Event registration can be found here.
Keynotes and Reading Suggestions can be found here.
Abstracts and Speaker Bios can be found here.
Workshops and Roundtables can be found here.
Workshop registration opens on May 3 at noon BST.
This document is updated as needed. All times listed are BST, British Summer Time
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Discord
| Tuesday 9 May 2023 18:00-18:45 Discord Welcome in our Discord |
| Day 1: Wednesday 10 May 2023 |
| 9:30 – 10:00: Platform wide welcome / Opening words and explanation of the mechanics | ||
| 10:00 – 11:00: Roundtable: Researching Boundaries and Margins with Bettina Juszak, Dion Dobrzynski, Parinita Shetty, and Mariana Rios Maldonado Chaired by Grace A.T. Worm with Deputy Chair Dimitra Fimi | ||
| 11:25 – 12:40: Panel 1A Fantastic Liminalities Chair: Lucinda Holdsworth Deputy Chair: Madeline Wahl 11:25 Chengcheng You: Outlandish Representations: Crossing Boundaries of Species and Genres in Young Adult Liminal Fantasy 11:45 Parvathy R.: The Cracks Within: Liminality and Hero-making in Fantasy 12:05 Vaibhav Dwivedi: The Porous House: Investigating the House as a Space of the Fantastic in Neil Gaiman’s Coraline 12:25 Discussion | 11:25 – 12:40: Panel 1B Boundaries of Humanity Chair: Anna Milon Deputy Chair: Frances Pearson 11:25 Canchen Cao: What the “Other” Uncovers: The Periphery of the Medieval Fantasy World and Universe 11:45 Hannah Mimiec: Won’t Somebody Think of the Children! Liminal Fantasy and Biopower in Hope Mirrlees’s ‘Lud-In-The-Mist’ 12:05 Xiuqi Huang: Boundary Between the Human and the Inhuman in Arthur C. Clarke’s and Liu Cixin’s Science Fiction 12:25 Discussion | 11:25 – 12:40: Panel 1C Dungeons & Dragons & Drawing New Boundaries Chair: Emma French Deputy Chair: Anika Klose 11:25 Amy Richmond: The Living (and Loving) Dead: The Erotic Rejection of Death in Critical Role: Campaign 3 11:45 Fiona Reid: Beyond the Table and Into the Dungeon: How Neurodivergent and Queer People Explore Identity Through TTRPGs 12:05 Dr Dimitra Nikolaidou: Centering on the Margins: The Evolution of Fantasy Tabletop Role-Playing Games 12:25 Discussion |
| 12:40 – 13:10: Lunch | ||
| 13:30 – 14:30: Keynote: Dr Will Tattersdill, ‘Breathe Deep, Seek Peace’: The Fantasy/Science Boundary, Especially As It Applies To Dinosaurs Chaired by Dimitra Fimi with Deputy Chair Madeline Wahl |
| 14:30 – 14:50 Coffee Break | ||
| 14:50 – 16:05: Panel 2A Queering Fantasies 1 Chair: Taylor Driggers Deputy Chair: Jiaxin Liu 14:50 Tam Moules: Flower of Knights, Knight of Flowers: Transgression of Gendered Boundaries in Retellings of the Tale of Peredur 15:10 Mercury Natis: “And its Folks are Queerer”: Queer Marginality and the Found Family Dynamics of the Bagginses of Bag-End 15:30 Mars Nicoli: The Sex of Angels: Nonbinary readings of otherworldly creatures in Supernatural (2005-2020) and Good Omens (2019-) 15:50 Discussion | 14:50 – 16:05: Panel 2B Interrogating Fairy Tales and Folktales Chair: Anna Milon Deputy Chair: Sarah Koki 14:50 Cristina Espejo: Fairy tales and Fantasy: Expanding Boundaries and Subverting Expectations 15:10 Francesca Bihet: On the Borders of Fairyland: Science and the Supernatural in Andrew Lang’s That Very Mab and The Chronicles of Pantouflia 15:30 Madeleine Sinclair: Fantastical Subjectivity in Rana Dasgupta’s Twenty-First Century Folktales 15:50 Discussion | 14:50 – 16:05: Panel 2C Crossing Thresholds Chair: Siobhan Mulligan Deputy Chair: Annemarie Whitehurst 14:50 Madalena Daleziou: Threshold Crossing and Deconstructed Portals in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials and Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone. 15:10 Isabelle Hanshue: From Prisoner to King: Entrapment and Escape Through the Fantastic in Susanna Clarke’s Novels 15:30 Luise Rössel: Crossing the lake – The land of the dead, resurrection, and Jesus in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials 15:50 Discussion |
