GIFCon 2018 will take place over two days at the main campus of the University of Glasgow.
The main venue is the Interfaith Chapel and discussion panels will take place in selected rooms at the University Gardens.
Although the event has sold out, you may join the waitlist to take advantage of any last minute cancellations!
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: 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
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: 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
17:45 – 18:45 (University Gardens 4, room 203): Closing statements
