The Open Graves, Open Minds Project unearthed depictions of the vampire and the undead in literature, art, and other media, before embracing shapeshifting creatures (most recently, the werewolf) and other supernatural beings and their worlds. It opens up questions concerning genre, gender, hybridity, cultural change, and other realms. It extends to all narratives of the fantastic, the folkloric, the fabulous, and the magical. Supernatural Cities encourages conversation between disciplines (e.g. history, cultural geography, folklore, social psychology, anthropology, sociology and literature). It explores the representation of urban heterotopias, otherness, haunting, estranging, the uncanny, enchantment, affective geographies, communal memory, and the urban fantastical.
The city theme ties in with OGOM’s current research: Sam George’s work on the English Eerie and the urban myth of Old Stinker, the Hull werewolf; the Pied Piper’s city of Hamelin and the geography and folklore of Transylvania; Bill Hughes’s work on the emergence of the genre of paranormal romance from out of (among other forms) urban fantasy; Kaja Franck’s work on wilderness, wolves, and were-animals in the city. This event will see us make connections with the research of Supernatural Cities scholars, led by historian Karl Bell. Karl has explored the myth of Spring-Heeled-Jack, and the relationship between the fantastical imagination and the urban environment. We invite other scholars to join in the dialogue with related themes from their own research.
From its inception, the Gothic mode has been imbued with antiquity and solitude, with lonely castles and dark forests. The city, site of modernity, sociality, and rationalised living, seems to be an unlikely locus for texts of the supernatural. And yet, by the nineteenth century, Dracula had already invaded the metropolis from the Transylvanian shadows and writers such as R. L. Stevenson adapted the supernatural Gothic to urban settings. Gaskell, Dickens and Dostoyevsky, too, uncover the darker side of city life and suggest supernatural forces while discreetly maintaining a veneer of naturalism.
In twentieth-century fantastic and Gothic, perhaps owing in part to a disillusionment with modernity, all manner of spectres haunt our cities in novels, film, TV, and video games. Radcliffean Gothic saw the uncultivated wilderness and the premodern past as the fount of terror; the contemporary fantastic discovers the supernatural precisely where space has been most rationalised—the modern city. Civilisation, rooted etymologically in the Latin civitas (‘city’), is itself put into question by its subversion by the supernatural.
Supernatural cities emerge in a range of contemporary fictions from the horror of Stephen King to the dark fantasy of Clive Barker, the parallel Londons of V. E. Schwaab and China Mieville, magical neo-Victorian Londons in the Young Adult fiction of Genevieve Cogman and Samantha Shannon, and Aliette de Bodard’s fallen angels and dragons in a supernatural Paris. Zombies lurch through scenes of urban breakdown while, in TV, there is the vampire-ridden noir LA of Angel. The large metropolises are not alone in their unearthliness—see the Celtic otherworld that lies behind Manchester in Alan Garner’s Elidor. Then there are the imagined cities of high fantasy, which form a contrast to the gritty familiarity of the cities that feature in the distinct genre of urban fantasy itself or the frequently urban backgrounds of paranormal romance. Supernatural cities are haunted, too, by such urban legends as Spring Heeled-Jack and Old Stinker, the werewolf of Hull.
The conference will explore the image of the supernatural city as expressed in narrative media from a variety of epochs and cultures. It will provide an interdisciplinary forum for the development of innovative and creative research and examine the cultural significance of these themes in all their various manifestations. As with previous OGOM conferences, from which emerged books and special issue journals, there will be the opportunity for delegates’ presentations to be published.
The conference organising committee invites proposals for panels and individual papers. Possible topics and approaches may include (but are not limited to) the following:
The urban wyrd
The English eerie
Folk horror’s encroachment on the city
Magical cities
Alternative/parallel cities
Urban folklore/legends
Urban fantasy and genre
YA and children’s magical cities
Monsters and demons at large in the city (Dracula, Dorian Gray, Angel, Cat People, King Kong, Elephant Man, The Werewolf of London, Sweeney Todd, Jack the Ripper, Lestat, Zombie ‘R’, mummies, witches, etc.)
Psychogeography
Gothic architecture
Cities and the incursion of the wilderness
Civilisation and nature
Alternative urban histories; neo-Victorianism and steampunk
Gothic/magical fashion, music, and subcultures of the city
Supernatural city creatures (demons, gargoyles, ghosts, vampires, angels)
Animal hauntings and city spectres
Decay, entropy, and economic collapse
Supernatural cityscapes in video games
Gotham City/comic books/dark knights
The disenchantments of modernity and re-enchantment of the city
Dark spaces/borders/liminal landscapes
Wild, uncanny areas of the city
Drowned/submerged cities
Keynote Speakers:
Prof. Owen Davies, historian of witchcraft and magic, on ‘Supernatural beliefs in nineteenth-century asylums’
Dr Sam George, Convenor of the Open Graves, Open Minds Project, ‘City Demons: urban manifestations of the Pied Piper and Nosferatu Myths’
Adam Scovell, BFI critic and Folk Horror film specialist, on ‘the Urban Wyrd’
Dr Karl Bell, Convenor of Supernatural Cities, on ‘the fantastical imagination and the urban environment’ (title tbc)
Delegates will engage with our Gruesome Gazetteer of Gothic Hertfordshire and accompany us on a tour of Supernatural St Albans and its environs.
