CFP Crones, Crime, and the Gothic Conference (4/1/2022; Falmouth U 6/10-11/2022)

Crones, Crime, and the Gothic Conference

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/03/16/crones-crime-and-the-gothic-conference

deadline for submissions:
April 1, 2022

full name / name of organization:
Falmouth University, 10-11 June, 2022

contact email:
cronescrimegothic@gmail.com



Older women have traditionally been portrayed negatively in folklore, fairy tales, literature and film, for example. Images of witches, evil stepmothers, shrivelled, bitter 'spinsters', and vindictive, bullying women abusing positions of power are rife in Western culture. Yet, perhaps things are changing. A new emphasis on the need to discuss and understand the menopause seems to be at the heart of this. This conference examines historical representations of the 'crone' in relation to crime and Gothic narratives. But it also looks ahead and globally to examine other types of discourses and representations. Bringing older women to the fore of the discussion, this conference aims to go global and really shake up the way that the ‘crone’ is thought about and symbolized.

This conference addresses the key real-world issue of how older, menopausal, and postmenopausal women are spoken about and represented in different cultures and locations. It focuses on crime and Gothic narratives that are the most often, but not always, negatively positioned in relation to older women. As well as highlighting some of the historical issues, this conference gives a voice to diversity, global differences, and other issues such as race, trans-cultures, class, colonization, sexuality identities, femininity, and masculinity.

We welcome abstracts for papers, panels, workshops, and creative practice.

Topics can include (but are not limited to) the following:

• The Crone
• Witches
• Folklore
• Fairytales
• Global representations
• Older women in film and television
• Criminal women
• Wise women
• The older woman and the Gothic
• Older women and ethnicity
• Trans-cultures
• Regional cultures
• Historical fiction
• Literature
• Class
• Race
• Gender
• Sexuality
• Crones and ecology and/or the climate emergency
• Grandparents
• Spinsters
• The menopause

Abstracts do not have to cover each subject (crones, crime, or the Gothic) but each paper should address at least one of the title subjects and present a clear challenge to conventional and traditional ways of thinking. The aim of the conference is to explore the fears of the past and the contemporary, as well exploring ways to go forward.



Please send 250 word abstracts + a short bio in a Word document to: cronescrimegothic@gmail.com



Submission deadline: 1 April 2022



Last updated March 16, 2022

CFP Fairy Tales, Folk Lore and Legends Conference (10/2/2015; Budapest 3/14-16/2016)

Fairy Tales, Folk Lore and Legends
Announcement published by Robert Fisher on Thursday, August 27, 2015
https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/80114/fairy-tales-folk-lore-and-legends

Type: Conference
Date: March 14, 2016 to March 16, 2016
Location: Hungary
Subject Fields: Anthropology, Cultural History / Studies, Literature, Oral History


Fairy Tales, Folk Lore and Legends
Call for Submissions 2016

Monday 14th March – Wednesday 16th March 2016
Budapest, Hungary


Wicked witches, evil stepmothers, Rumplestiltskin, jinn, gnomes, trolls, wolves and thieves versus fairy godmothers, Peri, departed beloved mothers, firebirds, dwarves, princesses, Simurgh, woodcutters and princes charming. Fairy tales, folk lore and legends are the canvas on which the vast mural of good versus evil plays out and our darkest dreams or nightmares struggle against our better selves and highest hopes. At the same time, the relationship between these tales and modern society is a complex one that invites closer consideration of the changing nature of the stories and how modern sensibilities have both challenged and been challenged by the values and viewpoints that underpin the narratives.

Fairy tales can be interpreted in a variety of ways and from a variety of viewpoints: they can be psychological exposes, blueprints for dealing with the traumas of childhood and early adulthood, guides to navigating life, windows onto social realities long forgotten, remnants of ancient mythology or hints at how to access the Transcendent.

The Fairy Tales interdisciplinary research and publishing stream investigates how fairy tales/folk tales/legends represent both good and evil, how these are personified or interact, what these reveal about the lives of those who have told them over the years, what they mean for us who read or listen to them today. Possible subjects for presentations include but are not limited to:



Exploring the Tales Themselves

• Functions of tales over time and across cultures
• Socio-political context of tales and their capacity to serve as allegories for real life issues
• Justice and morality in the tales
• Fairy tale utopias and dystopias and the blurred lines between fiction, fact, reality, science fiction and mythology
• How fairy tales shape ideas about happiness
• Considerations of why tales are an enduring aspect of culture
• Factors that make some tales more popular than others (and why popularity can shift over time)
• (Re)interpretations and re-imaginings of the same tales differ over time or across cultures
• Relationship between fairy tale characters and real life humans: do human ‘good guys’ or ‘bad guys’ behave so differently from fictional goodies and baddies, where there times when characters that seem fantastic to modern folks were actually considered to be more realistic by historical readers/listeners, what factors shape the changes that cause people to perceive characters as more or less real
• Relationship between fantastic and magical elements of tales and lived reality
• Tales and monsters: monstrous animals, monstrous humans, children’s interaction with monsters
• Intended lessons and values of stories and counter-interpretations, particularly in relation to gender, sex, materialistic values, notions of virtue and authority
• Processes around the domestication of fairy tales
• Tales as a source of/mechanism for oppression of individuals or groups
• New/modern tales
• Critical approaches to tales
• Tales and their authors
• Fairy tale artwork and imagery
• Fairy tale geographies: spaces and places of both the worlds within fairy tales as well as the spaces and places where the narratives are told or written

