RE-THINKING THE MONSTROUS:
VIOLENCE AND CRIMINALITY IN SOCIETY
Conference Program

Friday, July 1st
2:00
Registration Desk Opens (TBA)
2:30-3:45
Keynote Address (TBA)
Chair: David Levente Palatinus (University of Ruzomberok)
Niall Scott (University of Central Lancashire) –
“TBA”
4:00-6:00
PANEL SESSION ONE
A) Minority and Classification (TBA)
Chair: TBA (TBA)
 “To Die on Skid Row: Racial Violence and Monstrous Spaces in Native Canadian
Fiction” – Kristina Aurylaitė (University of Bergen and Vytautas Magnus University)
 “The Monstrous in the House of Love: Violence, Recrimination and Faith Healing in
John Dunne’s Purtock” – Jonathan Highfield (Rhode Island School of Design)
 “The Osage Murder Cases” – Delores J. Huff (California State University, Fresno)
 “Monstrosity Narratives and Criminal Case Studies: The Function of Monstrosity” –
Joela Zeller (University of Chicago)
B) Ancient and Modern (TBA)
Chair: TBA (TBA)
 “‘Just who is the monster here, anyway?’ Private and Public Heroism in Shrek ” –
Christopher Ankersen & Andrew Ankersen (Independent Scholars)
 “Finding Conciliation in the Monstrous: A Comparative Approach to the Medieval
Herzog Ernst and Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are” – Gabriela Antunes (Université
de Strasbourg and Humboldt University Berlin)
 “The Monstrous Other: Fritz Lang’s Death and the Gothic Masters” – Silke Hoklas
(Rostock University)
 “Grendel: A Foucauldian Reading” – Almudena Nido (University of Oviedo)
C) Children (TBA)
Chair: Keli Rowley (California State University, Northridge)
 “An Inexplicable Monstrosity: Gendered Offenses against Children in Wartime
China, 1931-45” – Lily Chang (University of Oxford)
 “Guilty Victims and Murderous Saviors: Amélie Nothomb’s Re-assessment of
Monstrosity”– Cecilia Gil (Newcastle University)
 “Fearing Delinquents in Munich: Moral Panics and Youth, 1942-48” – Martin Kalb
(Northern Arizona University)
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
“‘Monstrous’ Children in Contemporary British Fiction”– Ulrike Tancke (Johannes
Gutenberg-Universität Mainz)
D) Banality of Evil? (TBA)
Chair: TBA (TBA)
 “‘Funny Games: Playing with Monsters” – Janna Houwen (Leiden University)
 “Uncanny Evidence: Revealing the Character of the Accused in Court” – Ben Livings
(University of Sunderland)
 “The Truth about Monsters” – Lynda Ng (University of New South Wales)
 “Monsters and Narcissism: Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky” – G. St. John Stott (Arab
American University, Jenin)
6:00-6:30
Tea and Coffee (TBA)
6:30-8:30
PANEL SESSION TWO
A) Frames and Forms (TBA)
Chair: TBA (TBA)
 “‘Coach Houses, Trains, and Stains: Monstrosity and Frame Narratives in Sade’s
Justine and Buñuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire” – Regina Martin (Georgia Institute of
Technology)
 “That’s what you get for being a murderer: Crime, Comedy, and Postmodernism in
the Poetry of Luke Kennard” – Paul McDonald (University of Wolverhampton)
 “Richard Wright’s Empathetic Monster in Native Son” – Keli Rowley (California State
University, Northridge)
 “Nightmares of Wonder: Nabokob’s Violent Demonology” – Paul Sheehan (Macquarie
University)
B) Gender Issues (TBA)
Chair: TBA (TBA)
 “Between the Monstrous and the Ideal: Violence and Nonviolence in the Crafting of
Latino Masculinities” – M. Cristina Alcade (University of Kentucky)
 “Mocking Monstrosity, Liberating Masculinity: Masculine/Monstrous Writing Gu
Cheng’s Ying Er and in James Lasdun’s The Horned Man” – Po-hsi Chen (National
Central University, Taiwan)
 “When Trans Translates into Tolerance – or Was It Monstrous? Transsexual and
Transgender Identify in Liberal Humanist Discourse” – Randi Gressgård (University of
Bergen)
C) Re-thinking Frankenstein (TBA)
Chair: Julie Nash (University of Massachusetts, Lowell)
 “Textual Monstrosity: Postmodernism Meets Frankenstein” – Randall Craig (University
of Albany)
 “‘I am the monster’s mother’: Aesthetic Strategies of Monstrous Creation in
Contemporary Monster Narratives” – Anya Heise-von der Lippe (Freie Universität Berlin)
 “Monstrous Flesh and How We Have Learned to Love It” – Călin D. Lupiţu (Jacobs
University, Bremen)
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
“Monsters on the Dissection Table: Frankenstein and Nineteenth-Century Anatomy
Theater” – Kristen Miller (University of Louisville)
D) Early Modern (TBA)
Chair: TBA (TBA)
 “‘Sleeping in a Serpent's Bed': Selling Murder and Adultery in Arden of Faversham” –
Christina Furtado (Fordham University)
 “‘Whose hand presents this gory spectacle?’ Monstrous Rulers on the Early Modern
Stage and the Breakdown of the Law” – Susanne Gruß (Friedrich-Alexander-University
Erlangen-Nuremberg)
 “Benevolent Monsters in Thomas Otway’s The Soldiers’ Fortune” – Sarah Rasher
(University of Connecticut, Storrs)
 “Protestantism and Monstrous Female Genitalia in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie
Queen ” – Amber H. True (Michigan State University)
6:00-8:00
Wine Reception and Buffet Dinner
(White Rose Room?)

