Grimm Legacies 2012: Tentative Schedule

Grimm Legacies, the fairy tale symposium at Harvard next month, has posted its tentative schedule which I am posting below. If you look closely, you will see that I am on the schedule. Yes, I am attending and I am presenting, eschewing the relative anonymity of an audience member,* after accepting Maria Tatar's kind invitation. She has also allotted an hour for my presentation so if you plan to attend and have any input into what you would like to hear, please let me know. For now, I plan for my focus to be on SurLaLune as well as fairy tales in a technological world. The Grimms, too, will be mentioned more than once.

Of course, the other presenters are a great draw and my own reason for attending. I want to hear their presentations! So without further ado, here's the list to tempt you:

This is a draft schedule of the event. It is still subject to change.

Friday, February 3rd:

4:00 – 5:00 pm
Heidi Heiner of SurLaLune: Workshop

6:00 – 7:30 pm
Jack Zipes, Keynote Speaker
“Two Hundred Years after Once Upon a Time: The Legacy of the Brothers Grimm and their Tales in Germany”

Saturday, February 4th:

9:00 - 9:30 am – Welcome

9:30 - 11:15 am - INTO THE WOODS

Cara Zimmerman
“Henry Darger, Adolf Wolfli, and Tales of Violence in Outsider Art”

David Rice
“When the Forest Becomes the Woods: The Horror Effect in the Grimms; Hansel and Gretel and Beyond”

Megan Leroy
“Domestic Adaptations: Anne Sexton’s Transformations and the Grimms’ Tales”

Katie Orenstein

11:30 - 1:00 pm - UNDER THE KNIFE

Valerie Gribben
“Medicine and Märchen”

Ariane Mandell
“Empowered by Tears: Weeping in Grimm’s Fairy Tales”

Perri Klass
“Grimm and the Experts: Psychiatrists, Pediatricians, and Pundits”

1:00 - 1:45 pm - Lunch

1:45 - 2:15 pm – Presentation

2:15 - 3:45 pm - AMONG THE BEASTS

Ruth Lingford

David Elmer
“The Metamorphosis of a Folktale: 'Beauty and the Beast' in Apuleius' Metamorphoses."

Jerry Griswold
“The Many Conclusions of ‘Beauty and the Beast’”

4:00 - 5:45 pm - THROUGH THE MAGIC MIRROR

John Cech
“The Grimms, Sendak, and the Zeitgeist”

Michael Hearn
"Increasing the Happiness of Children: George Cruikshank Illustrates the Brothers Grimm"

Kate Bernheimer
"The Grimm Art of Fairy-Tale Editorship"

Claudia Schwabe
“Between Socialism and Snow White: GDR Fairy Tales”

5:45 - 6:30 pm - Wrap Up

*Truthfully, I find so many of you know me when I do get to attend these events, that anonymity doesn't really happen anyway! Name tags remove the mystery. And I wear hats. I do it to myself. So please do introduce yourself, chat with me, and we will all revel in this fairy tale weekend!

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Call for Papers: Cinderella Conference in Rome

Okay, this is one I really want to attend. Especially after slaving over Cinderella Tales From Around the World the last few years, which will be coming out soon. But on to the real topic of this post:

CFP: Cinderella Conference in Rome

Cinderella as a Text of Culture

International Conference

University of Rome, “La Sapienza”

November, 8-10th 2012

Cinderella is one of the most beloved and well-known tales in Western culture. Invariably popular among the audience of children and adults alike, translated, adapted and reinvented in sometimes dramatically different versions, the story of Cinderella has been told again and again, in literature, music, theatre, film and other arts. It has also been the object of extensive scholarly research, beginning with Marian Roalfe Cox’s pioneering compendium compiled in the nineteenth century. Folklorists have recognized hundreds of distinct forms of Cinderella-related plots and subtypes throughout the Western World, and they have analysed the form and typology of the tale, as well as its development through time. Many methodological approaches have been applied to Cinderella, such as ritual, structural, anthropological, sociological and, more recently, feminist interpretations, alongside the influential psychoanalytical account of the significance of the tale in Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment.

However while mainstream research tends to emphasise the universal values and meanings of the tale, we would like to propose a different approach by considering Cinderella in its textual nature in relation to a given geo-cultural, historical, literary and mediatic ec(h)o-system. We are particularly interested in contributions that focus on Cinderella neither as an item of folklore nor as a universal story, but rather on the many Cinderellas that have populated Western culture past and present, and in different cultural and national areas. In order to investigate these phenomena, we invite you to discuss Cinderella’s various textual metamorphoses and account for significant differences in their textual, iconographic and mediatic realisations.

Topics and questions that may be addressed include: Giambattista Basile – Charles Perrault – Grimm brothers: textual interconnections and interactions;

Grimm’s Aschenputtel versus Perrault’s Cendrillon as literary texts: affinities and differences, reception and legacy;

What is the status of Cinderella among other fairy tales? How can we account for its particular appeal? Is it somehow different from other, or similar, rise- or restoration tales?

Travelling stories and intercultural canon formation: to what extent is Cinderella a “canonical” fairy tale? Is there an international fairy tale canon?

Translatio / translation

The circulation of the tale in European culture: audience typologies and reception, manipulation and ideology, cultural translatio;

Domestication: national identity and “nationalisations” of Cinderella vs. intercultural communication through fairy tale adaptations;

Iconological and imagological interpretations of Cinderella: diachronic and synchronic aspects of the tale’s visual representations;

The literary canon and medial adaptations (Cinema, Theatre, Music, etc.);

The colloquium is international in scope and attendance. The official conference languages will be English and Italian.

Confirmed keynote speakers:

Ruth Bottigheimer (Stony Brook University)

Andrea Andermann (director and producer, Rada Film-RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana)

The conference is hosted by the University of Roma “La Sapienza” Department of European, American and Intercultural Studies

Organization
Scientific Committee

- Francesca Bernardini (University of Rome “La Sapienza”)

- Johanna Borek (University of Wien)

- Ruth Bottigheimer (Stony Brook University)

- Martine Hennard Dutheil de la Rochère (University of Lausanne)

- Vanessa Joosen (University of Antwerp)

- Gillian Lathey (Roehampton University, London)

- Jan Van Coillie (Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel)

- Monika Wozniak (University of Rome “La Sapienza”)

Local Organizing Committee
Camilla Miglio, Martine van Geetruyden, Monika Wozniak (University of Rome “La Sapienza”)
Deadlines
February 28th, 2012
Deadline for the proposal of conference papers, with the submission of a 300-400 word abstract (in English) and a short bionote including the following information:
1. Postal address
2. E-mail address
3. Academic affiliation
The abstracts should be sent to the following e-mail address: cinderella.roma2012 (at) gmail.com

Enquiries

Monika Wozniak monika.wozniak (at) uniroma1.it
or
Camilla Miglio camilla.miglio (at) uniroma1.it

Web page: http://www.cinderellaroma2012.wordpress.com/

March 30th, 2012

The notification of admission will be sent to participants.

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Fairy Tales at Southwest Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Association

I just learned about this one today, so hopefully if you are interested in the topic and have a proposal to submit, you already have since the deadline is December 1. However, registration and attendance are still open, too. This one sounds interesting especially considering the conference's wider theme of "Foods & Culture(s) in a Global Context." The PDF for the fairy tale specific paper call is copied below. The main is at Southwest Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Association.

Myth and Fairy Tale Call for Papers


Abstract/Proposals Due: 1 December 2011

Southwest/Texas Popular Culture & American Culture Association’s 33rd Annual Conference
Albuquerque, NM February 8-11 2012

Hyatt Regency Albuquerque
330 Tijeras
Albuquerque, NM 87102
Phone: 1.505.842.1234
Fax: 1.505.766.6710

Panels now forming on topics related to all areas of myth and fairy tale and their connections to popular culture. To participate in this area, you do not need to present on both myths and fairy tales (one or the other is perfectly fine), but we have seen that bringing both genre categories into conversation has led to extremely valuable and stimulating conversations.

