The monstrous feminine: writing conference looks at myth, magic and monsters
'Head of Medusa' by Peter Paul Rubens, 1617
'Mythic, Magical & Monstrous Women in Contemporary Women’s Writing' is being jointly hosted by our School of English and SPELL* and is part of a nationwide series of events organised by the Postgraduate Contemporary Women’s Writing Network. Leicester PhD student Claire O’Callaghan and Emma Young are both on the steering group of the PCWWN.
The conference “seeks to address why the magical, mythical and the monstrous continue to remain prominent in contemporary women’s writing and explore how such tropes and topics continue to be deployed and reworked by authors to represent women in fiction.”
Dr Becky Munford from the University of Cardiff will deliver the keynote speech on ‘Writing in Blood and Dust: Angela Carter and Sadeian Gothic’. Other speakers include representatives from the universities of Loughborough, Manchester, Bedfordshire, Edinburgh, Leeds, Sheffield, Warwick, Anglia Ruskin, Kingston, Durham, Exeter and even Malaga. Papers include:
- ‘The Wicked Anti-Mother: Bellatrix Lestrange and Female Villainy’
- ‘“Like something of Dr Frankenstein’s, isn’t it?”: Medicine and Female Monstrosity in Neo-Victorian Fiction’
- '(In)Visible Romance in Sarah Waters' Affinity: Resisting the Heterosexual Plot'
- ‘Negotiating with the Dead: Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad and Revisioning Odysseus as Bluebeard’
- ‘The Japanese Girl Vampire: Addressing Female Sexuality and Identity in Japanese Comics’
The conference takes place in the Ken Edwards Building tomorrow, 20 June 2012.
- Conference poster (PDF)
*The School of English postgrad soc: Society for Postgraduates in English Language and Literature.
