Ninth Biannual Conference of the International Gothic Association:

Monstrous Media/ Spectral Subjects

21-24 July 2009, Lancaster University, UK

Confirmed plenary speakers:

Elisabeth Bronfen, Tanya Krzywinska, Marina Warner
(Further plenary events to be confirmed.)

CALL FOR PAPERS

Gothic forms and figures have long been bound up with different media, from the machinery of
Walpole’s modern romance to Robertson’s phantasmagorical shows in the eighteenth century;
from uncanny automata to ghostly photographs and monstrous kinetograms in the nineteenth;
from cinematic shocks to digital disembodiments in the twentieth. More than merely exploiting
new technical developments in cultural production and consumption, Gothic modes, in adopting
and adapting new media, engage with excitements and anxieties attendant on cultural and
technological change.

Examining conjunctions of literary, visual, spatial and digital texts in relation to spectral and
visceral effects and affects, the conference aims to stimulate discussions of the relationship
between Gothic fictions and other cultural forms, media and technologies. Doubling monstrosity
and spectrality, it sets out to explore the cultural production and consumption of monsters and
ghosts from the eighteenth century to the present.

This interdisciplinary, international conference will be hosted by the Department of English and
Creative Writing and supported across the University by colleagues in English, Film, Media and
Cultural Studies, Gender Studies and the Contemporary Arts. It is hoped that international
scholars from diverse fields will participate.

Topics which may be covered include, but are not limited to:

• Early visual technologies (phantasmagoria/ magic lantern shows/spirit photography)
• Gothic embodiments (staging, smoke and mirrors, automata and mechanical curiosities)
• Gothic on screen
• Digital Gothic (web, video games, hypertext)
• Visualising Gothic narrative (graphic novels, comics and illustration)
• Monstrosities (subjects, texts, bodies, forms)
• Media monsters
• Spectralities (subjects, spaces, environments, images)
• Transgeneric crossings (cyborgs, science, fictions)

Send queries and 250-word abstracts to Dr Catherine Spooner and Prof. Fred Botting at
monstrousmedia_at_lancaster.ac.uk by 5 January 2009.

Suggestions for panels and for sessions which break the traditional academic mould are warmly
welcomed.

Further information to follow shortly at www.monstrous-media.com.

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Received on Wed Jul 16 2008 - 15:42:45 EDT