Papers relating to the 2012 Conference Theme: “Celebrating Foods and Culture(s) in a Global Context” will be given special consideration, and might be as variable as (though certainly not limited to):

--Eating and Devouring in “Little Red Riding Hood”

--Magical Fruits in Classical Mythology

--Food and Entrapment in “Hansel and Gretel”

--Rituals and Eating in Hindu Mythology

--Fairy Tale Poetry: Food and Seduction (Olga Broumas, Carol Ann Duffy, Jackie Kay, etc.)

--Food, Ritual, and Folklore (Joseph Campbell, James Frazer, etc.)

--Disney Heroines and Food Preparation (Rapunzel, Snow White, Frog Princess, etc.)

--Music, Food, and Myth in the Cherokee Tradition

-- Storytelling as an Act of Feeding the Soul: Scheherazade Narratives

--Picture Books: Illustrating of Fairy Tale Foods

Additional areas of interest might include:

--Where Fairy Tales and Myth Overlap

--Non-Western Myths and Fairy Tales

--Fairy Tales in/as “Children’s Literature”

--Disney

--Urban Fairy Tales

--Ethnic Myths and Fairy Tales

--Gendered Readings of Myths and Fairy Tales

--Postcolonial Myths and Fairy Tales

--Myths and Fairy Tales in Advertising Culture

--Reading Myths and Fairy Tales in the Popular Culture of Past Centuries

--Performing Myths and Fairy Tales: Drama and/or Ritual

--Genres of Myths and/or Fairy Tales: Film, Television, Poetry, Novels, Music, Comic Books, Picture Books, Short Stories, or Graphic Novels

Scholars, teachers, professionals, and others interested in Myths And Fairy Tales are all heartily encouraged to participate. Graduate students are particularly welcome, and should consider submitting their conference papers for one of the Graduate Writing Awards, especially the Kenneth Davis Award for Folklore Studies, which recognizes “an outstanding graduate essay in the field of folklore studies.” (full papers due January 15, 2012) http://swtxpca.org/documents/112.html#KennethDavisAward_Bookmark.

If you wish to form your own Myth or Fairy Tale-focused panel, I would be glad to facilitate (panels focused on one particular tale are especially encouraged). If your work does not focus on Myth or Fairy Tale but fits within the broad range of areas designated for the upcoming conference on American & Popular culture, I strongly encourage you explore the long list of areas http://www.swtxpca.org/documents/123.html. And please do pass along this call to any friends and colleagues who work with myths and fairy tales. We’ve had some wonderful and wonderfully diverse panels over the last few years, and I look forward to seeing that tradition continue in 2012.

Please submit 200 word abstracts and 600-800 word proposals for panels by 1 December 2011, and please note that all presenters must be registered for the conference by 31 December 2011.

Abstracts must be uploaded to the SW/TX PCA/ACA database at: http://conference2012.swtxpca.org

But if you have any additional questions about the “Myths and Fairy Tales” area, please feel free to contact:

Jacquilyn Weeks: jweeks@nd.edu
College of Arts and Letters Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Notre Dame
Department of English
356 O’Shaughnessy Hall
Notre Dame, IN 46556

General information and online registration http://www.swtxpca.org/ (updated regularly)

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Catwoman to Katniss Conference 2012

I think I will have to drive 30 minutes down the road to this one since I can. I'm in Murfreesboro at least a few times a month anyway. :) And that makes three conference posts in one day. Good since there won't be one next Thursday since it will be Thanksgiving here in the states. And if there are any readers out there interested in submitting fairy tale related papers to this one, a round table would be interesting and I could be there...

From the Catwoman to Katniss Conference 2012 site:

Catwoman to Katniss Conference 2012

March 15-16, 2012 • Murfreesboro, TN

Middle Tennessee State University

Catwoman to Katniss is an interdisciplinary conference examining female images in electronic, graphic, and textual media within the science fiction and fantasy genres. Featured in this conference are keynote speakers C.S. Friedman and Dr. Rhonda Wilcox. Friedman is the bestselling science fiction and fantasy author of such works as In Conquest Born, and The Coldfire and Magister Trilogies as well as many other novels and short works. Dr. Wilcox is a professor of English at Gordon College, a founding editor of Critical Studies in Television: Scholarly Studies in Small Screen Fiction, Editor of Studies in Popular Culture and Coeditor of Slayage: The Journal of the Whedon Studies Association.

While women have occupied many roles in science fiction and fantasy text and media, the last several years have produced a wealth of images of women as both heroine and villainess, offering a new and unique view of the female body and image. This conference seeks to interrogate these representations of the female form, and how they contrastingly strengthen or challenge prevailing ideas of gender, class, and power. We wish to examine the extent to which such female figures exercise agency, or whether they merely appear to, within their fantasy and science fiction milieu. This conference welcomes papers on all aspects of female representations of “good” and “evil” within an imaginative context, including but not limited to:

• Folktales
• Epic Fantasy
• Children’s and young adult fiction
• Television and film
• Graphic novels / comics
• Traditional fiction and literature
• Video games
• Manga and Anime
• Robot, cyborg and psychically enhanced female figures
• Myth / Legend
• Classical female figures (goddesses, etc.) in twenty-first century narratives

Additionally, papers and presentations interrogating the below topics, artists and authors are strongly encouraged:

• Women in film and television: Sucker Punch, Marvel films, Game of Thrones, V, The Vampire Diaries, True Blood, Torchwood, Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica, etc. While Twilight and Harry Potter would certainly fall within the grasp of this conference, only original approaches to these topics will be considered.
• Heroines and Villainesses in graphic novels, comics and manga
• Treatment of women in epic fantasy by both male and female authors.
• Depictions of women by male authors: Robert Jordan, George R.R. Martin, Terry Goodkind, etc.
• Women in the works of Anne Rice, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Anne McCaffrey, Sherri Tepper, Octavia Butler, Ursula LeGuin, Kelley Armstrong, Charlaine Harris, Kim Harrison and Mercedes Lackey
• We strongly encourage participants to propose panels and/or roundtables for discussions of any of the above, or other, topics.

Please send 300 – 500 word abstracts by December 1, 2011, to Conference Organization Committee, Middle Tennessee State University, Department of English, catwomankatniss@gmail.com.

Thanks again to Valerie Frankel for sharing...

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PCA/ACA National Conference 2012: Fairy Tales in Popular Culture

2011 and 2012 are strong years for studying fairy tales in popular culture with the flood of new interpretations across medias. The PCA/ACA (Popular Culture and American Culture Associations) National Conference in 2012 has an entire section devoted to fairy tales (and many other related topics such as children's literature tracks). But I will focus on the fairy tales section and the dates for submitting materials if you are interested in presenting or just attending.

From the website:

Fairy Tales

The Fairy Tales Area of the Popular Culture Association invites submissions on any topic involving fairy tales for the 2012 Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference, to be held April 11 - April 14 in Boston.

While our interests are broad and inclusive, we are particularly interested in papers that discuss fairy tales in contemporary popular culture (tv shows, movies, graphic novels, advertising, toys, video games, popular literature, etc), revisions and adaptations of fairy tales, and pedagogical uses of and approaches to fairy tales. Still, we are interested in as wide an array of papers as possible, so please do not hesitate to send a submission on any fairy tale related subject.

Please send a 250-word abstract, with title and contact information included, via email to both holland-toll@moc.edu and rnicks@utk.edu. Please email submissions as a Word attachment. The deadline for submission is December 15, 2011.

