* Each paper is numbered so that you can match it with the list of abstracts here.
4: 06 April 2018 11:00 – 12:20 Parallel Session 1
1 Urban Myths and Fairy Tales
Chair: Dr Ceri Houlbrook Seminar Room M015
36 Dr William Redwood (Supernatural Cities), Hell Finding Cabs Round Here: Taxi Rides through the Urban Weird
14 Dr Carina Hart (University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus), Fairy Tales of the Neoliberal Gothic City: Michael Cunningham’s The Snow Queen
35 David Powell (University of Birmingham), Mind the doors! Folk horror on the London Underground
2 Weird Victoriana
Chair: Dr Karl Bell Seminar Room M021
5 Dr Joseph Crawford (University of Exeter), The Urban Turn: Gothic Cityscapes before The Mysteries of London
23 Rebecca Langworthy (University of Aberdeen), Beyond the Text: The influence of George MacDonald’s Robert Falconer upon the urban spaces of Huntly
24 Janette Leaf (Birkbeck, University of London), Big Bug in the Big City: Richard Marsh’s Beetle in Late Victorian London
3 Ghosts and Spectrality
Chair: Dr Sam George Seminar Room M031
26 Dr Anastasia A. Lipinskaya (St Petersburg University, Russia), The City That Was Not There: Space in British Ghost Stories
29 Dr Charlotte-Rose Millar (University of Queensland, Australia), The Urban Ghost: Spectres in Early Modern London
33 Dr Ivan Phillips (University of Hertfordshire), ‘That’s a hell of a lot of ghosts’: the haunting of Doctor Who
6: 06 April 2018 13:20 – 14:40 Parallel Session 2
4 China Mieville
Chair: Dr Carina Hart Seminar Room M015
9 András Fodor (University of Szeged, Hungary), The space out of joint: haunted urban spaces in China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun
30 Sarah Neef (TU Dortmund University, Germany), ‘Up’s no longer out of bounds, and down’s nothing to fear’: Verticality and Locomotion in China Miéville’s Urban Fantasy
5 The Virtual Weird
Chair: Dr Kaja Franck Seminar Room M021
17 Dr Madelon Hoedt (University of South Wales), ‘Welcome Home, Good Hunter’: The Gothic and Environmental Storytelling in From Software’s Bloodborne
20 Debbie Kent (Goldsmiths, University of London), Ghosts of the Shadow City: adventures in the CGI dreamscapes of urban development
21 Prof. Tanya Krzywinska (Falmouth University) , ‘Everything is True’: A Weird Tale: Urban Gothic meets Urban Myth in Multiplayer Online Game, The Secret World
6 Nineteenth-Century Europe and the Weird
Chair: Dr Andrew Maunder Seminar Room M031
34 Dr Hannu Poutiainen (University of Tampere, Finland), The Esoteric Flâneur: Steps Towards a Theory of Initiatic Walking (and Reading)
11 Marine Galiné (University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne, France) Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘Spalatro’ (1843) and the remapping of the Gothic mode
10: 06 April 2018 16:20 – 17:40 Parallel Session 3
7 Paranormal Romance
Chair: Dr Sam George Seminar Room M015
8 Meghanne Flynn (University of Cambridge), Betwixt and Between: (Sub)Urban Space in Young Adult Supernatural Romance
18 Dr Bill Hughes (OGOM), Tales of two cities: heteroglossia, heterogeneity, and decay in Aliette de Bodard and Kate Griffin’s urban fantasies of Paris and London
10 Dr Kaja Franck (University of Hertfordshire), The Troll in the City: Urban Fey, Environmentalism and Holly Black’s Valian
8 Killers of London
Chair: Dr Charlotte-Rose Millar Seminar Room M021
2 Dr Barbara Braid (University of Szczecin, Poland), ‘Here he is again, in flesh’: the haunted city in the Whitechapel series
13 Dr Siân Harris (University of Bristol), A Scottish Inspector in London: The uncanny city in Ian Rankin’s Tooth and Nail
40 Olivia Steen (University of Hertfordshire), Lookout in the Blackout: Spatiality and the serial killers of WWII London
9 The Politics of Horror
Chair: Dr Justin Sausman Seminar Room M031
6 Ralph Dorey (Northumbria University), Rotten Borough: the biological reterritorialization of urban space in horror texts as counter hegemonic resistance
28 Dr Simon Marsden (University of Liverpool), Tainted Cities: Adam Nevill’s Austerity Gothic
44 Jillian Wingfield (University of Hertfordshire), ‘Fucking yuppies are ruining my whole neighborhood’: the psychodynamic environment in Charlie Huston’s Already Dead (2005)
14: 07 April 2018 10:00 – 11:20 Parallel Session 4
10 The East and the Weird
Chair: Dr Bill Hughes Seminar Room M015
22 Meriem Lamara (University of Northampton), Behind Gilded Walls: The Islamic Gothic in S. A. Chakraborty’s The City of Brass
37 Tania de Rozario (Lasalle College of the Arts, Singapore), Death Wears a Dress
41 Tom Sykes (University of Portsmouth), The City-as-Hell: Horror, Dystopia and Orientalism in Anglo-American Literary Constructions of Urban Manila 1852-2011
11 Weird London
Chair: Dr Karl Bell Seminar Room M021
16 Dr Ruth Heholt (Falmouth University), Tracing the Supernatural City in E. F. Benson’s London Tales
7 Helena Esser (Birkbeck, University of London), ‘Funeral Theater’: The Whimsy and Weird Foundations of Steampunk London
1 Alison Baker (University of East London), Jonathan Stroud’s The Golem’s Eye: Magical class conflict in an alternative London
12 The Urban Weird in Fantasy
Chair: Dr Anna Tripp Seminar Room M031
12 Dr Jessica George (Cardiff University), Gothic silence and urban Welshness in Mary Ann Constantine’s Star-Shot
43 Adam Teall (University of Hertfordshire), The spectral city, posthumanism and the blurring of human boundaries in Gustav Meyrink’s The Golem
25 Pascal Lemaire, Misty Bruges: the resurrected city that became a fantastic character
16: 07 April 2018 12:20 – 13:40 Parallel Session 5
13 Weird Archaeology
Chair: Jillian Wingfield Seminar Room M015
27 Dr Ken Lymer (Wessex Archaeology ), Cyclopean ruins and albino penguins – The weird urban archaeology of H. P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness
4 Daisy Butcher (University of Hertfordshire), ‘The Pharaoh-cious feminine’: Archaeologists and princesses in the city in Universal’s The Mummy (2017)
38 John G. Sabol (Interpretive Performance Excavation Research Center), Wolvesey, Winchester, and Wolves: Multi-Species Cosmopolitics, the Unearthing of Urban Folklore, and Archaeological Perspectivism
14 The Weird Resistance
Chair: Prof. Owen Davies Seminar Room M021
14 Kate Harvey (University of Stirling), It’s an Animal City: Johannesburg as Gothic Space in Lauren Beukes’s Zoo City
39 Dr Justin Sausman (University of Hertfordshire), ‘Whispers of witchcraft and haunting’: Haweswater, reservoir noir and the ghosts of Mardale
32 Eilís Phillips (University of Portsmouth), ‘Infernal Machine[s]’: Understanding Diabolical Depictions of Incendiarism in Nineteenth-Century Britain