Encountering Fairy Tales/Legends/Folk Tales

• Studies of readers/audiences across time and cultures
• Listening versus reading: impact of oral traditions on the narratives, impact of illustrations in reception of the tales, etc.
• Relationship between traditional and modern forms of interactive storytelling involving fairy tales
• How adaptation to other mediums, such as film, television, visual art, music, theatre, graphic novels, dance and video games, affect the content of the tales themselves, appreciation of the narrative or our interpretations of narrative meaning

Uses of Fairy Tales/Legends/Folk Tales

• In advertising (re-imagining tales in advertising imagery, marketing the princess lifestyle, etc.)
• Tales and pedagogy: using tales as teaching and learning tools
• In tourism through destination marketing of spaces associated with fairy tales, Disneyfication of tales, etc.
• In the formation of national/cultural/ethnic identity
• In the publishing business
• Communities, biography and fairy tales: How social communal identity is forged around telling and re-telling tales

Tales, Health and Happiness

• Tales and magical thinking in the human development
• Tales and psychological/clinical practices involving tales
• Tales and unhealthy behaviour/beliefs
• Effect of tales on shaping notions of (un)happiness, (in)appropriate ways to pursue it and how to respond to respond to others’ (un)happiness
• Tales and aging (“growing old” as a theme in tales, how tales shape perceptions of old age, etc.)

Live Performances of Tales

• Theatrical, dance and other types of staged presentations
• Pantomime
• Vocal performances
• Art installations
• Readings

Curated film screenings

Further details can be found on the project web site:

http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/persons/fairy-tales-folk-lore-and-legends/call-for-participation/

Call for Cross-Over Presentations

The Fairy Tales, Folk Lore and Legends project will be meeting at the same time as a project on Health and another project on Happiness. We welcome submissions which cross the divide between both project areas. If you would like to be considered for a cross project session, please mark your submission “Crossover Submission”.

What to Send

300 word abstracts, proposals and other forms of contribution should be submitted by Friday 2nd October 2015.
All submissions be minimally double reviewed, under anonymous (blind) conditions, by a global panel drawn from members of the Project Team and the Advisory Board. In practice our procedures usually entail that by the time a proposal is accepted, it will have been triple and quadruple reviewed.

You will be notified of the panel’s decision by Friday 16th October 2015.
If your submission is accepted for the conference, a full draft of your contribution should be submitted by Friday 5th February 2016.

Abstracts may be in Word, RTF or Notepad formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) title of proposal, e) body of proposal, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: Fairy Tales Abstract Submission



Where to Send

Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs:

Organising Chairs:
Stephen Morris: smmorris58@yahoo.com
Rob Fisher: fairytales@inter-disciplinary.net

This event is an inclusive interdisciplinary research and publishing project. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting.

It is anticipated that a number of publishing options will arise from the work of the project generally and from the meeting of Fairy Tales, Folk Lore and Legends stream in particular. Minimally there will be a digital eBook resulting from the conference meeting. Other options, some of which might include digital publications, paperbacks and a journal will be explored during the meeting itself.

Ethos

Inter-Disciplinary.Net believes it is a mark of personal courtesy and professional respect to your colleagues that all delegates should attend for the full duration of the meeting. If you are unable to make this commitment, please do not submit an abstract for presentation. Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.

Contact Info:
 Dr. Rob Fisher

Priory House

149B Wroslyn Road

Freeland, Oxfordshire OX29 8HR

United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0)1993 882087

Fax: +44 (0)870 4601132

Contact Email:
fairytales@inter-disciplinary.net
URL:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/persons/fairy-tales-folk-lore-and-legends/call-for-participation/

CFP Female Tricksters (9/15/15; Kalamazoo 2016)

Also from MEARCSTAPA-L:

CFP: Kalamazoo 2016: Female Tricksters
Session Sponsors: MEARCSTAPA (Monsters: the Experimental Association for the Research of Cryptozoology Through Scholarly Theory and Practical Application) and the American Society of Irish Medieval Studies (ASIMS).
Session Organizers: Sarah L. Higley (University of Rochester), Larissa Tracy (Longwood University), and Asa Simon Mittman (Chico State University).
Session Presider: Sarah L. Higley (University of Rochester)

The trickster, who conquers by cunning and not force, inhabits a complex moral/ethical world and seems to provoke a culture already steeped in cruelty and punishment in order to enact his/her own cruelty and punishment. The trickster in the “Beast Epic” gratifies his brute desires at the expense of others for fun and sadism, and is often punished for doing so in order to restore order to a damaged cultural body, but also to expose its injustices and hypocrisies. It has been suggested by Joan Acocella in the New Yorker that that the only kind of creature that can’t be a trickster is a woman, and yet medieval literature is rife with female tricksters of all kinds—particularly in fabliaux and Celtic fairy lore where the hero is defeated by a woman’s underhanded magic or rewarded by his ability to deal with her.

This session engages the challenge set forth by Acocella to locate and examine female tricksters in medieval culture. What role does the female trickster/monster play in it? The Morrígan of The Táin takes multiple animal shapes, as does Cerridwen of Welsh tradition. Acocella mentions Alison of The Miller’s Tale, but not the Wife of Bath or her model, La Vieille of Roman de la Rose; nor Dame Sirith; nor the monstrous loathly ladies in Irish and Middle English literature; nor the ugly, otherworldly woman in The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel who brings down the hapless Conaire. Hags and widows are relentlessly portrayed as “cunning women.” Women of the Old French fabliaux beguile and trick their witless spouses and lovers through a variety of means. In short, female tricksters abound in the medieval literary traditions all over the world.

MEARCSTAPA and ASIMS invite 20-minute papers from any field or theoretical approach and on any subject relating to the topic of medieval female tricksters. Please send abstracts of 300 words and a brief bio to session organizers Sarah L. Higley (sarah.higley@rochester.edu) and Larissa Tracy (kattracy@comcast.net) by Sept. 15, 2015.