Linda J. Holland-Toll
Area Chair, Fairy Tales
Department of Language and Literature
Mount Olive College
919-658-7845
lholland-toll@moc.edu

Robin Gray Nicks
Area chair, Fairy Tales
Department of English
311 McClung Tower
University of Tennessee--Knoxville
Knoxville, TN 3996-0430
rnicks@utk.edu

Dates:

Boston 2012
April 11 - 14, 2012
Note: This is a week later than we have traditionally held it in the past.

Deadlines
Registration:

Paper Proposals Due December 15, 2011

Proposals Due for Endowment January 7, 2012

Tentative Program on Web January 28, 2012

Early Bird Registration Ends January 31, 2012

Regular Registration Begins February 1, 2012

Regular Registration Ends March 31, 2012

Late Registration Begins April 1, 2012

Last Day for a Refund February 15, 2012

You can read more about proposal submissions here.

Thanks again to Valerie Frankel for sending this to me.

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Sirens Conference 2012: Tales Retold

It's Thursday! Must be conference day! I don't know if you've noticed but somehow most of the conference announcements on the blog occur on Thursdays. It wasn't planned but it kept happening that way--such as receiving emails on Wednesdays--although this one arrived a few days ago and I am just finally sorting through to it. Thanks to Valerie Frankel for sharing this one and another one I will announce when I learn a bit more.

This one, however, sounds wonderful! Read on for more information:

Sirens Conference 2012:

In fantasy worlds, women embark on daring adventures. They slay dragons and lead nations, spark revolutions and solve riddles. In their worlds, beauty is nice, but cleverness, perseverance, and fairness are nicer. They are wise, powerful, stubborn, charming, shy, angry, changeable. So are the women who write them. And so is Sirens.

Sirens is a conference on women in fantasy literature. We are part scholarly examination, part networking weekend, part personal retreat—and always a chance to discuss fantastic women. We welcome adult readers of all types, including scholars, authors, librarians, educators, and publishing professionals. We encourage all attendees, regardless of background, to share their perspectives as part of our conference, and all attendees are welcome to submit presentations for our programming.

Within our focus on fantastic women, each year Sirens features a fantasy-related theme—and in 2012, that theme is "tales retold." Women have been storytellers, oral historians, and eloquent entertainers for thousands of years, and in 2012, Sirens will celebrate—and participate in—that tradition. Within the larger question of women in fantasy literature, we will examine and dissect retellings of tales from around the world: fairy tales, certainly, but also myths, legends, and folklore. To further our discussion, we have invited three guests of honor, each of whom has brilliantly retold classic stories, to join us: Kate Bernheimer, Malinda Lo, and a third, yet unannounced guest.

In 2012, Sirens will take place October 11–14, at the Skamania Lodge in the Columbia River Gorge. Located in Stevenson, Washington, Skamania is a resort in the style of the grand Pacific Northwest lodges, with a soaring foyer, a roaring fire, and expansive views of the Columbia River. Your free time during the conference can be spent either chatting with other attendees or rejuvenating your spirit in the spa, the woods, or the library.

Our website's sections describe the many aspects of Sirens, so please use the navigation bar above to learn more about our conference, programming, registration, traveling to Skamania, and connecting with other attendees. If you would like to learn more about our three previous years of Sirens, please visit our archive. If you need more information or assistance, we look forward to hearing from you. We hope you join us!

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Conference: Cinderella as a Text of Culture

Cinderella as a Text of Culture

International Conference

University of Rome, “La Sapienza”

November, 8-10th 2012

Cinderella is one of the most beloved and well-known tales in the Western culture. Invariably popular among the audience of children and adults alike, translated, adapted and reinvented in sometimes dramatically different versions, Cinderella’s story has been told again and again, in literature, in music, in theatre, in film and in other arts. It has also been the object of an extensive scholar research, beginning with Marian Roalf Cox’s pioneering compendium compiled in the nineteenth century. Folklorists have recognized hundreds of distinct forms of Cinderella’s plots and subtypes throughout the Western World, and they have analysed form and typology of the tale, as well as its development through time. Many methodological approaches have been applied to Cinderella, such as ritual, structural, anthropological, sociological or – more recently – feminist interpretations, while one of the most extensive psychoanalytical readings of the tale is to be found in Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment.

However while the mainstream of the research puts an emphasis on the universal values and meanings of the tale, we would like to propose a different approach and to consider Cinderella in its textual nature, as a product related to a given geo-cultural, historical and literary and mediatic ec(h)o-system. We are particularly interested in contributions In other words, the focus of the proposed seminar is neither the Cinderella as an item of folklore nor the universal meaning of the tale, but rather the many Cinderellas that have populated past and present Western culture and the different national literatures. In order to investigate these phenomena in greater depth, we would like to invite you to discuss Cinderella’s various textual metamorphoses. Topics and questions that may be addressed include:

Giambattista Basile – Charles Perrault – Grimm brothers: textual interconnections and interactions;

Grimm’s Aschenputtel versus Perrault’s Cendrillon as literary texts: affinities and differences, reception and fortune;

What is the status of Cinderella tale among other fairy tales? What are the reasons of its particular appeal? Is it somehow different from other, similar rise- or restoration tales?

Travelling stories and intercultural canon formation (what does it mean that Cinderella is a “canonical” fairy tale? Does an international canon of fairy tales truly exist?)

Translatio / translation
Audience typologies and reception, manipulation and ideology, cultural translatio;

Domestication, its function and the question of national identity: the “nationalisations” of Cinderella; intercultural communication through adaptations of fairy tales;
Iconological and imagological lecture of Cinderella: diachronical and synchronical aspects of tale’s visual representations

The literary canon and medial adaptation (Cinema, Theatre, Music)

The Conference is international in scope and attendance. The official conference language will be English and Italian.

Confirmed key speakers:

Ruth Bottigheimer (Stony Brook University)
Andrea Andermann (director and producer, Rada Film-RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana)

The conference is hosted by the University of Roma “La Sapienza” Department of European, American and Intercultural Studies

Organization
Scientific Committee
- Francesca Bernardini (University of Rome “La Sapienza”)
- Johanna Borek (University of Wien)
- Ruth Bottigheimer (Stony Brook University)
- Martine Hennard Dutheil (University of Lousanne)
- Vanessa Joosen (University of Antwerp)
- Gillian Lathey (Roehampton University, London)
- Jan Van Coillie (Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel)
- Monika Wozniak (University of Rome “La Sapienza”)

Local Organizing Committee
Camilla Miglio, Martine van Geetruyden, Monika Wozniak (University of Rome “La Sapienza”)

Deadlines
January 31th, 2012
Deadline for the proposal of conference papers, with the submission of a 300-400 word abstract (in English) and a short bionote including the following information:
1. Postal address
2. E-mail address
3. Academic affiliation

The abstracts should be sent to the following e-mail address: cinderella.roma2012@gmail.com

Enquiries
Monika Wozniak monika.wozniak@uniroma1.it
or
Camilla Miglio camilla.miglio@uniroma1.it

March 30th, 2012
The notification of admission will be sent to participants.

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After Grimm: Fairy Tales and the Art of Story Telling

This is a follow-up to a conference I posted about previously. Here's the most up-to-date info.

