I was recently contacted by Dr. Hannah Priest, who would like to spread the word about a werewolf-related conference happening in the UK this September. I’ll get out of the way and let Dr. Priest explain:
The conference is entitled She-Wolf: Female Werewolves, Shapeshifters and Other Horrors in Art, Literature and Culture (but She-Wolf for short). It’s on Thursday 9th – Friday 10th September 2010, at the University of Manchester, UK.
The conference is being run by myself, Dr. Hannah Priest (University of Manchester), and a final year PhD student, Carys Crossen. I recently completed a PhD on monstrous characters in medieval romance, and Carys is working on her thesis on post-1800 werewolves. The idea for the conference came when I was working on gender and werewolves in medieval texts. I was struck by the fact that all the werewolves I was looking at were male. As a big fan of Buffy and Ginger Snaps, I knew that there were female werewolves out there… and I thought it was about time people started talking about them.
Since I started planning the conference, there’s been a bit of a female werewolf invasion. A number of new books, TV series and films have appeared. So obviously I wasn’t the only person who noted their absence. As a sister-event to the conference, we’re going to have a discussion panel with some writers who are currently working with female werewolves (and vampires) in their own work, and we’ll be discussing the challenges and attractions of such female monsters.
At the conference itself, we’ll have papers on Terry Pratchett, Angela Carter and contemporary fantasy fiction – of course. But we’ve also got speakers lined up to talk about 1940s cinema, Roman literature and Scottish witchcraft narratives. It’s going to be a fascinating few days.
For information on registration, or to find out more about the event, you can contact Hannah Priest at hannah.priest@manchester.ac.uk
You can also visit the conference’s web site, where you’ll find a registration form and a programme of talks and speakers. Registration for students is £40 and £70 for everyone else. The deadline for getting your form in is 5:00 P.M. Friday, August 6th. If you’re in the area you should go; I know I would! See a summary of the programme after the jump– there’s some pretty cool stuff up for discussion.
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