Cannibals Conference Programme

Cannibals: Cannibalism, Consumption and Culture
Kanaris Lecture Theatre and Conference Room
Manchester Museum, Oxford Road,
Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom
(Venue Information)

Thursday 25th April – Friday 26th April 2013

Registration Now Closed
Deadline for registration is 10th April 2013, both registration options include lunch and refreshments on both days. Please note as we are not in receipt of any funding it is not possible for us to offer a subsidised rate for post-graduate students at this time.

The conference is preceded by Twisted Tales of Cannibalism on 24th April.

Conference Programme

Thursday 25th April

9.15-9.45am: Registration 

9.45-10.00am: Welcome and Opening Remarks (Kanaris Lecture Theatre) 

10.00-11.30am: Session 1: Cultural/Cannibal Encounters (Kanaris Lecture Theatre)
Chair: Carys Crossen 

(i) Sarah-Louise Flowers (University of Manchester): Consuming Local Tradition: How Outsiders Have Left the Amazon’s Dead Cold and Lonely

(ii) Ruth (Meg) Oldman (Indiana University of Pennsylvania): Preying Upon Blood: Depictions of Catholics in Early Modern Literature

(iii) Michelle Green (University of Nottingham): The Wendigo Cannibal and the ‘Myth’ of Diabetes in Native American Groups

11.30-12.00am: Coffee

12.00-1.30pm: Parallel Sessions

Session 2a: Theorizing Cannibal Culture (Kanaris Lecture Theatre)
Chair: Sarah-Louise Flowers

(i) Sandra Bowdler (University of Western Australia): ‘Cannibalism is Bad’

(ii) Matthias Stephan (Aarhus University, Denmark): How Other is the Cannibal? – Ontological Blurring in SF Cannibal Scenes

(iii) Suzanne Stuart (Independent Scholar): A Very Particular ‘Consumer Culture’: Theorising Cannibalism in Cultural Discourse

Session 2b: Consuming Women (Conference Room) 
Chair: Ruth (Meg) Oldman 

(i) Jennifer Bowes (Leeds Metropolitan University): Devouring the Self: Eating Disorders as Cannibalism of the Psyche in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Universe and Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman

(ii) Nancy Schumann (Books With Bite): Pardon My Bite: Vampire Women Who Kill Children From Ancient Folklore to Post-Modern Literature

(iii) Carys Crossen (University of Manchester): Fine Young Cannibals: Cannibalism, Psychoanalysis and the Ethics of Consumption in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Series and Poppy Z. Brite’s Lost Souls

1.30-2.30pm: Lunch 

2.30-3.30pm: Film Screening and Round Table: Babysitting and the Child Cannibal (Kanaris Lecture Theatre)

A screening of Babysitting (dir. Lucas Masson, 2012), followed by a round table discussion about children, horror and cannibalism

Chair: Hannah Priest
Panel: Darren Oldridge (University of Worcester), John Sears (Manchester Metropolitan University) and Nancy Schumann (Books with Bite)

3.30-4.00pm: Coffee

4.00-5.00pm: Session 3: Cannibalism in Fiction (Kanaris Lecture Theatre)
Chair: David McWilliam

(i) Abby Bentham (University of Salford): Let Us Prey: Cannibalism, Capitalism and Culture in Jim Thompson’s The Getaway

(ii) Nela Roxana Gheorghica (Independent Scholar): Faber’s Under the Skin and the Cannibal Within Us All

5.00pm: Sessions End

5.00-7.00pm: Drinks at Kro Bar

7.30pm: Conference Dinner at Felicini

 

*****

 

Friday 26th April

9.00-10.30am: Session 4: Consuming Knowledge, Consuming Christ (Kanaris Lecture Theatre)
Chair: Hannah Priest

(i) Matthew Graham (Leeds Metropolitan University): The Devouring of Knowledge: Consumption and Philosophy in Blanchot’s Thomas the Obscure

(ii) Daisy Black (University of Manchester): ‘Smiting a Cake’: Preparing and Cooking Christ in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament

(iii) Sara Williams (University of Hull): ‘The Soul is Like an Infant That Still Nurses When at its Mother’s Breast’: Oral Fixation and Fantasies of Kleinian Cannibalism in Female Hagiography

10.30-11.00am: Coffee

11.00-12.30pm: Parallel Sessions

Session 5a: Cannibals and Popular Narrative (Kanaris Lecture Theatre)
Chair: Sandra Bowdler

(i) Hannah Priest (Hic Dragones/University of Manchester): ‘Killing for Sport… Eating All the Bodies’: Richard the Lionheart, Eric Cartman, Hollywood Superstar Shia Leboeuf

(ii) Franziska Burstyn (University of Siegen): Wicked Witches and Gruesome Giants: Parental Infanticide in Children’s Literature

Session 5b: On Serial Murder (Conference Room) 
Chair: Franziska Kohlt 

(i) Emilia Musumeci (University of Catania): Love Me, Kill Me, Eat Me. Serial Killers, Sexual Behaviour, and Voluntary Cannibalism

(ii) David McWilliam (Lancaster University): ‘Help Me, I am in Hell’: Necrophiliac, Necrophagic Serial Killer Jeffrey Dahmer and the Limits of Empathy

12.30-1.30pm: Lunch 

1.30-3.00pm: Session 6: Empire and Machine (Kanaris Lecture Theatre) 
Chair: Daisy Black 

(i) Jessica George (Cardiff University): ‘The War Ate my Boy, Damn Them All’: Food Chain and Fantasy in Lovecraft

(ii) James Collinge (Leeds Metropolitan University): Rethinking the Martian: British ‘New Imperialism’ as a Cannibal Cyborg in H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds

(iii) Franziska E. Kohlt (Independent Scholar): Horrid King Besmear’d with Blood of Human Sacrifice: Man-Consuming Machinery and Moloch as Dystopic Metaphor in H.G. Wells’s Time Machine and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis

3.00-3.30pm: Coffee 

3.30-5.00pm: Session 7: Cannibalism and Textuality (Kanaris Lecture Theatre) 
Chair: Carys Crossen 

(i) Barbara Laner (University of Innsbruck): Incorporating Media: Cannibalism in Film as a Metaphor for Intermediality

(ii) Ellie Dobson (University of Birmingham): Flesh-Eaters in London: Cosmopolitan Cannibals in Late Nineteenth-Century Fiction and the Press

(iii) Joanne Ella Parsons (Bath Spa University): ‘Bone Soup’: Cannibalism, Civilisation, and Racism in The Frozen Deep and the Franklin Expedition

5.00pm: Conference Close