AFTER GRIMM: FAIRY TALES AND THE ART OF STORY TELLING
6th – 8th September 2012


Call for Papers

2012 is the bicentenary of the publication of the first volume of the Kinder- und Hausmärchen [Children’s and Household Tales] by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. As this groundbreaking collection moves into its third century, this conference explores the trajectory of the Grimm phenomenon in Britain and the English-speaking world. Examining the varied and colourful reception history of this collection of tales, this conference will discuss the most recent fairy- tale scholarship, as well as looking forward to possible future developments. The Grimm bicentenary will also be celebrated through story-telling events, readings, a creative writing prize, and an exhibition of illustrations.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers: Professor Donald Haase, Neil Philip, and Professor Jack Zipes

Previously this conference was billed as two distinct events. Now Kingston University and The Sussex Centre for Folklore Fairy Tales and Fantasy at The University of Chichester are delighted to announce that they will be collaborating on a single event. Proposals for conference papers are invited on any aspect of fairy tale and storytelling over the last two-hundred years, but particularly in the following subjects:

The Oral Tradition within Grimms’ Tales a The literary origins of the Grimms’ ‘folktales’ a Translations of Grimms’ tales into English a The influence of Grimm upon British collectors of fairy tales a The impact of Grimms’ tales upon world literatures in English a Uses of Grimms’ tales in English-language visual media a Grimms’ tales and Romanticism a Grimms’ tales in Victorian Britain a Grimms’ tales in colonial and post-colonial contexts a Illustrations and art works relating to Grimms’ tales a Grimms’ tales in the electronic age a Memes, Tropes and Unchanging Elements a Telling Stories with Pictures a Songs as Stories a Reading Aloud a Performing Grimm a Packaging Grimm (illustrations, book covers, merchandising etc) a Fairy tales in (popular) culture a Retellings, Revisions and Reworkings a Adapting to New Audiences a New Fairy Tales a Fairy Tales on Stage and on Screen a Gossip, Slander, Rumour and News

This multi-disciplinary conference will welcome contributions from any disciplinary perspective including proposals to read creative work, screen films, mount performances and exhibit visual work.


Abstract submission

Please submit an abstract of approximately 300 words, and a brief contributor’s bio online at:
http://fass.kingston.ac.uk/activities/conferences/abstracts/

Deadline: January 31st 2012.
Enquiries:

Prof Bill Gray (Sussex Centre for Folklore Fairy Tales and Fantasy, University of Chichester) e: bgray@chi.ac.uk

Dr Andrew Teverson (Kingston University) e: fass-conferences@kingston.ac.uk

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The Fairy Tale Vanguard Conference Call for Papers

The Fairy Tale Vanguard

Conference Call for Papers

Ghent University, in collaboration with the University of Antwerp.

Saint Peter’s abbey, Ghent (Belgium), 20 – 22 August 2012.

Confirmed keynote speakers: Jack Zipes (University of Minnesota) – Ute Heidmann (University of Lausanne, European Institute of the University of Geneva) – Cristina Bacchilega (University of Hawai`i)

During the past decades, a lot has changed in the field of fairy tale studies: moving away from typological, structuralist and hermeneutically essentialist approaches, scholars today have again come to appreciate the specificity of individual fairy tale texts, the historical context in which they originated, and the many ways in which they have functioned. This general turn to history has brought about a variety of interesting new approaches, many of them focusing on questions of a social, political or ideological nature.

However, when it comes to the fairy tale’s functioning as a literary art form, i.e. as partaking in the dynamics of larger literary fields, research interests have been much more moderate. During the upcoming conference, we intend to re-examine the fairy tale in ways that will shed light on the genre’s position within the conservative and innovative forces that make up for the historical development of literatures. More specifically, we will take off from the idea that throughout its history, the fairy tale has provided authors with a space in which they could engage in literary experimentation and self-consciously reflect on contemporary trends in the literary field. As a result, it was often tied up with or even constituted literary vanguard impulses.

Examples of this are plenty, perhaps most obviously in postmodernist writings, but also in the Grimms’ careful construction of a national Natur/Volkspoesie, the exploration of mondain préciosité by the French salon writers, the Baroque textual games of Basile’s Pentamerone, etc. When we go back further into the genre’s prehistory, we encounter even more texts, both in “sacred” and vernacular languages, which display this same propensity for reflection and innovation.

We can at least partially explain this phenomenon by considering the general traits of the genre itself: as fantastic narrative par excellence, the fairy tale has tended to ostentatiously distance itself from more realistic modes of experience and representation. Though often engaged with very tangible historical realities, its general discourse is not so much characterized by faithful mimetic description as it is by creative fabulation – by the act of weaving language into unconventional textures.

The tale’s relatively short format only aids to heighten our awareness of its (sometimes intricate) architectural construction as a textual artifact – as Angela Carter once said: “The short story is not minimalist, it is rococo. I feel in absolute control. It is like writing chamber music rather than symphonies” (The Bloody Chamber, Vintage 2006, xix). It is exactly this kind of textual control which far exceeds the boundaries of more conventional mimesis that makes the fairy tale into a world of words, at least as much as of things. Not surprisingly then, authors have used this little world of words as a laboratory in which they could experiment with the art of literature, self-consciously explore its subjects, forms, aims and boundaries and comment on other literary forms and cultural debates (both in meaning and in form).

We welcome any proposals for papers regarding these ideas. Possible topics include:

• Theoretical and historical reflections on the literary discourse of the fairy tale genre
• The metaliterary use of fairy tales
• The programmatic paratextual framing of fairy tale collections
• Literary experimentation in fairy tales
• Fairy tales and the formation of national literatures
•The fairy tale’s response to and impact on developments within the larger literary field, e.g. its active participation in literary vanguards and movements, its shifting properties in globalized literature, its response to the introduction of new media

A three hundred word abstract and five line biography should be submitted to fairytale (a) ugent.be.

Abstract deadline: 1 March 2012

Notification of acceptance: April 2012

Organization:

Stijn Praet (°1986) is an FWO-funded doctoral researcher at Ghent University. He holds a BA in Latin and English, an MA in Comparative Modern Literature and a specialized MA in Literary Studies. He has recently published in Anti-Tales: The Uses of Disenchantment (Cambridge Scholars 2011) and is currently preparing his doctoral thesis on the Latin prehistory of the fairy tale genre. stijn.praet (a) ugent.be

Vanessa Joosen (°1977) is an FWO-funded postdoctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp. She is the author of Critical and Creative Perspectives on Fairy Tales (Wayne State UP 2011) and has published in a.o. Marvels and Tales, The Greenwood Companion to Fairy Tales and Children’s Literature in Education. vanessa.joosen (a) ua.ac.be

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American Folklore Society's Annual Meeting 2011

Tomorrow, August 31, is the last day to preregister for the American Folklore Society's Annual Meeting on October 12-15 in Bloomington Indiana. I am planning to attend it myself and hope to see some of you there.

Here are some of the panels that may be of most interest to SurLaLune readers from the current schedule:

Thursday, October 13, 8:00--10:00 AM
01-09
Fairy Tale Films and Realities: Four Views
Sponsored by the Folk Narrative Section
Oak
Pauline Greenhill, chair
Tracie Lukasiewicz (University of Miami), Neo-Magical Realism: A Study of
Reality and Fantasy in Pan's Labyrinth and Inception
Cristina Bacchilega (University of Hawai`i, Mānoa), Double Exposures:
Storytelling and Fairy-Tale Traumas
Pauline Greenhill (University of Winnipeg), "This is the North, Where We Do
What We Want”: Popular Green Criminology and the Red Riding Trilogy
Brian Ray (University of North Carolina, Greensboro), "I Can Recite, Therefore I
Am": Reinscriptions of Gender in Alice in Wonderland


01-10
War and Peace
Persimmon
Marilyn F. Motz, chair
Marilyn F. Motz (Bowling Green State University), Legends of Civil War
Insurgency in Western Missouri
Cherry P. Levin (Louisiana State University), “I Don't Care if the Yankees are
Coming! We Have a Wedding Dress to Make!”: Southern Women's Folklore and the
Changing Nature of Wedding Ritual during the American Civil War
Brittany Warman (George Mason University), Fairy Tales at War: Retelling Fairy
Tales as War Narratives in Young Adult Literature
Gary Hicks (Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library), Antonio Gramsci's Concept of
"Common Sense" as Applied to Issues of War and Peace