Abstracts (200-300 words) for twenty-minute papers or proposals for two-hour panels, together with a 100-word biography, should be submitted by 1 January 2018 as an email attachment in MS Word document format to all of the following:
Dr Sam George, s.george@herts.ac.uk;
Dr Bill Hughes, bill.enlightenment@gmail.com;
Dr Kaja Franck, k.a.franck@gmail.com;
Dr Karl Bell, karl.bell@port.ac.uk
Please use your surname as the document title. The abstract should be in the following format: (1) Title (2) Presenter(s) (3) Institutional affiliation (4) Email (5) Abstract. Panel proposals should include (1) Title of the panel (2) Name and contact information of the chair (3) Abstracts of the presenters.
Presenters will be notified of acceptance by 30 January 2018. Visit us at OpenGravesOpenMinds.com and follow us on Twitter @OGOMProject @imaginetheurban
Terry Wright of the Sacred Writings blog made me aware of a new essay applying monster theory to biblical studies. The title and abstract are reproduced below.
My complete panel list for Salt Lake Comic Con. Some great and thought provoking discussions, two of which I moderate.
The boundary between the animal and the human has long been unstable, especially since the Victorian period. Where the boundary is drawn between human and animal is itself an expression of political power and dominance, and the ‘animal’ can at once express the deepest fears and greatest aspirations of a society’ (Victorian Animal Dreams, 4).
“WAR” completes great “APES” trilogy
The final film in the APES reboot trilogy, War for the Planet of the Apes, has been well received by audiences, fans, and critics alike. As a result, a lot has been written on the film that covers a lot of ground by way of commentary. I’ve written quite a bit about various aspects of the Apes films as an almost lifelong fan going back to my childhood, and in light of the volume of material available on War online, I’ll simply share a few impressions after watching this great film.
To begin the acting was top-notch. Woody Harrelson gives a good performance as the human villain, and like many have noted already, Andy Serkis is wonderful as Caesar. I join the chorus of calls for those who want to see performance-capture added as a category for consideration by the Academy Awards. Serkis’ performance is very moving, and with that coupled with the ability of technology to capture facial expressions, the viewer forgets that one is watching a non-human animal, which makes it easy to get caught up in the story and empathize with the apes against one’s own species.
The visuals are also amazing. From the wooded home of the apes who flee like refugees, to the human military camps, the cinematography in this science fiction film rivals that of any standard drama. At one point I caught myself mesmerized by a scene with a waterfall, simply because of the beauty of the imagery in connection with the developing story.
Like it’s trilogy predecessors, War includes elements that connect it to the five films in the original franchise. This makes for a great time Easter egg hunting, and provides a nice sense of nostalgia for older fans. In addition, it also makes for an interesting bit of storytelling as the script writers work to make seemingly natural connections between the updated story and the films of the late 1960s and 1970s. In War viewers will find many nods to the original film of 1968, but also to Beneath the Planet of the Apes with the use of “Alpha and Omega.”
Previously I’ve written on religion in the Apes franchise, and it surfaces in War as well. The Colonel wears a cross, and has a cross and Bible in his quarters, even while engaging in atrocities against apes as well as his fellow humans. In one scene after speaking to his troops he finishes his audience with them by making the sign of the cross in the air, mimicking a priestly blessing on the people, which is connected to his conception of his military action as a holy war.
Then there’s the social commentary. In our age characterized by deep political and religious divisions, at times involving violence and even genocide, War, as well as Rise, speak well to this situation. Human beings are incredibly tribal creatures, and we tend toward inter-group as well as intra-group conflict with very little provocation. This is accompanied by hatred toward others, the desire for revenge, all of which puts empathy and forgiveness in short supply. One of the best elements of War is the way in which it takes audiences on Caesar’s journey for his soul, picking up where Rise left off with the death of Koba who was consumed by hatred of humans and a desire for revenge. Caesar seemingly wants to pursue a different path, but tragic personal circumstances make him wrestle with his own demons of vengeance in this film. For viewers able to connect the dots self-critically from [to current events, whether the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the legal battle over Middle Eastern refugees, or the fate of war-torn Syria, War provides plenty of material to help us look carefully in the mirror at human nature.
Director Matt Reeves has said in an interview that he’s interested in one more film in the Apes series, one that helps bring this prequel trilogy up to the point of the 1968 film. Given his successes in handling of the Apes mythology, I hope for at least one more film.