Review: 2001: Beyond 50
Review: 2001: Beyond 50, Bangor University, 16 June 2018 2001: Beyond 50 – a commemoration and celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Stanley Kubrick’s ground-breaking and influential science-fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey – was no ordinary academic event. Organised by Professor Nathan Abrams (Bangor University) and hosted by the Centre for Film, Television and Screen Studies at Bangor University, it featured debate and discussion from academic experts on the film as well as scholars from a range of other disciplines. These included psychology, psychiatry, evolutionary biology, artificial intelligence, religion and philosophy, contributions from key industry practitioners who worked on it, a live concert featuring music from Kubrick’s films, an exhibition of student work inspired by 2001, and two screenings — one for families in the morning and one for the general public in the evening — of the film itself. It was a celebration of a masterwork of cinema that […]
Continue ReadingLiterature, Education and the Sciences of the Mind in Britain and America, 1850 – 1950
Review: Literature, Education and the Sciences of the Mind in Britain and America, 1850 – 1950, University of Kent, 17-18 July 2018 Dr Sara Lyons and Dr Michael Collins welcomed international contributors to the University of Kent to investigate how British and American novelists understood and represented the sciences of the mind between 1850 and 1950. During this period, the development of psychology and psychiatry led to increasing concern regarding the nature of knowledge, pedagogy, and individual ability. This two-day conference traced and explored how these concerns were frequently reflected and registered in literature of the time. A recurring theme of the conference was, as Emma Burris-Jansen (University of Connecticut) put it in her discussion of changing abortion narratives, ‘dangerous knowledge’. Novels were often the only source of information for women about their reproductive systems and were therefore vehicles for both repression and discovery. Olga Ackroyd (University of Kent) developed […]
Continue ReadingReview: The Half-Life of Philip K. Dick
Review: The Half-Life of Philip K. Dick, Queen Margaret University, 27 April 2018 Philip K. Dick is a strong candidate for serving as the twentieth century’s science fiction prophet—his novels and essays still resonate with audiences across the globe fifty years after they were written. Whether scholars are analyzing cinematic adaptations of his most popular works, such as The Man in the High Castle (1961) and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1969), or critically reading his lesser-known publications, such as The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick (2012), or The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), Dick’s presence is palpable in both the arenas of academia and popular culture. Organized by Terence Sawyers of Queen Margaret University, “The Half-Life of Philip K. Dick” invited scholars to explore how Dick’s science fictional futures have predicted our science fictional present. The conference began with a tangent to Dick’s work, a “hard-science” presentation […]
Continue ReadingConference Review: Recovering May Alcott Nieriker’s Life and Work, Université Paris Diderot
This special guest review comes to us from Amelia Platt, a fifteen-year-old student from Litcham Comprehensive High School and a participant in the Brilliant Club, a charity that employs PhD students to tutor pupils from low-participation backgrounds. Amelia would like to thank her mentor, Azelina Flint, a doctoral candidate and AHRC CHASE Award Holder at the School of American Studies, University of East Anglia.
Continue ReadingReview: DISCO! An Interdisciplinary Conference
Review: DISCO! An Interdisciplinary Conference, University of Sussex, 21-23 June 2018 The word ‘disco’ refers to several things, both the genre of music which the OED describes as ‘strongly rhythmical pop music mainly intended for dancing’ that was ‘particularly popular in the mid to late 1970s’, to the nightclub or dance-hall venue where such dancing takes place. But it also describes a sensibility, an adjective conjuring up numerous erotic or musical or sartorial associations, or particular figures from its scene, perhaps least fortunately the image of John Travolta in flares that has become the lingering symbol of its populist zenith (and thus perhaps its nadir.) The expertly curated ‘DISCO! An Interdisciplinary Conference’, recently held at the University of Sussex and co-organised by Arabella Stanger, Michael Lawrence and Mimi Haddon, drew much of its strength from the way this central word moved between these states of description, offering a portrait of […]
Continue ReadingReview: ‘It Is True, We Shall Be Monsters’: New Perspectives in Science-Fiction, Horror, and the Monstrous On-Screen
With 2018 marking the bicentenary of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein – often cited as the first science-fiction novel – the Cinema and Television History (CATH) Research Centre’s seventh annual postgraduate conference at De Montfort University was particularly timely. Indeed, the genres of horror and science-fiction have enjoyed recent critical and commercial successes, such as Black Mirror (2011-), Stranger Things (2016-), and The Shape of Water (2017).
Continue ReadingReview: Exhaustion and Regeneration in Post-Millennial North American Literature and Visual Culture
Its focus was the topics of exhaustion and regeneration in American and Canadian literature and visual cultures, including but not limited to film, visual arts, video games, and television from the year 2000 to the present day.
Continue ReadingReview: Pursuing the Rooseveltian Century
Pursuing the Rooseveltian Century, 31 November – 1 December 2017 The two-day conference ‘Pursuing the Rooseveltian Century’ was the inaugural conference of the recently rebranded Roosevelt Institute for American Studies (RIAS) located in Middelburg, the Netherlands. The conference called on scholars of American studies to reinterpret important moments in modern American history through the three Roosevelts, Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor, around four key themes; security, equality, freedom and legacies. Because the Rooseveltian Century is a relatively new concept within American studies, Giles Scott-Smith (Academic Director of the RIAS) encouraged attendees and speakers to thoroughly test this idea. Think big, think critically and think ahead was his three-part motivation during his introductory speech, something many of the speakers and panelists certainly did. The four keynote dialogues and five panels showed not only how broad the framework of the Rooseveltian Century is, but also how versatile this theme can be. The papers […]
Continue ReadingReview: BGEAH and BrANCH Postgraduate and Early Career Conference 2018
Overall, the conference demonstrated the value of bringing together members of BGEAH and BrANCH. Concerns about postdoctoral funding and the job market were shared by all, and the range of research discussed highlighted the growing shift away from periodisation within the study of American History. The day provided an opportunity not only for PGRS and ECRs to meet members of another organisation with similar interests, but also to draw on their expertise to enhance their own research.
Continue ReadingReview: Ghostly, Ghastly, Corporeal and Creaturely: Tim Burton’s Curious Bodies, First International Conference on Twenty-First Century Film Directors
Tim Burton’s Curious Bodies (The First International Conference on Twenty-First Century Film Directors), University of Wolverhampton, 15 February 2018 The inaugural International Conference on Twenty-First Century Film Directors, organised by The University of Wolverhampton in conjunction with Redeemer University College, Ontario, focused on the films of Tim Burton. Specifically, it explored the theme of ‘curious bodies’ in his work. Held at Light House Media Centre in Wolverhampton, this one-day event brought together contributors from around the world in stimulating discussion that built on existing scholarship about Burton and challenged some existing notions. After a brief introduction to proceedings from Dr Frances Pheasant-Kelly (University of Wolverhampton), Dr Samantha Moore (University of Wolverhampton) delivered the day’s first keynote address. She discussed the function of physical metamorphosis in animation, situating it historically as a subversive tool that serves to disrupt narrative structure and causal logic. With reference to films including Corpse Bride (2005), […]
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