01-13
Narratives
Poplars
Phillip McArthur, chair
Theresa A. Vaughan (University of Central Oklahoma), Folklore and Medieval
Women's Sexuality: An Analysis of The Distaff Gospels
Julie Koehler (Wayne State University), If the Shoe Fits: A Search for Cinderella's
Oral Tradition
Phillip McArthur (Brigham Young University, Hawai`i), Narrative Battles in the
Post-Independent Marshall Islands State
John D. Galuska (Indiana University), Creative Process Narratives and
Individualized Workscapes in the Jamaican Dub Poetry Context


Thursday, October 13, 10:15 AM—12:15 PM
02-09
Fantasies of War: Cross-Dressing and Identity in the Fairy Tale
Sponsored by the Folk Narrative Section
Oak
Donald Haase (Wayne State University), chair
Christine A. Jones (University of Utah), G.I. Jeanne: Hero(in)ism and War in the
French Fairy Tale
Anne E. Duggan (Wayne State University), The Revolutionary Undoing of the
Maiden Warrior in Riyoko Ikeda's The Rose of Versailles and Jacques Demy's Lady
Oscar
Jennifer Schacker (University of Guelph), Slaying Blunderboer: Cross-Dressed
Heroes, National Identities and Wartime Pantomime


Friday, October 14, 1:30--3:30 PM
12-12
Fairy Animals, Demonic Beasts, and Fantastic Creatures in International
Tradition I
Walnut
Adam Grydehøj, chair
Jeremy Harte (Folklore Society, UK), Animals with Human Faces
Fumihiko Kobayashi (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), A Study of Japanese
Animal-Spouse Lore: Gender Favoritism in Japanese Narrative Traditions
Benjamin Radford (Center for Inquiry), The Chupacabra and Folklore
Mark Bender (The Ohio State University), Dragon Blood: Eco-Genealogy, Para-
Humans, and Animal Allies in a Nuosu Epic


Friday, October 14, 3:45—5:45 PM
13-04
Diamond Session: Digital and Computational Approaches to Folklore II
Georgian
Timothy R. Tangherlini (University of California, Los Angeles), chair
Jeana Jorgensen (Indiana University), A Quantitative Folkloristic Approach to
European Fairy Tales
Carrie Roy (University of Wisconsin), Narrative Knot: Threads in Stories and
Circles of Thought
Bandari Roja (University of California, Los Angeles), If a Protester Tweets in
Egypt and No One Retweets Her, Has She Tweeted?
Robert Glenn Howard (University of Wisconsin), VAX CON: A Computational
Approach to Online Rumor about Vaccines
Peter Leonard (University of California, Los Angeles), Modeling Folklore in the
Google Books Corpus


13-11
Fairy Animals, Demonic Beasts, and Fantastic Creatures in International
Tradition II
Sassafras
Fumihiko Kobayashi (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), chair
Adam Grydehøj (Island Dynamics), Protective Spirits or Fluffy Agents of Doom?:
The Role Transition of Phantom Sheep, Undead Dogs, and Church Pigs in Danish
Tradition
Noriko Reider (Miami University, Ohio), Earth Spider: "Tsuchigumo Sôshi" and a
Killer Female Spider
Amber Slaven (Western Kentucky University), Seal-Folk: Exploring Gender and
Family Constructions in Traditional Narratives and Popular Media
Thomas A. DuBois (University of Wisconsin, Madison), discussant


13-13
"Strange Things Happening in the Land”: Current Trends in Lomax Studies
Poplars
Todd D. Harvey, chair
Todd D. Harvey (American Folklife Center), Accessing the Alan Lomax Collection Nathan Salsburg (Association for Cultural Equity), “We of the Jets, the Wireless,and the Atom Blast": Cultural Equity in the Digital Age
Judith R. Cohen (York University), "Facebooking” the Village: A Decade of
Fieldwork Following Alan Lomax's Spanish Fieldwork
Miriam Phillips (University of Maryland), Resurrecting Beauty and the Beast:Choreometrics in the 21st Century


Saturday, October 15, 10:15 AM—12:15 PM
18-14
Beyond Provenance: Rethinking Literature in Folklore
Distinguished Alumni
Adam D. Zolkover, chair
Adam D. Zolkover (Indiana University), The Literary Lens: Books as Community
Foci
K. Elizabeth Spillman (University of Pennsylvania), The Genre Gap: Bridging
Fiction and Folktale
Linda J. Lee (University of Pennsylvania), Whose Cinderella? Tale Types as Emic
Markers in Popular Romance
David Elton Gay (Independent), Medieval Romance and Folklore Theory

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Conference in India: FOLK TALES AND AFTER: THEORY & PRAXIS IN STORYTELLING

Children’s Literature Association of India’s [CLAI] 5th International Conference

FOLK TALES AND AFTER: THEORY & PRAXIS IN STORYTELLING

Place: Pune, Venue : to be announced

Date: 25th to 27th November 2011.

“A folktale is a poetic text that carries some of its cultural contexts within it; it is also a travelling metaphor that finds a new meaning with every telling” – A.K. Ramanujan.

The above comment by one of the prominent folktale scholars of India embodies the essence of both theory and praxis of folktales and storytelling.
As literacy grew and the art of printing made books more accessible, storytelling began to die out. Worried that these folktales would fade from memory and disappear, collectors of folktales published them in books. Has the excessive presence of modern technological media almost eliminated the fashion of storytelling? Or viewed differently, are the hypnotic appeal of mass entertainment in television, music, video, films etc. just telling us stories in which we see ourselves, sometimes as we are, sometimes as we would like to be, sometimes as we hope we will never be? Then, as Julius Lester, the great African American children’s writer tells, “Story is who we are.” Folktales and After: Theory & Praxis in Storytelling is an academically worth mental exercise to explore into our own identity and it will be greatly exciting to be involved in this venture in the great central city of education in India, Pune, where cultural artefacts of east and west meet in a unique proportion and balance.

Traditionally, folktales taught the adults and children of a region how to live; it set a pattern for right living, directing almost a moral code of behaviour for a group of people. These tales were passed from one generation to the next and framed a set of rules for emulation. Today, the oral tradition has been replaced by mass media and children’s books have become the conservators of the oral tradition. Hence, the topic for the conference is a wide one that encompasses the total sphere of folktales, storytelling, and oral tradition, the whole gamut of tales and narration of children’s literature.

Folktales and storytelling are inseparable. This conference proposes to invite an international band of scholars in children’s literature to engage in various deliberations and themes associated with folktales and story telling. Discussions may be based on defining folktales, as folktales are often confused with fairy tales, myths, legends, fables, and other terms. Defining the realm of folktales in theory and praxis is essential to the critical evaluation of folktales study. Or, further explorations can be based on common characteristics of folktales. The themes of topics may vary as concerned with the setting, characters, plot, presence of animals, presence of tricksters, etc. in folktales. Another perspective may direct scholars to present papers on the structural aspects of folktales, especially on the Mnemonic devices used in folktales such as stock or set openings and closings in the narration of folktales, various formula and set descriptions in narration, etc.

Indian scholars, we suggest, may, perhaps, make a theoretical as well as performing effects of folktales narrated from different regions of the country and represent in papers topics such as themes, motifs, narrative structures peculiar to the folktales of the subcontinent. Or, for the more serious scholars, we propose a postcolonial study of folktales! British colonial officials, writers, missionaries, and their helpers collected a number of Indian folktales during colonization. Rich in local cultural details, these collections of tales contain elaborate prefaces and explanatory notes that often reveal how these colonial collectors of folktales delineated the other and dwelt with subjectivity while themselves experiencing shifting subaltern positions.

Other scholars can be more incisive in their criticism of folktales as for example by interrogating the presence of outmoded values of an earlier time preserved in ancient folktales or even by probing into their suitability as literature for children today. You may even go to the extend of breaking all norms of submissiveness questioning certain tales that might be communicating attitudes we no longer consider appropriate for children.

For the more serene scholars, we also put forward topics more child-centred like folktales and their contemporary impact on children, or characteristics of oral literature for children as exposed in certain examples of folktales of your choice.

