Thank you to everyone who has sent in abstracts for the OGOM Company of Wolves conference. We have enjoyed reading through the wonderfully varied and pertinent responses and today began to write to those who have been accepted so far. The CFP has been extended until 30th April so there is still time to contribute if you have not got your abstract in yet. We have added some new categories (re-wilding; changelings and werelings; the last wolf; eco-criticism) into the mix to solicit an even broader response. After this deadline we will go live with the registration and programme.
I have been working on perfecting things behind the scenes and today had confirmation that Professor Garry Marvin will be our final plenary speaker. Garry Marvin is a social anthropologist and Professor of human-animal studies at the University of Roehampton, London. He is author of Wolf (Reaktion Books) and has been profiled in The Guardian. His research will really make our programme complete. Garry will give something of an anthropological overview of the cultural images of the wolf and link this to the present-day issues of wolves re-emerging in different places in Europe. Our other plenaries are the film director Neil Jordan ‘Company of Wolves’ and Sir Christopher Frayling on ‘Angela Carter’, Dr Catherine Spooner on ‘Wearing the Wolf’, Dr Stacey Abbott on ‘The Sound of the Cinematic Werewolf’, and the novelist Marcus Sedgwick, whose wolf children are some of the most remarkable in fiction,
Delegates will have the opportunity to visit unique places associated with our theme, such as the grave of Hertfordshire’s very own wolf child Peter-the -Wild-Boy and the UK Wolf Trust to learn about rewilding and to actually ‘walk with wolves’. There will be werewolf games and theatricals and David Annwyn Jones will entertain us prior to the conference dinner with a lycanthropic lantern-of-fear show projected from an antique magic lantern.
In the tradition of OGOM the event is looking very, very special indeed. I cannot wait for werewolf time!!.
