Apocalypse and its Discontents: Programme Announced

Westminster English Colloquium #16: Apocalypse and its Discontents
Saturday 11th – Sunday 12th December 2010
The Boardroom, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London

UPDATE: REGISTRATION FOR THIS EVENT IS UNFORTUNATELY NOW CLOSED

The programme for Apocalypse and its Discontents has been announced. See below the line for details.

Admission is free, but to register please send your name, email and affiliation to Monica Germana: m.germana@westminster.ac.uk

 

 

9.45-10.45

Keynote 1: Dr Pat Wheeler (University of Hertfordshire)
Chair: Chris Daley (University of Westminster)

10.45-11.00 Coffee Break

11.00-13.30 Parallel Sessions 1A, 1B, 1C

1A. Apocalypse and Gender

(Chair: Simon Avery)

Susan Watkins  (Leeds Metropolitan University)
‘Rewriting the Apocalypse in Contemporary Women’s Fiction’ 

Elizabeth Russell  (Universitat Rovira I Virgili)
‘“Escape/Landscape/Genderscape”: Futuristic Visions of Apocalypse in India’

Arielle Zibrak  (Boston University)
‘Intolerance, A Survival Guide: Heteronormative Culture Formation in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road’

1B.  Endings and Aftermaths 
(Chair: Chris Daley)

Justin McCarthy  (Trinity College)
‘Post-Apocalyptic Representations in Popular Culture’

Joanne Murray  (Birkbeck College)
‘New Brutalism under the Westway: The Articulation of Aftermath in JG Ballard’s Concrete Island’

Maria Soultouki  (Roehampton University)
’Postmodernism Revealed? Surviving Postmodern Literature and the Search for Another Post-’

1C. Apocalypse: Global Perspectives 
(Chair: Walter Ratliff)

Pere Gallardo-Torrano  (Universitat Rovira I Virgili, Tarragona, Spain)
‘“The Day Our World Ended”: Sampling Apocalyptic Fiction written in Catalan’

Joseph Tham & Jocelyn Low  (Singapore)
‘Shuji Terayama’s Emperor Tomato Ketchup: A Paradise Turned Awry’

Boris Knorre (University-Higher School of Economics)
‘Apocalypses in the Religious Mentality of Russian People at the Edge of the Millennia.  Traditionalist and Innovative Interpretations’

12.30-13.30 Lunch (own arrangements)

13.30-15.00 Parallel Sessions 2A, 2B, 2C

2A.  Apocalypse and ‘Theory’ 
(Chair: Aris Mousoutzanis)

Andrew McGettigan (Independent Scholar)
‘Walter Benjamin’s Iconoclasm: The Ban on Images of the Future’

John Vignaux Smyth (Portland State University)
‘Clarifying Contemporary Catastrophe in Slavoj Žižek and Jean-Pierre Dupuy’

Sophie Fuggle  (King’s College)
’Flashing Forward: Turning the Apocalypse into a Non-Event’  

2B.  The Apocalypse in British Fiction 
(Chair: Justin Sausman)

Andrew M. Butler (Canterbury Christ Church University)
‘The Good Life? The Cosiness of Survivors’

Lyn Poole (Roehampton University)
‘“Alighting Angels” and “Armadas of Angelic Creatures”: JG Ballard’s End-zone Fiction’

Caroline Edwards  (University of Surrey)
‘Rethinking the Arcadian Revenge: Pastoral Post-Apocalypse in Contemporary British Fiction’

2C.  Apocalypse, Language, and Representation 
(Chair: Giovanni Parenzan)

William Abberley  (University of Exeter)
‘“Out goes the candl/ Out goes the lite/ Out goes my story/ And so Good Nite”: Language Decay and Creation in Apocalyptic Visions of the Future’

Courtney Hopf  (University of California, Davis)
‘Living to Tell About It: Documenting Apocalypse in Narrative Fiction’

Emily Horton  (Brunel University)
‘The Apocalyptic Sublime: A Gothic Response to Contemporary Environmental Crisis in John Burnside’s Glister’ 

15.00-16.30  Parallel Sessions 3A, 3B, 3C

3A. Apocalypse and Cultural Theory  Boardroom
(Chair: John Vignaux Smyth)

Suzanne Newcombe & Sarah Harvey  (Inform, London School of Economics)
’Learn the Truth: Google 2012’
Nicolás Mendoza  (University of Melbourne)

‘Life in a Network for Survivors: The Thermonuclear Apocalypse and the Protocols of Freedom’

Aris Mousoutzanis  (Kingston University)
‘Consuming Apocalypse: Consumerism, Disaster, and Globalisation’

3B.  Early-Twentieth-Century Apocalypse
(Chair: Anne Witchard)

Trevor Norris  (London Metropolitan University)
‘D.H. Lawrence’s Green Apocalypse’

Justin Sausman  (University of Westminster)
‘The Death of the Moth and the Meaning of Life: Modernism, Occultism, Apocalypse and the First World War’

Kate E. Desforges  (University of Hull)     
‘Anticipating Apocalyspe: Visions of the End of the World in Katharine Burdekin’s Swastika Night (1937)’

3C.  ‘Young Apocalypses’ 
(Chair: Mehmet Evren Eken)

Will Buckingham  (De Montfort University)
‘Knowledge and Friendship at the End of the World’

Patrick O’Neill  (Kingston University)
‘Apocalypse and its Discontents in the American Teen Film’

Andrew Crome  (University of Manchester)
‘“So…basically, end of the world”: Re-imagining the Apocalypse in Russell T. Davies’ Doctor Who’

16.30-16.45 Coffee Break

16.45-17.45

Keynote 2: professor Adam Roberts (Royal Holloway)
Chair: Dr Aris Mousoutzanis (Kingston University)

 

9:30-11 Parallel Sessions 4A, 4B, 4C

4A.  Apocalypse in American Fiction 
(Chair: Xavier Aldana Reyes)

Jeremy F. Green  (University of Colorado)
‘Revelation and Sacrifice: Steve Erickson’s Ironic Apocalypse’     

Søren Staal Balslev (University of Copenhagen)
‘Why are Terminal Events so Pleasing? On the Eschatological Patterns in Don DeLillo’s Writing and the Aspects of Redemption’  

Martyn Colebrook  (University of Hull)
“The end of the world is nought”: Stephen King’s Cell and post-apocalyptic America.          