We promise it to be an exciting experience in Pune – a unique instance of academic collaboration in children’s literature with Bhaasha, an NGO actively working for children. The local organizers of the conference in Pune require immediate email messages of confirmation in participation. Please send a message to Ms. Swati J. Raje as early as possible.

The abstracts of your paper presentations as word attached file in Times New Roman 12 point font, with double spacing, and the words limited to a maximum of 250. The abstract should reach Children’s Literature Association of India in the email address antoct@yahoo.co.in on or before 30 August 2011.


For further details of the conference venue and other requirements including accommodation and local hospitality, please contact:

Ms. Swati J Raje, Children’s Writer, Pune, India.

Phone: 91-9822401876

Mail to: swatijraje@hotmail.com

swatijraje@gmail.com

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“Grimm Legacies,” February 3 & 4, 2012 at Harvard University



Here's the first conference/symposium devoted to the Grimms being held in the U.S. next year that I know about. I've already posted about three in Europe, specifically in Germany, England and Portugal.

The site for the Harvard symposium is a little design challenged at the moment, making it nearly impossible to read half of the text, but here's what I have been able to copy and paste here. The deadline for papers is October 1, 2011. Maria Tatar and Holly Hutchison are organizing.

“Grimm Legacies”

February 3 & 4, 2012

Thompson Room, Barker Center, Harvard University

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the publication of the tales collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the Program in Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University will host a symposium to be held on February 3 and 4, 2012.

“Grimm Legacies” takes as its premise a line (“pasted on for eternity”) from Anne Sexton’s poem “Cinderella” and adds a question mark to the phrase to interrogate the seemingly timeless and universal hold of the cultural stories collected by the Brothers Grimm. Jack Zipes, Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota, will deliver the keynote address.

Panel discussions will cover a range of topics:


• Fairy Tales and Antiquity

• Migrations into New Media

• Copyright, Translation, and Transculturation

• Beasts and Steeping Beauties

• Violence, Excess, and the Dark Side

To inquire about submitting paper proposals. please contact Folklore & Mythology chair Maria Tatar and administrator Holly Hutchison. The deadline for proposals will be October 1, 2011.

(I'm not including hot email links which are on the symposium site to spare their email spam filters...)

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Children's Literature Symposium, February 3-4, 2012

Children's Literature Symposium, February 3-4, 2012 in Florida will be of interest to many readers here since fairy tales are included in the theme and call for papers. The call doesn't have a due date so perhaps it has already passed. I didn't see one on the website at childrensliteraturesymposium.org. It's a somewhat clunky site set up in Flash so it will have difficulty on some iPads and such and will take a bit to load for others of you, so I am sharing the pertinent information below, too:

Call for Papers

"The Same Text but Different: Variants in Children’s Media"

Children's Literature Symposium, February 3-4, 2012

This year, the CLS Steering and Planning Committees invite proposals from scholars, critics, researchers, librarians, educators, children's book authors and illustrators, and graduate students for presentations that address the topic of “variants” in children’s and young adult literature: books with plots built upon folklore or other previously written tales. Interest in variants is hardly new, and ultimately, all texts build upon one another. However, recent increases in the publication of picturebooks, novels, and releases of other media (such as film and video games) with plots or structures that draw on folklore (e.g., Gidwitz’s [2010] A Tale Dark and Grimm, Weston’s [2010] Dust City), the work of authors like William Shakespeare (e.g., Dionne’s [2010] The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet, Stone’s [2011] The Romeo and Juliet Code, Ray’s [2011] Falling for Hamlet), Henry James (e.g., Griffin’s [2011] Tighter), or Jules Verne (e.g., Blackwood’s [2010] “sort of sequel,” Around the World in 100 Days), or composers like Vivaldi (e.g., Zalben’s [2011] Four Seasons: A Novel in Four Movements) suggest a renewed cultural fascination with texts that “play” with other texts. In addition, single texts have been adapted across media: Neil Gaiman’s Coraline (2002), for example, has been released as both a 2009 feature film and as a 2008 graphic novel (adapted and illustrated by P. Craig Russell).

Through this year’s symposium, we seek to further discussions and enrich understandings of both historical and contemporary children’s and young adult literature and media that lean on, contradict, or extend other texts—privileging some at the expense of others. Potential topics include (but are not limited to):

•Literary lore, fractured fairy tales, and the authorial use (and/or abuse) of folklore
•Cultural literacy and cultural capital
•Reinscribing and disrupting media Canons
•Shifting audiences: retellings or the appropriation of children’s texts for adults (or “adult” texts being retold or appropriated by/for children)
•Variants as/in translation
•Fanfiction, slash fiction, and other reader-created retellings
•Re-writing of “mainstream” texts by traditionally marginalized populations (i.e., people of color, queer sexualities)
•Theories of variation in narrative and poetic structures (generally—and in texts for young people explicitly)

We invite 250-500 word abstracts for both individual paper presentations or virtual papers. While all proposals will be considered, preference will be given to those which focus on most clearly on the conference theme.

About the CLS:

Established in 2007, the Children's Literature Symposium at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee is an annual conference sponsored by the College of Education. Children's Literature Symposium conferences center on issues related to the study of children’s and young adult literature. The overarching goal of these symposia is to critically explore genres of children’s and young adult literature through scholarship, research, and criticism. As opposed to focusing on the pedagogical uses of children's texts, the Children's Literature Symposium treats "children's literature" and "young adult literature" as genres, as opposed to indicators of readership. By bringing together scholars, critics, and researchers in literary analysis, education, and library and information sciences, the Children's Literature Symposium seeks to engage participants in critical discussions about children's and young adult literature.

Each year, the Children's Literature Symposium provides a program through which participants engage with critical and theoretical perspectives on children’s and young adult literature through presentations that address contemporary issues and trends that affect children’s and young adult literature, media, and culture. With a primary audience of professionals in English, education, library/media science (as well as community members and others with an interest in this body of literature), the Children's Literature Symposium aims to engage participants in scholarly discussions about children’s and young adult literature.

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Grimm in Lisbon 2012 Conference (Grimm and You in Lisbon 2012)

So far, I know of three conferences dedicated to the 2012 Grimm Bicentennial. I posted about the one at Kingston University in London yesterday. I will post about the other two today including one in Kassel, Germany. This post is for the Grimm in Lisbon 2012 Conference scheduled for June 2012 in Lisbon (obviously).

Here is the call for papers which are due by September 4, 2011:

The Grimm Brothers Today

Kinder- und Hausmärchen and Its Legacy, 200 Years After

Since 1812 the Grimm Brothers’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen (KHM), translated in dozens of languages and read by children and adults everywhere, became the quintessential book of fairy tales. It also provided an enduring, if controversial, paradigm for folktale studies. As the bicentenary of the publication of KHM approaches, we invite scholars to appraise its significance today. We call for papers on all aspects of the Grimms’ tales and their legacy, from a number of distinct perspectives. The symposium comprises the following panels:

Brothers Grimm and their European contemporaries (convened by Sadhana Naithani, Associate Professor, Centre of German Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi);

Fairy tale and genre in a post-Grimm era (convened by Donald Haase, Associate Dean and Professor of German, Wayne State University, Detroit);

Filmic adaptations of the Grimm fairy tales (convened by Jack Zipes, Professor Emeritus of German and Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota);

KHM at the intersection of learned tradition and popular literature, art and folk narrative (convened by Christine Shojaei Kawan, Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen and Arbeitsstelle Enzyklopädie des Märchens);

Metamorphosis as metaphor: Transformative magic in the Grimms' KHM (convened by Maria Tatar, John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University);

Who owns the fairy tales? Heritage, copyright, and the Grimm legacy (convened by Valdimar Hafstein, Associate Professor of Folkloristics, University of Iceland).

