GIFCon 2018 will take place over two days at the main campus of the University of Glasgow.

The main venue is the Interfaith Chapel (“University Chapel” on Google Maps): From the main gate on University Avenue walk towards the main building, turn right to reach Professors’ Square and then turn left.

Discussion panels will take place in selected rooms at the University Gardens.

Thursday 26 April 2018

9:00 – 9:45 (Chapel): Registration & Coffee

9:45 – 10:00 (Chapel): Opening and welcome

10:00 – 11:00 (Chapel): Keynote by Dr Dimitra Fimi: In the blood and in the landscape: escaping (into) the “Celtic” past in contemporary children’s fantasy

11:00 – 12:00 (Chapel): Keynote by Dr Will Slocombe: There is No Escape from Here (Wherever Here Is): Fantasies of Control in Fictions of Artificial Intelligence

12:00 – 13:00 (Chapel): Lunch

13:15 – 14:30 (University Gardens 4, room 202)
Panel 1: Pictures are worth a thousand words: Illustrations, visual interpretations, and costume

13:15: Rachael Grew: The fantastical costumes of Leonor Fini

13:35: Gill Sampson: Exploring the role of Illustration in picture books at the intersection between fantasy, imagination and meaning

13:55: Alexandra Gushurst-Moore: Escape to the country: examining the role of natural imagery in late nineteenth century British fantasy art

14:15: Discussion

13:15 – 14:30 (University Gardens 5, room 101)
Panel 2: Fear, fantasy, and fairy tales

13:15: Laura Martin: Experiencing the Fairy Tale in Therapeutic Practice: “The Golden Bird” by the Brothers Grimm

13:35: Gabrielle Cohen: The instability of knowledge: Three types of fear in the works of H.P. Lovecraft

13:55: Oliver Rendle: The Cthulhu Mythos: Lovecraft’s Diseased Fancy

14:15: Discussion

13:15 – 14:30 (University Gardens 5, room 205)
Panel 3: Breaking the rules: Justice, law, and the power of disobedience

13:15: Karen Gardiner: Escaping Justice in Wonderland

13:35: Prabhash Yadav: The Price of Dreaming: choice, protest and “fantastic” disobedience in Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth

13:55: Thomas Moules: Escapism as a Weapon: An Exploration of N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy

14:15: Discussion

14:30 – 14:50 (University Gardens 4, room 203): Coffee Break

15:00 – 16:15 (University Gardens 4, room 202)
Panel 4: Abandoning the Analogue: Digital and Virtual Realities

15:00: Anna Mackenzie & Patricia Flores: Locating the secondary world of Harry Potter within the primary landscape: A new Digital Humanities approach

15:20: Monica Vazquez: Virtual Reality and the rules of immersion: the non-place that I call home

15:40: Ana Gabriela Méndez Gutiérrez: Digital Characters

16:00: Discussion

15:00 – 16:15 (University Gardens 5, room 101)
Panel 5: The Shape of Suffering: Monsters and Escapism

15:00: Zoe Wible: Creature design: The structure of empathy in fantasy and sci-fi films

15:20: Elena Pasquini: Monsters: Patron Saints of Children

15:40: Callie Coogle: Chasing your Demons: How Fantasy is Filling the Spiritual Void and Becoming the New Religion

16:00: Discussion

15:00 – 16:15 (University Gardens 5, room 202)
Panel 6: Escape or Confrontation? Realities and how (not) to face them

15:00: Laurie Beckoff: Sword Versus Sorcery: The Medieval(ist) Juxtaposition of Magic and Might in Harry Potter

15:20: Colin Gibson: Race and Fugitive Freedom in N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy

15:40: Allan Rae: “The Impossible Is True”: Fantasy as Emancipatory Theory in the Work of China Miéville

16:00: Discussion

16:15 – 16:40 (University Gardens 4, room 203): Coffee Break

16:45 – 18:00 (University Gardens 4, room 202)
Panel 7: Out of the Books: Metafiction Against Escapism

16:45: Marita Arvaniti: Near, Far, Wherever She’s Not: Gendered Escapism through Metatextual Faerie

17:05: Beatrice Kunkel: “What’s real, what’s not real and what’s the difference”: Pratchett’s Fantastic Metafiction and the Möbius-Strip of Reality and Fantasy

17:25: Akylina Printziou: The Chimera of Escape: Entrapment and the Fantastic in Abe Kōbō’s The Woman in the Dunes and Karagatsis M.’s The Lost Island

17:45: Discussion

16:45 – 18:00 (University Gardens 5, room 101)
Panel 8: There be dragons: maps, architecture and worldbuilding in fantasy

16:45: Siddharth Pandey: Distant Estrangement or Deep Engagement?: Countering Fantastical Escapism through Materialist Making in British Fantasy

17:05: Chris Lynch: Off the Map: Spatial Revolution in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld

17:25: Lena Abraham: Poetics of Pending in F. Hernández’s “The Balcony”

17:45: Discussion

16:45 – 18:00 (University Gardens 5, room 205)
Panel 9: The Legacies of the Professor

16:45: Anna Milon: The Inescapable: does the author’s personal experience dictate the fantasy narrative?

17:05: David Selfe: An Apostrophe to Escapism: Linguistic Realities in Imaginary Worlds

17:25: Felix Taylor: ‘No longer glades of silent turf’: J.R.R. Tolkien, Algernon Blackwood, and the ill will of the wood

17:45: Discussion

19:00: The event dinner will take place at Curler’s Rest on 256 Byres Road.