Saturday, July 2nd
9.00-10.30
PANEL SESSION THREE
A) Let the Right One In (TBA)
Chair: TBA (TBA)
 “Let the Right One In!: Monstrosity, Violence, and Complicity in Matt Reeves ‘Let
Me In’” – Simon Bacon (London Consortium)
 “De-familiarizaton of Violence and an Ethics of Hospitality: A Reading of John
Ajvide Lindqvist’s Let the Right One In” – Sonjeong Cho (Seoul National University)
 “Mandy, Grab the Knife: Representations of Violence in Narratives of the New
Female Monster-Hero” – Julie Miess (Humbolt University Berlin and Alpen-AdriaUniversity of Klagenfurt)
B) Television (TBA)
Chair: TBA (TBA)
 “Soft-Spoken Tyranny” The Obama Presidency, Right-Wing Paranoia and the New
Alien Invasion Narrative in ABC’s Remake of V” – Steffen Hantke (Sogang University)
 “Humanized Monsters and Monstrous Humans: The Psychology of Terror and the
Abnormal(s) in the TV Show Sanctuary” – Sabine Schmidt (Independent Scholar)
 “Monstrous Modifications: The Politics of Monstrosity in Critical Makeover
Narratives” – Heike Steinhoff (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
C) Disability (TBA)
Chair: TBA (TBA)
 “The Monstrous in Veza Canetti’s Fiction”– Ylenia Forti (University of Udine)
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

“Monstrous Liberalism: Robert Frost’s Fear of Randolph Bourne”– Grzegorz Kosc
(University of Warsaw)
“The Socio-Medical Construction of Monstrous Disability” – Beate Ochsner (Universität
Konstanz)
D) Romania (TBA)
Chair: TBA (TBA)
 “From Lombroso’s Criminal Monster to Kraepelin’s Eugenics in Eastern Europe:
Social, Racial and Bio-medical Controversies on Criminal Behavior in Romania,
1893-1943”– Octavian Buda (University of Medecine and Pharmacy Bucharest)
 “No Monster, Just a Tumor: Legal Medical Expertise in Romania at the End of the
Nineteenth Century”– Corina Dobos (University College, London)
 “Common Sense and the Monstrous: Exclusion and Nation-building in Nineteenth
Century Romania” – Andrei-Dan Sorescu (University of Bucharest)
10:30-11:00
Tea and Coffee (Percy Foyer)
11:00-12:15
Keynote Address (TBA)
Chair: Ingrida Povidisa (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
Margrit Schildrick (Queen’s University, Belfast) –
“TBA”
12:15-1:15
Buffet Lunch (TBA)
1:15-2:45
PANEL SESSION FOUR
A) Brains! And Other Human Delicacies (TBA)
Chair: TBA (TBA)
 “Family Splatters: Rescuing Heteronormativity in the Zombie Apocalypse” – Kathryn
Cady (Northern Illinois University) & Thomas Oates (Northern Illinois University)
 “Narcos, Necros, and Homos: On Queer Geographies and Phenomenologies in
Film” – Daniel Sander (New York University)
 “Variations of Monstrosity in Peter Greenaway’s The Cook the Thief His Wife and Her
Lover” – Zita Turi (Eötvös Loránd University)
B) Serial Killers (TBA)
Chair: David Schmid (University of Buffalo)
 “Integrating Criminologies: Monstrsotiy and Everyday Life Violence In
Contemporary Television Fiction (regarding Dexter)” – Patricia Trapero-Llobero
(University of the Balearic Islands)
 “The Monsters We Need, the Monsters We Feed: Serial Killers in Caleb Carr and
Stieg Larsson” – Thomas W. Kniesche (Brown University)
 “The Ambiguous Fascination of the Monster: The Strange Case of Vincenzo
Verzeni, ‘The Strangler of Women’” – Emilia Musumeci (University of Catania)
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C) 9/11 (TBA)
Chair: TBA (TBA)
 “Uncovering the Monstrous: The Islamist ‘Gefährder’ and Other Offenders without
Offense” – Andrea Kretschmann (Bielefeld University)
 “Disillusioned in Capitalist Faith: The Birth of Monsters in John Updike’s Terrorist
and Laila Lalami’s Secret Son” – Chi-sum Garfield Lau (Hong Kong Baptist University and
Open University of Hong Kong)
 “Exploring Freud’s Death Drive: Witnessing the Falling Man” – Sandra Singer