4B.  Apocalypse, Science, and Religion 
(Chair: Tom Ue)

Walter Ratliff  (Associated Press)
‘The Mennonite Trek to Central Asia:  Apocalyptic Debacle or Christian-Muslim Paradigm?’

Terence McSweeney  (University of Essex)
‘“Each night is darker – beyond darkness”: The Environmental Apocalypse of The Road’

Matt Stanley  (New York University)
‘The Revelation of Carl: Nuclear Winter as Apocalypse from the Scientific Prophet’

4C.  Game Over: Apocalypse and Popular Culture 
(Chair: Andrew Butler)

Steve Brie  (Liverpool Hope University)
‘As Sure As Eggs is Eggs: The Apocalypse and the return of the guaranteed eternal sanctuary man in Genesis’s Supper’s Ready’

Steven Boyer  (University of Glasgow
‘Apocalyptic Regionalism: Left 4 Dead 2, the American South and Community Collaboration’

Emily Laycock  (Lancaster University)
‘Drawing on Apocalypse: Apocalyptic Discourse in Comic Books and Graphic Novels’

11:00-11.15 Coffee Break

11.15-12.45 Parallel Sessions 5A, 5B, 5C

5A. Inhuman Sacrifices: Aesthetics of the Apocalypse  Boardroom
(Chair: Monica Germanà)

Mela Jones  (University of California, Davis)
‘Apocalypto: Bloody Bad Endings and New Beginnings’

Laura Hudson  (University of California, Davis)
‘Breaking Bad or Hollywood Business as Usual?’

Erin Paszko  (University of California, Davis)
‘Accidental Tourism: The Day After Tomorrow and Political Violence’

5B.  Apocalypse and Social Theory 
(Chair: Andrew McGettigan)

Adela Fofiu  (“Babes-Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania)         
‘“Europe in 2029”: Group Reactions to the Angst of a White Apocalypse’

Daniel Whisker  (University of Birmingham)
‘The Postemotional Apocalypse’     

Adam Haley  (Pennsylvania State University)
‘It’s the End of the World, But Not As We Know It:  Means, Ends, and Beginnings in the Ideology of Apocalypse’

5C.  Pre-Twentieth-Century Apocalypses 
(Chair: Dmytro Drozdovskyi)

Adam Swann  (University of Glasgow)
‘By Degrees of Merit Razed: Ravaged Rebirth in Milton’s History of Britain’

Tommi Kakko  (University of Tampere, Finland)
‘Defoe’s Apocalyptic Visions During the Great Plague of London’

Tom Ue(University College London)
‘Romance and Public Politics in Gissing’s Veranilda’

12:45-13:45 Lunch (own arrangements)

13.45-15.45 Parallel Sessions 6A, 6B, 6C

6A.  Apocalypse in Film & Television 
(Chair: Laura Hudson)

Dmytro Drozdovkyi (VSESVIT magazine of world literature) & Oksana Prykhodko  (Kyiv Slavic University)
‘Inception as Utopia of the XXI Century: New Frontiers for Mind Culture’

Shane Nicole Trayers  (Macon State College, Georgia)
‘Destruction from Within: Viral Metamorphoses in Apocalyptic American Film and Television’

Xavier Aldana Reyes  (Lancaster University)
‘A-Porn-Ellipse: The Advent of Carnihilistic Horror’  

Karma Waltanen  (University of California, Davis)
‘Apocalyptic Change in Shaun of the Dead’ 

6B.  Apocalypse in Theatre and the Arts 
(Chair: Matthew Stanley)

Geirthrudur Finnbogadottir Hjorvar (Independent Artist)
‘Home Delivery Service: The Ending in ‘Sending’ and the Geometry of Finitude’

Matthew Morrison  (University of Westminster)
‘Playwriting at the End of the Universe: How Does Drama Deal with the Ultimate Ending?’

Mehmet Evren Eken  (University of Sussex)
‘The Age of Conflicts Through the Looking Glass: Revival of Irrationalism in Disguise’

Carl Gent  (Independent Artist)
‘Allure of Apocalypse: Observing Apocalyptic Aesthetics and Thematics within the Paintings of John Martin’

6C.  Apocalypse and Trauma 
(Chair: Dan Whisker)

Magdalena Zolkos  (University of Western Sydney)
‘Infernal Witnessing: Apocalyptic Themes in the Contemporary Holocaust Novel’

Francesca Haig  (University of Chester)
‘“Billows of ash”: Cormac McCarthy’s Road Back to Auschwitz’

Giovanni Parenzan (University of Bergamo)
‘Intimate Apocalypses: Archaeology, Regression and Trauma in Marker’s La jetée’

James Aston  (University of Hull)
‘What Will We Tell Our Children? The Family Under Threat in post-9/11 Apocalyptic Cinema’

15.45-16.45

Keynote 3: Professor John R. Hall (University of California Davis)
‘[de)Texting the Apocalypse’
Chair: Dr Monica Germanà (University of Westminster)