution from award winning novelist Marcus Sedgwick, whose wolf children are some of the most fascinating to appear in fiction. Delegates will have the opportunity to visit unique places associated with our theme, including a re-wilding centre and the grave of Hertfordshire’s most famous wolf child, Peter the Wild Boy.

Grave in Christchurch, Herts

Grave in Christchurch, Herts

There will be werewolf themed games and theatricals and the opportunity to actually ‘walk with wolves’. The conference dinner will be preceded by a unique take on monstrous hounds in a lycanthropic lantern-of-fear show projected from an antique magic lantern. You really do not want to miss out on showtime!! Delegates will be invited to submit to a special edition of Gothic Studies on werewolves and an OGOM edited collection on our Company with Wolves.

We invite proposals for panels and individual papers. Possible topics and approaches may include (but are not limited to) the following:

Werewolves, lycanthropy, and shapeshifters; feral and wild children; language, culture, and nature; instinct and agency; animal studies and humanist perspectives; Re-wilding projects, Eco-Gothic; The last wolf;  Werelings and Changelings; Phenomenology and the philosophy of language; mind, and body; animality and sociality from Hobbes through Rousseau to Darwin; narratives of the Grimms, Perrault, Kipling, Angela Carter, Neil Jordan, Anne Rice, Maggie Stiefvater, Glen Duncan, Marcus Sedgwick; genre, intertextuality, and narratology; Young Adult and children’s fiction; urban fantasy and paranormal romance; TV, film, and other media;folklore and anthropology; fables, fabliaux, and fantasy; the Gothic fairy tale, and myth; sexuality and romance, species, ‘race’, identity, and taxonomy.

Abstracts (200-300 words) for twenty-minute papers or proposals for two-hour panels should be submitted by 30th April 2015 as an email attachment in MS Word document format to all of the following: Dr Sam George, s.george@herts.ac.uk; Dr Bill Hughes, bill.enlightenment@gmail.com; Kaja Franck, k.a.franck@googlemail.com

Please use your surname as the document title. The abstract should be sent in the following format: (1) Title (2) Presenter(s) (3) Institutional affiliation (4) Email (5) Abstract. Panel proposals should include (1) Title of the panel (2) Name and contact information of the chair (3) Abstracts of the presenters. Presenters will be notified of acceptance by April 2015

For more information, contact Dr Sam George at s.george@herts.ac.uk.

OGOM awaits your email………

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