| Day 2: Thursday 11 May 2023 |
| 9:30 – 10:45: Panel 3A The Political Fantastic Chair: Dimitra Fimi Deputy Chair: Annemarie Whitehurst 9:30 Samantha Hammond: “To Win or Lose a Great Game”: Board Games, Seth Dickinson’s “Masquerade” Series, and Policing Fantasy’s Political Boundaries 9:50 Louise Marchel: Revolution or Fantastic Dream? The Importance of William Morris’ ‘News from Nowhere’ in the Psychedelic Creative Landscape of 1960s London 10:10 Esther Edelmann: Fantastic Underdevelopment in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Devil’s Elixirs and Reinaldo Arenas’ Hallucinations 10:30 Discussion | 9:30 – 10:45: Panel 3B Rewriting Women in National Contexts Chair: Isabel Ferrari Deputy Chair: Hannah Mimiec 9:30 Yimin Xu: Re/discovering Women in Chinese Taoist Myth: New Gods: Yang Jian 9:50 Aicha Daoudi: Trickster Witches: The Manifestation of the Archaic Trickster Energy in Female Characters of the American Fantasy Genre. 10:10 Ane B. Ruiz-Lejarcegui: Embracing Hybrid Identities in Silvia Moreno-García’s The Daughter of Doctor Moreau 10:30 Discussion | 9:30 – 10:45: Panel 3C Crossover Audiences Chair: Tom Emanuel Deputy Chair: Grace A.T. Worm 9:30 Lizao Hu: Fantasy as crossover carnival: Transgressing boundaries in Aaron Becker’s wordless picturebook trilogy 9:50 Alvin Emmanuel Alagao: A Filipino Gamer Gets Lost in the Universe of Saga Frontier in 1998 and 2021: An Autoethnography 10:10 James Lowder and Fergus Attlee: Fantastic Interdisciplinarity: Two Human Geographers on Makoto Shinkai’s Voices of a Distant Star and Your Name 10:30 Discussion |
| 10:45 – 11:15 Break | ||
| 11:15 – 12:30: Workshops 4A: “Solo Roleplaying Games: History and How To” with Anna Blackwell Deputy Chair: Tam Moules 4B: “Writing Hybrid Genres” with Dr Oliver Langmead Deputy Chair: Laura Sanchez 4C: “Boundless Empathy: Exploring Non-Anthropocentric Writing” with Michael Deerwater Deputy Chair: Maggie Naylor | ||
| 12:30 – 13:00 Lunch Break | ||
| 13:00 – 13:55: Panel 5A Representing Hostile Worlds Chair: Isabel Ferrari Deputy Chair: Sarah Koki 13:00 Katarina Dulude: To Refuse What Has Been Refused to You: Depictions of the Undercommons in the Future Imaginaries of Arcane and Babel 13:20 Despoina Tantsiopoulou: Opposing School of Thought: Marginalization and the Campus in R.F. Kuang’s “Babel” 13:40 Discussion | 13:00 – 14:15: Panel 5B Screening Fantastic Horrors Chair: Maria Arvaniti Deputy Chair: Jiaxin Liu 13:00 Jamie MacGregor: Now with more blood, guts, and gore!: Horror Cinema in the Wake of Covid-19 13:20 Eilidh Harrower: “You kids have fun” – ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’ and ‘Scream’ as Reflections of Changing Generational Fears 13:40 Rebecca Gault: A Conspiracy of Bodies: Negating Sexual Anthropocentrism 14:00 Discussion | 13:00 – 14:15: Panel 5C Renegotiating Fantastic Margins Chair: Siobhan Mulligan Deputy Chair: Maggie Naylor 13:00 Suzanne Black: Canon(n)s in the Distance: Black Sails Fanfiction, Decolonial Gothic and the Negotiation of Canon 13:20 Anika Klose: “My Colours Are Mine” – New Shades of Detective Fiction in Ambelin and Ezekiel Kwaymullina’s Catching Teller Crow 13:40 Saga Bokne: Settler Fairies: Postcolonial Implications of Fairies in America 14:00 Discussion |
