2018 “Stranger Things” Conference Schedule

British Modernities Group Conference 2018

“Stranger Things: The Weird, the Paranormal, and the Problem of Belief”

 

Friday, April 20, Illini Union Ballroom 

8:30 a.m. – Check In, Coffee, and Refreshments

9:00 a.m. – Opening Remarks

9:15 a.m. – Panel 1: The Non-Human Weird: Ecocritical Perspectives

Consolidation of Authority: Hypnotism, Contagion, and the Logic of Immunization in Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation, by Ben DeVries, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Floral Figuring: Weirding Convention in Medieval Poetry, by Jo Nixon, University of Chicago

Feeling is Believing: Disrupting Wilderness Through Bigfoot Photography and Film, by Jessica Landau, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

10:30 a.m. – Coffee and Refreshments

10:45 a.m. – Panel 2: Fantastical Worlds and the Production of Difference

Curioser and Curioser: Representations of Split Subjectivity in Stranger Things, by Asiya Ikhsanova, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Little People, Big Problems: Portrayal of Little People in High Fantasy Films, by Niki Casady, University of Missouri at Kansas City

Shakespeare’s Weïrd Sisters: Witchcraft as the Chink in the Armor of the Male Action Hero, by Britt Garrett, University of Illinois at Chicago

12:00 p.m. – Lunch

1:15 p.m. – Panel 3: The Strange on Screen: Media and Social Change

“The Machines are Everywhere!”: The Outer Limits, Anti-Capitalism, and Cultural Counter-Hegemony in 1960s Media, by Augustus Wood, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The Ethics of the Hostage: Political Philosophy in Get Out!, Stranger Things, and The OA, by Daniel Gonzalez, University of Illinois at Chicago

Between the Ocean Waves and God’s Indifference: Reflections of the Irrational in Konstantin Lopushansky’s Visitor to a Museum, by Alejandra-Isabel Otero Pires, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

2:30 p.m. – Coffee and Refreshments

2:45 p.m. – Keynote Address

Listening to the Dead: W. B. Yeats’s Communication with Spirits, by Dr. Catherine E. Paul, Professor Emerita, Clemson University

 

Saturday, April 21, Illini Union, Room 104

8:30 a.m. – Coffee and Refreshments

9:00 a.m. – Panel 4: Staging the Weird

The Tarot and Transnationalism in Yeats’ Early Symbolist Drama, by Julian Dean, University of Notre Dame

What Haunts the Scourge of God?: Marlowe’s Monster, Tamburlaine, by Jeffrey McCambridge, Ohio University

e.e. cummings’ Strange Goodness, by Alissa Babaeva, University of Granada

10:15 a.m. – Coffee and Refreshments

10:30.a.m – Panel 5: Religion and Secularism: The Problem of Belief

“The Vision of Joel has Been Fulfilled”: Vernacular Mormonism, Near-Death Experiences, and the Culture of Preparation for the Last Days, by Cameron C. Nielsen, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Postsecularism, by Sarah Buchmeier, University of Illinois at Chicago

Mind the Light: The American Quaker Reformation in the Age of Biblical Criticism & Inerrancy, 1790-1830, Joshua M. Reinke, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Singing with Spirits: Adaptation of the Paranormal, by Susan Bywaters and Elizabeth Gartman, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

12:15 p.m. – Lunch

1:15 p.m. – Panel 6: Growing Up Weird

Unworldly Things: Science and Girlhood in the Case of the Cottingley Fairies, by Elizabeth Grumer, University of Chicago

Looking to the 80’s for an Appreciation of Childhood: Nostalgia and Power Dynamics in Stranger Things, by Charley Koenig, Illinois State University

White Trash Fantasies: Identity, Class, and Magic in Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Cycle, by Fiona Hartley-Kroeger, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

2:30 p.m. – Coffee and Refreshments

2:45 p.m. – Panel 7: Reading Reality through the Weird

Made from Monsters: Polyphemus in Statius’ Thebaid, by Stephen Froedge, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

When Hawkins, Indiana Turns Upside Down: the Horror of Everyday Life in Stranger Things, by Matt Sautman, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

Chaos and Pathworking: Books as Sigils in Postmodern Fiction, by Aaron Burstein, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

4:00 p.m. – Closing Remarks