OGOM Company of Wolves Conference: Extended Call for Papers

OGOM: ‘The Company of Wolves’: Sociality, Animality, and Subjectivity in Literary and Cultural Narratives—Werewolves, Shapeshifters, and Feral Humans

Conference, University of Hertfordshire, Sept 3rd-5th 2015

Extended Call for Papers and Panels

OGOM is extending its call for papers for its third conference until 30th April 2015 so there is still time to contribute to this unique event. The programme features Neil Jordan and plenary talks from Sir Christopher Frayling on ‘Angela Carter’, Dr Catherine Spooner on ‘Wearing the Wolf’, Dr Stacey Abbott on ‘The Sound of the Cinematic Werewolf’, Dr Sam George on ‘Wolf Children’ and Dr Bill Hughes on ‘Werewolves and Paranormal Romance’. OGOM’s intrepid researchers Kaja Franck and Matt Beresford, will present papers on their current research involving wolves/werewolves and there will be a special contribution from award winning novelist Marcus Sedgwick, whose wolf children are some of the most fascinating to appear in fiction. Delegates will have the opportunity to visit unique places associated with our theme, including a re-wilding centre and the grave of Hertfordshire’s most famous wolf child, Peter the Wild Boy.

Grave in Christchurch, Herts

There will be werewolf themed games and theatricals and the opportunity to actually ‘walk with wolves’. The conference dinner will be preceded by a unique take on monstrous hounds in a lycanthropic lantern-of-fear show projected from an antique magic lantern. You really do not want to miss out on showtime!! Delegates will be invited to submit to a special edition of Gothic Studies on werewolves and an OGOM edited collection on our Company with Wolves.

We invite proposals for panels and individual papers. Possible topics and approaches may include (but are not limited to) the following:

Werewolves, lycanthropy, and shapeshifters; feral and wild children; language, culture, and nature; instinct and agency; animal studies and humanist perspectives; Re-wilding projects, Eco-Gothic; The last wolf;  Werelings and Changelings; Phenomenology and the philosophy of language; mind, and body; animality and sociality from Hobbes through Rousseau to Darwin; narratives of the Grimms, Perrault, Kipling, Angela Carter, Neil Jordan, Anne Rice, Maggie Stiefvater, Glen Duncan, Marcus Sedgwick; genre, intertextuality, and narratology; Young Adult and children’s fiction; urban fantasy and paranormal romance; TV, film, and other media;folklore and anthropology; fables, fabliaux, and fantasy; the Gothic fairy tale, and myth; sexuality and romance, species, ‘race’, identity, and taxonomy.

Abstracts (200-300 words) for twenty-minute papers or proposals for two-hour panels should be submitted by 30th April 2015 as an email attachment in MS Word document format to all of the following: Dr Sam George, s.george@herts.ac.uk; Dr Bill Hughes, bill.enlightenment@gmail.com; Kaja Franck, k.a.franck@googlemail.com

Please use your surname as the document title. The abstract should be sent in the following format: (1) Title (2) Presenter(s) (3) Institutional affiliation (4) Email (5) Abstract. Panel proposals should include (1) Title of the panel (2) Name and contact information of the chair (3) Abstracts of the presenters. Presenters will be notified of acceptance by April 2015

For more information, contact Dr Sam George at s.george@herts.ac.uk.

OGOM awaits your email………