| 14:15 – 14:45: Break | ||
| 14:45 – 15:45: Keynote: Nghi Vo, A Fantastic Conversation Chaired by Matthew Sangster with Deputy Chair Laura Sanchez |
| Day 3: Friday 12 May 2023 |
| 12:30 – 13:30: Networking Event | ||
| 13:45 – 15:00: Workshops & Discussion Groups 6A: “‘The tale is the map that is the territory’: Exploring national identity and the fantastic unknown through the Hunterian Collection” with Siobhan Mulligan and Isabel Ferrari Deputy Chair: Laura Sanchez 6B: “Academic Yassification: From Essay to Article, Navigating Student Publishing” with Gabriel Elvery Deputy Chair: Katarina O’Dette 6C: Tabletop Role Playing Games Roundtable with Andy Tytler, Misha Grifka, and Beatrix Livesey-Stephens Chaired by Emma French | ||
| 15:15 – 16:30: Panel 7A Gaming the Boundaries Chair: Rhys Pasternack Deputy Chair: Maggie Naylor 15:15 Caighlan Smith: Colors of Compassion: Breaking Boundaries through Fantastical Empathy Play in Life is Strange: True Colors 15:35 Mark Hines: Stats and Soil: Race and Homeland in Fantastic Worlds 15:55 Charlie Schroeder & Roxanne Tuckman: Grotesque Bodies and Surreal Planes: Transgressing the Boundaries of the Weird through Video Game Glitches 16:15 Discussion | 15:15 – 16:10: Panel 7B Queering Boundaries 2 Chair: Maria Arvaniti Deputy Chair: Anika Klose 15:15 Rachel Milne: We’re All Mad Queer: Breaching the Boundaries of Sanity and Sex in Wonderland and Oz 15:35 Amber Hancock: Rejected and Searching for Home: An Exploration of Doorways and Queer Representation in Seanan McGuire’s Every Heart a Doorway 15:55 Discussion | 15:15 – 16:10: Panel 7C Negotiating Genre Chair: Tom Emanuel Deputy Chair: Hannah Mimiec 15:15 Nathaniel Harrington: “síneadh eile lenár dtraidisiún scéalaíochta”: Fantasy and “Celtic” tradition 15:35 Anushmita Mohanty: On Why We Read Fantasy: Affective Responses as Generic Boundaries 15:55 Discussion |
| 16:30 – 17:00 Break | ||
| 17:00 – 18:00: Keynote: Dr Sami Schalk, Reimagining Bodyminds and Liberation in Pandemic Times Chaired by Taylor Driggers with Deputy Chair Jiaxin Liu |
| 18:25 – 19:40: Panel 8A Embodied Fantasy Chair: Siobhan Mulligan Deputy Chair: Annemarie Whitehurst 18:25 Megan Stephens: The borders of power: Superheroes and disability 18:45 M. Caroline McCaulay: “The Childbed is Our Battlefield”: Examining Depictions of Childbirth in Contemporary Fantasy 19:05 Madeline Wahl: Who Is Allowed To Cast Spells?: Stuttering, Fluency, And Spellcasting In The Harry Potter Series 19:25 Discussion | 18:25 – 19:40: Panel 8B Transgressing the Text Chair: Anna Milon Deputy Chair: Hannah Mimiec 18:25 Cameron Bourquein: How Do You Solve a Problem Like “Mairon”?: Exploring How Sauron’s Most Marginal Name Recasts the Lord of the Rings 18:45 Timothy Miller: Unicorn Variations: Continuity and Change in the Many Versions of The Last Unicorn 19:05 Eugenia Biavati: Resisting narrative patterns: the transgressive power of Terry Pratchett’s parody 19:25 Discussion | 18:25 – 19:40: Panel 8C Fantasies of Environmental Realities Chair: Grace A.T. Worm Deputy Chair: Sarah Koki 18:25 Maggie White: Challenging Energy Exuberance through Epic Fantasy: A Study of N.K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth trilogy 18:45 Declan Roberts: Blurred Battle Lines: Analyzing Energy Analogues in Tracy Deonn’s Legendborn 19:05 Sababa Monjur: “I Don’t Wanna Become a Demon”: Rethinking Binaries in Princess Mononoke and Okja 19:25 Discussion |
| 20:00 – Later: Post-conference social [in person and on Zoom] | ||