Friday, August 23, 2013

NEPCA Sessions 2012 Update

I just realized that I never updated our session list from last fall. We had two very intimate (and enlightening) sessions. Paper proposals and additional material are available (as noted) on St. John Fisher College's digital archive at http://fisherpub.sjfc.edu/nepca/conference/.

Northeast Popular Culture Association
35th Annual Conference
St. John Fisher College, Rochester, New York
October 26-27, 2012

Saturday, October 27, 2012: 8:30 AM-10:00 AM
11. Science Fiction, Fantasy and Legend I: Visions of the Future (Kearney 317)

Chair: Michael Torregrossa (Independent Scholar)

Paper 1: Cory Matieyshen (National University): “Bert the Turtle Won't Save You: American Science Fiction Prose and Criticism of Nuclear Civil Defense During the 1950s” (proposal and paper)

Cory Matieyshen is a Master of Arts in History student at National University in La Jolla, California. He lives in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Papers by Derek Newman-Stille, Özüm Ünal, and Shannon Tarango have been withdrawn. 


Saturday, October 27, 2012: 10:15 AM-11:45 AM
17. Science Fiction, Fantasy and Legend II: Old Legends, New Stories (Kearney 317)

Chair: Michael Torregrossa (Independent Scholar)

Paper 1: Mary Bridgeman (Trinity College Dublin): “Complex subjects in Twilight, The Vampire Diaries, and True Blood” (proposal and PowerPoint)

Mary Bridgeman is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies and the School of English in Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. She is in her third year of research, which is funded by The Irish Research Council. Her dissertation “Loving the Dark: Gendered Subjectivity in Three Popular 21st Century American Vampire Romance Narratives” focuses on negotiations of womanhood in Twilight, The Vampire Diaries, and True Blood. As last year’s winner of the William E. Brigman award at the national meeting of The Popular Culture and American Culture Associations, Mary will have an article entitled “Forged in Love and Death: Problematic Subjects in The Vampire Diaries” published in The Journal of Popular Culture in February 2013.

Paper 2: Laura Wiebe (McMaster University): “Witches, Elves, and Bioengineers: Magic and Science in Kim Harrison’s The Hollows” (proposal)

Laura Wiebe is a Ph.D. Candidate (ABD) in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, where she will be teaching a course on Science Fiction in the Winter 2013 term. She also teaches in McMaster’s Women’s Studies program and at Brock University in the Department of English Language and Literature and the Department of Communications, Popular Culture and Film. Laura’s doctoral research focuses on science and technology studies, theories of gender and of genre, critical posthumanism, and popular culture, particularly contemporary speculative fiction. Her academic work also includes the study of metal music and culture.

Paper 3: Kathleen Mulligan (Providence College): “Robin Hood: from ‘History’ to Folklore and Back Again” (proposal)

Kathleen Mulligan has a B.A. in history from Providence College in Rhode Island, where she is currently continuing her studies in their Master’s program for Medieval and Modern European History. After obtaining her Master’s degree she hopes to continue on in a doctoral program to study British history.

Paper 4: Michael Torregrossa (Independent Scholar): “Once and Future Kings Revisited: The Theme of Arthur Redivivus in Recent Comics” [note revised title] (proposal)

Michael A. Torregrossa is a graduate of the Medieval Studies program at the University of Connecticut (Storrs). His research interests include adaptation, Arthuriana, comics and comic art, medievalism, vampires, and wizards. Michael is currently Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Legend Area Chair for the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association. He is also founder of The Alliance for the Promotion of Research on the Villains of the Matter of Britain, founder of The Institute for the Advancement of Scholarship on the Magic-Wielding Figures of Visual Electronic Multimedia, and co-founder, with Carl James Grindley, of The Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages; he also serves as editor for these organizations’ various blogs. Michael has presented his research at regional, national, and international conferences and has been published in Adapting the Arthurian Legends for Children: Essays on Arthurian Juvenilia, Arthuriana, The Arthuriana / Camelot Project Bibliographies, Cinema Arthuriana: Twenty Essays, Film & History, The 1999 Film & History CD-ROM Annual, The Medieval Hero on Screen: Representations from Beowulf to Buffy, and the three most recent supplements to The Arthurian Encyclopedia.

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