Other panel proposals are welcome. The deadline for panel and paper submissions is September 4, 2011. The acceptance of submissions will be announced by October 31, 2011. We expect to send out a second circular, containing an outline of the program and further details, by December 15, 2011. The meeting will take place in June 21–23, 2012.

For instructions on submissions, check here.

Looking forward to seeing you in Lisbon!

Francisco Vaz da Silva
Organizing Committee

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Brüder Grimm Kongress 2012

Brüder Grimm Kongress 2012 is another conference dedicated to the Grimms' Bicentennial next year.  It is scheduled for December 2012 in Kassel, Germany. (Brrr... It'll be cold!) Most of the conference site is in German but the call for papers is in English and I will share it below. Note that the dates are given in European form, not U.S. with day/month/year.

Fairy tales, Myths and Modernity – 200 years of Brother Grimm’s Children’s and Household tales” Kassel, 17.12. - 20.12.2012.

Conference organizers: Prof. Dr. Claudia Brinker-von der Heyde, Universität Kassel, FB 02 Geistes- und Kulturwissenschaften (Institut für Germanistik) / Dr. Holger Ehrhardt (Universität Kassel, FB 02 Geistes- und Kulturwissenschaften (Institut für Germanistik)/ Prof. Dr. Hans-Heino Ewers, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, FB 10 Neuere Philologien (Institut für Jugendbuchforschung)

Deadline for submission of proposals and abstracts: 14.11.2011

20th December 2012 marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of the Brother Grimm’s first volume of their Kinder- and Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Tales). This work is imbued with the spirit of Romanticism. It probably represents the most famous collection of early nineteenth-century fairytales throughout the world and has proved to be one of the most frequently translated works of German literature. The Hessian cities of Hanau, Steinau, Kassel, and Marburg are the places where the Grimm Brothers were born and raised, where they received their education, where they studied and started their careers. In this region the Kinder- and Hausmärchen were collected and recorded.

Besides the general success of their fairytale collection, the Brothers Grimm played a leading role in many other areas: in Germany as well as abroad their mode of collecting fairytales, sagas, anecdotes, legends, and animal epics set a standard. They were emulated and celebrated as discoverers and editors of literary as well as legal sources and monuments of the past, as researchers of myths and dialects, as historians of languages, and as dictionary compilers.

The old narrative material, the myths, and sagas of heroes of archaic cultures and earlier times exerts a remarkable fascination even today on writers of fantasy and fiction novels. The Brothers Grimm tackled the question of how to treat old and most ancient narrative material. They maintained points of view that are still controversially discussed today.

The 200th anniversary of the first volume of Kinder- and Hausmärchen is to be celebrated with an international conference under the provisional title “Fairytales, Myths, Modern Age” to be held in Kassel from 17 to 20 December 2012. Researchers and colleagues from all over the world are cordially invited to the place where the Brothers Grimm spent more than thirty years of their lives. In Kassel they collected not only fairytales and sagas, but also started work on their famous dictionary.

Papers on the following topics are now called for:

Historical Philosophy of Romanticism and the Discovery of Vernacular Literature: Ethnic and Folkloric Studies and Modern Age
The Brothers Grimm and the Middle Ages: Imagination, Projections, and Reconstructions
The Brothers Grimm, Romanticism, and the Vormärz
The Brothers Grimm and the Origins of (National) Philology: Language and National Identity
The Brothers Grimm and the Beginnings of National Research on Myths
The Writing of Fairytales in Europe from the 16th to the 18th Centuries and the Assessment According to the Brothers Grimm
Kinder- und Hausmärchen: Ideological Premises, Sources, Contributors, Principles of Treatment, History of Editions, and Reviews
International Reception of the Kinder- and Hausmärchen: Translations, Adaptations, Arrangements, and Revisions
Fairytales and childhood: educational concepts
The Collection of Fairytales and Sagas of the Brothers Grimm as Prototype and Example for Similar Projects in other Cultures and Countries
Fairytales as Reading for Adults and Children
History of (International) Illustrations of Fairytales, Picture books of Fairytales, Fairytales in Comics and Mangas
Narrating Fairytales – Live and Recorded
Adaptations of Fairytales I: Fairytale Plays, Fairytale Dramas, Fairytale Operas, Fairytale Movies and Television Productions
Fairytales and Psychoanalysis
Work and Impact of the Brothers Grimm: national and international


Contacts:

Universität Kassel, FB 02 Geistes-und Kulturwissenschaften IfG

Frau Katharina Becker, Kurt-Wolters-Straße 5, 34125 Kassel,

E-mail: Grimm2012(at)uni-kassel.de

Homepage: www.grimm2012.uni-kassel.de

The conference at the University of Kassel will give researchers from all over the world a platform to discuss these topics and to reflect on new perspectives on the Brothers Grimm and their work.

We welcome proposals for 30 minute papers (700 words) with a short biography and current contact details. Please send them by email to grimm2012(at)uni-kassel.de in the form of a MS-word document. The deadline for the submission of all proposals is 14 November 2011.

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Call for Papers: Grimm Bicentenary Conference 2012

I received this call for papers for a Grimm Bicentenary Conference 2012 from Dr Andrew Teverson. Oh, I really, really want to attend this one myself....

A Grimm Legacy:

The Impact of Grimms’ Tales in the English-Speaking World

6th – 8th September 2012

Call for Papers

2012 is the bicentenary of the publication of the first volume of the Kinder- und Hausmärchen by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. To mark this occasion, the Department of English Literature and Creative Writing at Kingston University (U.K.) is planning a series of open lectures and a conference assessing the impact of the Grimms’ collection upon literature and culture in the English speaking world. Proposals for conference papers are invited on the following subjects:

- Translations of Grimms’ tales into English
- The influence of Grimm upon British collectors of fairy tales
- The impact of Grimms’ tales upon world literatures in English
- Uses of Grimms’ tales in English-language visual media
- Uses of Grimms’ tales in English-language performing arts
- Grimms’ tales and British Romanticism
- Grimms’ tales in Victorian Britain
- Grimms’ tales in colonial and post-colonial contexts
- Illustrations and art works relating to Grimms’ tales
- Grimms’ tales in the electronic age

This will be a multi-disciplinary conference, and contributions from any disciplinary perspective will be welcome. We also welcome proposals to read creative work, screen films, mount performances and exhibit visual work.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers: Professor Donald Haase (Wayne State University) and Neil Philip (Author and Independent Scholar).

Abstract submission
Please submit an abstract of approximately 300 words, and a brief contributor’s bio online at:
www.kingston.ac.uk/activities/conferences/abstracts/

Deadline: January 31st 2012.
Enquiries: Dr Andrew Teverson, e: fass-conferences@kingston.ac.uk

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Cinderella Ph.D.

From University offering crash course in 'Cinderella' by Becky Wright:

Weber State University is offering a Cinderella Ph.D. course. It's not a comprehensive program teaching the arts of fireplace cleaning, the language of mice, and ballroom dancing. It's a deeper look at a fairy tale that crosses time and culture.

"Cinderella Ph.D." is one of the sessions at this year's Weber State University Storytelling Festival. The crash course is at 1:30 p.m. Thursday in the Hetzel-Hoellein Room of the Stewart Library, on WSU's Ogden campus at 3848 Harrison Blvd. Admission is free.
The four doctorate holders conducting the class are Jean Andra Miller, who retired from WSU as a professor of French studies, and professors Kathleen Herndon, Eric Amsel and Rosemary Conover.

"It's not just a superficial story for children," said Herndon, chairwoman of WSU's English department, about the story of Cinderella. "It does seem to have some interesting insights about human nature, and the steps and stages we go through in a lifetime."

There are more than 1,500 versions of the story from around the world. Herndon herself has a collection of about 30 Cinderella tales set in different places and times.

And more:

The overall story has universal themes and symbols, Conover says, and each culture puts its own stamp on the tale.