Friday 27 April 2018

8:30 – 10:00 (University Gardens 4, room 202)
Workshop 1: Oliver Langmead and Ruth EJ Booth: Discovering New Worlds Through Writing

8.30 – 10:00 (University Gardens 5, room 101)
Workshop 2: Elaine Gallagher: Writing for Escape

8.30 – 10:00 (University Gardens 5, room 205)
Workshop 3: Angie Spoto: Writing Our Fears

10:15 – 11:30 (University Gardens 4, room 202)
Panel 10: Mirrored Portals and Distorted Idols

10:15: Bettina Juszak: The Hopeful Cynicism of the Discworld: Fantasy as a Focusing Mirror of Reality

10:35: Sonia García de Alba Lobeira: Through the looking glass: Worlds within worlds in Michael Ende and Lewis Carroll

10:55: Laura Poladian: Fantasies of Portal Escapes: Inter-dimensional Experiences of the Mundane in the Magicians Trilogy and Rick and Morty

11:15: Discussion

10:15 – 11:30 (University Gardens 5, room 101)
Panel 11: Escape in Japan

10:15: Hanna Greenblott: Broomsticks and Bathhouses: Modes of Connection in Hayao Miyazaki’s Kiki’s Delivery Service and Spirited Away

10:35: Miguel Cesar: Death, Loss and the Fantastic in Japanese Contemporary Media

10:55: Ruth Booth: Growing-up in the Time of No-Face: Escapism, Illusion, and Identity in Spirited Away

11:15: Discussion

10:15 – 11:30 (University Gardens 5, room 205)
Panel 12: When Fantasy is not Enough

10:15: Jessica Seymour: “… a fanciful, but sensible thing. Like a platypus”: The Limitations of Magic in the Raven Cycle

10:35: Philippa Semper: ‘Tales of Peace…Cities too Good to be True’: Fantasy and Escapism in the Wonder Tales of Lord Dunsany

10:55: Discussion

11:30 – 11:45 (Chapel): Coffee Break

11:45 – 12:45 (Chapel): Keynote by Tex Thompson: Once Upon a Time in the West: Fantasy and Identity on the Fictional Frontier

12:45 – 13:30 (Chapel): Lunch

13:30 – 14:30 (Chapel): Keynote by Professor Alice Jenkins: Getting away from it all: prediction, induction, and reading fantasy

14:45 – 16:00 (University Gardens 4, room 202)
Panel 13: Fantasies Against the War

14:45: Mohammed Sibahi: Quo Vadis? The Carnivals: No-Man’s Land and Entombment

15:05: Siobhán Morrissey: Escaping into War: The Fantasy Works of Enid Blyton

15:25: Danielle Simard: Pan’s Labyrinth and the Mythopoeic Voice

15:45: Discussion

14:45 – 16:00 (University Gardens 5, room 101)
Panel 14: Crossing screens: TV, film, and games

14:45: Justine Houyaux: Fantastic Feasts: Reflexions on two famous intersemiotic transpositions of the Mad Tea-Party in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

15:05: Alix Beaumont: Escaping from Myth into Fantasy, and from Fantasy to Myth: How the blurring of mythology with the conventions of fantasy allows world-building and engagement in God of War

15:25: Katarina O’Dette: Hanging Lampshades on Emotional Vampires: The Anti-Escapist Use of Emotional Realism and ‘Lampshading’ in Fantasy Television

15:45: Discussion

14:45 – 16:00 (University Gardens 5, room 205)
Panel 15: Category-Breaking Escapes

14:45: Mark Williams: Teaching Escapism and Confrontation in British Culture since 1980: Reflections on a Cultural Studies Course

15:05: Meghanne Flynn: Fantasies of Escape: Feminism and the Modern Romance Novel

15:25: Elaine Gallagher: Escaping Straitjackets of Identity: Representation of Gender Variance in Science Fiction and Fantasy

15:45: Discussion

16:00 – 16:15 (University Gardens 4, 203): Coffee Break

16:15– 17:30 (University Gardens 4, room 202)
Panel 16: A changing philosophy: Redefining colonialist approaches to Fantasy

16:15: Kim Wickham: “I paint a picture”: Postcolonial Fantasy and The Magical Woman

16:35: Gabriela Silva: The Sword and the Cross: Reading and Colonisation in Diana Wynne Jones’s Dark Lord of Derkholm

16:55: Taylor Driggers: Escaping (into) the Past?: Nostalgia and Radical Theological Imagination in Star Wars: The Last Jedi

17:15: Discussion

16:15– 17:30 (University Gardens 5, room 101)
Panel 17: Women and Witches

16:15: Sarah Tytler: Exeunt Stage Left, Pursued by the Patriarchy: Young Women Protagonists in Portal-Quest Fantasies

16:35: Lucinda Holdsworth: “Weak as Women’s Magic”: The Domesticity of Women’s Magic

16:55: Anna Köhler: Wayward Women as Wicked Witches: Negotiating Gender Roles Through Fantasy

17:15: Discussion

16:15 – 17:30 (University Gardens 5, room 205)
Panel 18: The Power of Words: Podcasts, Games and the Languages of the fantastic

16:15: Maayan Priel: Adventures Away from the Table: Social Escapism in Actual Play Podcasts

16:35: Kira Apple: Stories that Resonate: Sympathy and other Transformative Affects in Fantasy Fiction Podcasts

16:55: Alicia Copeland & Natalie Finlayson: Words as our most inexhaustible source of magic: exploring the language of the fantastic through corpus linguistics

17:15: Discussion

17:45 – 18:45 (University Gardens 4, room 202): Closing statements & wine reception