'More Terrors Than Her Reason Could Justify': An Online Gothic Conference

Romancing the Gothic presents its sixth annual online conference over two days - 22nd and 23rd August. The conference celebrates 200 years of Ann Radcliffe's Posthumous Publications with a series of talks, events, workshops, live readings and an author round table focusing on women and people of marginalised genders in the Gothic.

The conference is designed to cover different timezones so the days are long. People are recommended to come for as long as they want and dip in and out as necessary. The talks and sessions are recorded so that you don't miss anything even if you can't be there in person for specific times/sessions.

Early Bird Tickets, Concessions and Free Tickets

There will be early bird discounts on tickets until 29th July. Concession tickets are for students, the unwaged, retired people or anyone whose economic situation makes it necessary. We also offer a limited number of free tickets for those who cannot pay the ticket price, please email sam@romancingthegothic.com for more information. You can donate a ticket for those who are unable to afford to come.

Accessibility

We have live auto-generated captions. We provide slides and, where possible, scripts before the conference with alt-text for images. We have regular breaks and encourage people to take part in ways that are most comfortable for them. There is no forced participation.

If you have any accessibility needs, please get in touch at sam@romancingthegothic.com and I will do my best to make sure these accommodations are provided.

Programme

Saturday 22nd August

9.30am – Conference Opening and Welcomes

10am to 11am – Keynote 1: Dale Townshend - Ann Radcliffe’s Posthumous Works

11.15am – 12.45pm – Panel 1: Radcliffe and Her Contemporaries 1

Z I Mahmud – ‘Gothic Stitching in Radcliffe’s Poetry’

Hannah Winspear-Schillings – “Everything is termed nervous now!”: Neurodivergence, Disability, and Labour in the Minerva Press

Theadora Jean – ‘Nameless Terrors’: The Gothic Nightmares of Olivia Fairfield in The Woman of Colour (1808) and the ‘Radcliffean’ Gothic’

12.45-1.45pm - Lunch

1.45pm – 3.15pm: Panel 2: Gothic Parenting

Elif Yagci – ‘Demanding Monstrous Motherhood in The Need’

Aditi Joshi – ‘Domestic Terrors and the Failures of Maternal Imperialism in Memsahib’s Gothic’

Em Loney – Reproductive Experience and Horror (Title TBC)

3.30pm-4.30pm – “Now, albeit the landscape was still wild and woody…” — Crafting Characters in and Characterizations of a Gothic Forest’ – A writing workshop with B. Rae Grosz

5pm-6pm – Panel 3: Trees, Trees Everywhere

Great Dunn – ‘I, U, Tree, Together: Queer Polyamory in the EcoGothic’

Ava DeVries - “She Mustn’t Be Awakened”: The Goddess Archetype in Second-Wave British Folk Horror’

6.30pm-8pm – Author round table

Caitlin Starling, M K Hardy and more authors to be announced

8pm-9pm – Themed Cocktail/Mocktail hour with Julia O’Connell

Sunday 23rd August

9.45 – 10.45 Keynote 2: Sam Hirst – ‘What’s God got to do with it?’: The Theological Complexity of Radcliffe’s Work

11am – 11.45am – Reimagining Radcliffe Round Table

12 – 1.30pm: Panel 4: Gothic Adaptation

Madeline Sporer – ‘When Fear Becomes Horror: Gender, Creation and the Gothic in Frankenstein’

Jennie Kermode – ‘The Thing on the Doorstep: Beyond Gender in HP Lovecraft’s Tale and Its Monstrous Offspring’

Mariana Pinheiro – ‘From Constructed Bride to Abject Subject: “Messy Femininity” and the failure of Gothic Containment’

1.30pm-2.30pm: Lunch

2.30pm to 4pm: Panel 5: Gothic Bodies and Eating

Vani Zaveri - “More Appetites Than Her Reason Could Justify: Hunger, Discipline, and the Biopolitics of the Gothic Body”

Irina Rabinovich – ‘Monstrous Women, Marginalized Bodies: Reassessing Early American Sensation Fiction through Hentz and Hyneman’

Susan Vaderborg – ‘House Ghosts and Demon Feedings: Gothic Women in Comics Poetry’

Thea Perales – ‘Ageing the “Abject”: The Horror of Ageing Women through the “Male Gaze”

4pm-5pm: Panel 6: Female Vampires

Drumlin Crape – “My Coven is Claudia”: Agency, Monstrosity and Sapphic Horror in AMC’s Interview with the Vampire (2022-)

Tara Etherington – ‘Threats and Love Interests: Female Vampires in Gothic Shojō Manga’

5.15pm to 7pm – Panel 7: Radcliffe and Her Contemporaries 2

Oliver Bedard - “Radcliffe, Sade, Smith, and Pitaval: True Crime avant la lettre in The Romance of Real Life (1787) and The Marquise de Gange (1813)”

Mark Grant – ‘Mysteries of Udolpho as Radical Female Moral Education’

Aleksander Arctander Heggelund – ‘Narrating Gothic Sympathy in The Novels of Mary Wollstonecraft’

Alexia Mandla Ainsworth – ‘Exhuming the Female Gothic’

7.15pm – 8.15pm – Writing Workshop – Suzan Palumbo - Creating A Character Arc for Gothic Short Stories

8.30-9pm – Gothic Poetry Reading