Footwear is one of the symbols in almost every version -- which she suggests may be related to the theme of social mobility. The shoe material is glass in some versions, and gold or leather in others.

"These details offer intriguing little insights into the cultures that spawned those versions," said Conover, from the university's anthropology department.

The slipper is glass in the French version.

"I think by that time the French had perfected glassmaking, and understood its special, malleable consistencies," Conover said, noting that glass can be shaped, then hardens. "It had to not bend to any other foot but the one it was made for. ... It became something only one person could possibly fit into."

Fairy godmothers

Amsel, a psychology professor, looks at the story as a tale of adolescence.

"I think the point of the story is transformation of a child to an adult," he said. "It's the story of an adolescent girl in a dysfunctional relationship with her family, who experiences the blossoming of love and passion, and I'm afraid that isn't an unusual situation for adolescents."

Teens struggle with new roles and relationships as they try to find their place in adult society. That can lead to fights with parents, including stepparents.

"It's very easy to get caught up in sort of seeing an adolescent as an adversary, as a parent," said Amsel, "It helps if you understand that the fights you're having over rooms, clothes, and this and that, is really a negotiation of when someone earns the right ... to make their own decisions."

Anyway, a good article and an interesting event. To learn more about the festival itself, go to ‘Williams Tell’ Annual Storytelling Festival.

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Fairy Tales Re-imagined Symposium in Australia

A Fairy Tales Re-imagined Symposium presented by ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image) will be taking place in March in Australia, alas. I don't think I will make it to this one as intriguing as it sounds. Although I would LOVE to attend...

I'm copying the entire information page but won't block text it this time since it will be longer than usual and I don't think anyone wants to read all of it italicized. So the rest of this post is a quote:

From Werewolf to Forbidden Room


This two-day symposium will explore how traditional fairy tales are being reworked by visual artists, filmmakers and popular culture.

Join cultural commentators, psychologists and artists as they explore why fairy stories continue to enchant, entertain, fascinate and horrify adult audiences.


Thursday 10 March 2011

9-9.30am > Registration

9.30 - 10.45am > Re-enchantment: The hidden world of fairy tales for adults

Join writer/director Sarah Gibson and producer Sue Maslin for a look at Re-enchantment, an interactive multi-platform documentary project exploring the world of fairy tales. Delivered via the internet, television and radio, it combines rich content with animation for an immersive and community-building experience.


11am - 1pm > Woman and Wolf

A fairy tale over 700 hundred years old, Red Riding Hood has been reworked and re-told countless times. This panel will explore the themes and interpretations of this classic story and how it has evolved to reflect ideas about women through the ages.

Panelists:

Dr Kimberley Pearce - Girl Meets Beast: the Power of the Pelt

Jazmina Cininas - The Girlie Werewolf

Professor Barbara Creed - The Eroticism of Being Devoured

Chaired by Dr Terrie Waddell


2pm - 4pm > If the Shoe Fits: Interpreting Cinderella

Fairy tales aren't what they used to be, with modern stories rejecting the passive, conventional heroines of old. With the characters and stories changing, what does that mean for the fairytale ending and the quintessential Cinderella dream?

Panelists:

Dr Meredith Jones - The Princess and Makeover Culture

Sarah Gibson - Psychological Interpretations of Cinderella

Professor Peter McNeil - Sex, Shoes, and Cinderella

Chaired by Dr Esther Milne



Friday 11 March 2011

9.30am - 10.45am > Old Tales, New Platforms: The Creation of Re-enchantment

Join the creators of Re-enchantment, writer/director Sarah Gibson, producer Sue Maslin, and digital animator Rose Draper, along with chair Professor Norie Neumark, for a behind-the-scenes presentation of how this beautiful and complex production came together.


11am - 1pm > Working Creatively with Fairy Tales

Fairy tales have existed beyond books for generations; permeating mainstream and popular culture through film and TV, sold to us in products, and reflected in our social values. This panel will look at the recurring symbols of fairy tales and the ways we recognise and read these motifs.

Panelists:

Joy Norton - Symbols in Fairy Tales

Adam Hunt - Fairy Tale Motifs in Advertising

Dr Meredith Jones - The Symbol of Hair: The Hair Project

Chaired by Dr Constance Verevis


2pm - 4pm > The Forbidden Room: From Bluebeard to CSI

The story of Bluebeard and its themes of a forbidden room continue to appear in literature and other forms of art. This panel will discuss contemporary treatments of this darker fairy tale theme.

Panelists:

Cathy Cole - Death as Entertainment

Dr Terrie Waddell - The Forbidden Room in Cinema Narratives

Chaired by Dr Rebecca-Anne Do Rozario


Breaking news! Jeff Lindsay, creator of America's most-read, most-watched and most-beloved serial killer, Dexter Morgan, will be joining the panel of "The Forbidden Room."


Admission Two days: Full $40 Concession $30

Single day: Full $25 Concession $20

Free group bookings for tertiary students and lecturers

For bookings call (03) 8663 2583 or email fairytalesreimagined@acmi.net.au

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Call For Papers: Myths and Fairy Tales in Film and Literature post-1900

  

A two-day international conference hosted by the Film and Literature Programme of the University of York's Department of English and Related Literature in association with The Centre for Modern Studies

Myths and Fairy Tales in Film and Literature post-1900

24th-25th March 2011

CALL FOR PAPERS

This forthcoming conference invites renewed reflection on fundamental, inherited tales as these have found self-reinventing expression in film and literature post-1900. It seeks to interrogate the dramatic, poetic and visual character of culturally core stories (fairy/mythic/classical/religious/Shakespearean etc), the formal operations and cultural force of their variant tellings (and showings) across media and moment, and the ways in which their psychological, social, political and aesthetic functions have been interpreted and employed.

Abstracts are solicited for individual 20-minute papers on the theme of the conference (interpreted in literary or film terms, or both). Proposals of pre-constituted panels (composed of two or three 20-minute papers) are also welcome.

Questions informing case studies might include (without being limited to):

- Why do some stories endure across multiple retellings while others fall into neglect?

- What primal impulses are encoded, fears expressed or defused and/or desires satisfied in those that resurface repeatedly in altered guises?

- Which narrative elements and characters have proved largely stable across time and place, apparently immune to cultural disruption, and which have been gently or radically adjusted in response to other cultural-historical forces?

- How have particular post-1900 literary and screen engagements with culturally embedded stories appropriated, revivified and disseminated those inherited tales in distinctive and/or culturally illuminating ways?

- How have the behavioural models promoted, social imperatives implied, modes of telling adopted and artistic allegiances embraced in the ongoing lives of particular tales been revised over time to fit new circumstances, new audiences and new media?

- How have theories of transmission, narrative endurance and narrative change accounted for the culturally revealing reinventions of various fundamental story pools?

- Which theories of narrative transmission, inter-medial adaptation and/or inter-textuality can illuminate the ongoing life of a story most tellingly? (And, perhaps, which have proved interpretively diversionary or limiting?)

Panels have thus far been suggested on the following themes: classical subjects, scriptural/religious subjects, Shakespearean subjects, fairy tales for children, fairy tales for adults, the transculturing of inherited myths. Contributors are welcome to submit with these proposed panels in mind, or in any other area in line with the theme of the conference.

Abstracts of not more than 250 words should be submitted, not by attachment but within the body of the email, to: film-and-literature@events.york.ac.uk

Deadline for receipt of abstracts: Tuesday 21st December 2010.

A brief personal biog-sketch (not more than 100 words) including institutional affiliation, current appointment/stage of study, principal publication(s) (where applicable) and main research interests, should be included in the same email. All submissions will be responded to, and all contributors notified, by Tuesday 11th January 2011. Registration details to follow.

Conference chair: Judith Buchanan (judith.buchanan@york.ac.uk)

  

   

 

Conference learned about via The Fairy Tale Cupboard....

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