(University of Guelph)
D) Supernatural (TBA)
Chair: TBA (TBA)
 “Nazi Monsters: Toward a Supernatural History of Violence and Criminality in the
Second World War, 1942-45” – Eric Kurlander (Stetson University)
 “Monstrosity as Aspirational Experience in Contemporary Popular Paranormal
Fiction for Women” – Nickianne Mooddy (Liverpool John Moores University)
 “Female Monstrosity: ‘The Antichrist’ (2009) by Lars von Trier” – Virginia Spyratou
(University of Athens)
3:00-4:30
PANEL SESSION FIVE
A) Horror (TBA)
Chair: TBA (TBA)
 “Complexity and Ambiguity: An Examination of the Monster and the Monstrous
within Contemporary ‘Neo-nasty’ Horror Films” – Shaun Kimber (Bournemouth
 “Women from Hell: Female Monsters in Turkish Horror Film” – Yusuf Gürhan Topçu
(Erciyes Üniversitesi)
 “The Monster in Me: Spectators and Protagonists Confront the Amoral Self in
Modern Horror Cinema” – Christian Vittrup (Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel)
B) Syfy (TBA)
Chair: Peter Becker (Institute for the Sociology of Law and Criminology, Vienna)
 “Heroic Monstrosity: Posthumanity and Violence” – Elana Gomel (Tel-Aviv University)
 “Untitled” – F. Gul Kocsoy (Firat University)
 “Wells’s Time Machine: Violence Continues” – Murat Ogutcu (Hacettepe University)
C) Women (TBA)
Chair: TBA (TBA)
 “Bill’s Monstrous Wife: On Taratino’s Kill Bill and the Question of Gender” –
Stephanie Badziong (University of Cologne)
 “The Monsters of the Desert: Female Genital Mutilation in Waris Dirie’s Desert
Flower” – Oya Bayiltmiş (Hacettepe University)
 “You’re a Pretty Good Man, Eva: Violent Women in the Arizona, Nevada, and New
Mexico Courts and Prisons, 1890-1930” – Donna Crail-Rugotzke (College of Southern
Nevada)
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4:45-6:00
7:30
Keynote Address (TBA)
Chair: Malcah Effron (Community College of Baltimore County)
David Schmid (University of Buffalo) –
“Monsters for a Neoliberal Age”
Conference Dinner (only for delegates who have pre-booked/ pre-ordered)

Sunday, July 3rd
9:00-11:00
PANEL SESSION SIX
A) Pedophilia (TBA)
Chair: TBA (TBA)
 “‘That Creature Forfeits His Rights!’: Metaphor and the Dehumanization of Sexual
Criminals” – Cyd Cipolla (Emory University)
 “Beyond Redemption: ‘Sexual Predators’ as the Modern Day Monster” – Rebecca
Houghton (University of Hamburg) & Grace Krause (University of Hamburg)
 “‘Prominent Sinners and Ordinary Monsters in Polish Media Discourse” – Urszula
Jarecka (Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw)
 Incorporeal Monsters: The Internet Child Pornographer and the Development of
Virtual Ontology” – Karin Sellberg (University of Edinburgh) & Kamilla Aghtan (University
of Edinburgh)
B) Eighteenth Century (TBA)
Chair: TBA (TBA)
 “The Ethics and Aesthetics of Monstrosity in Kleist’s Penthesilea” – Maria Carone
(University of Wisconsin, Madison)
 “‘Chimerical Non-descripts’: Monsters and Monstrosity in Print Satire, 1790-1800” –
Christopher Machell (University of Northumbria)
 “A Revolutionary Monster: The Duc d’Orléans in the Pamphlets” – Rebecca Sopchik
(Columbia University)
 “A Monstrous and Guilty Conscious Life as Reflected in Lord Byron’s Manfred” –
İmren Yelmiş (Hacettepe University)
C) Autobiography (TBA)
Chair: TBA (TBA)
 “‘die Zeitungen machten uns zu entsprungenern Monstern’: Rewriting the Monstrous
in Women’s Post-terrorist Narratives” – Clare Bielby (University of Hull)
 “Once a Monster, Always a Monster: Kody Scott’s Rhetorical Confusion” – D.
Quentin Miller (Suffolk University)
 “Addiction and the Monstrous Self” – Patricia E. O’Connor (Georgetown University)
 “The Monstrous and Its Inversion in Two Contemporary Memoirs of Prostitution” –
Cansu Özge Özmen Pushkin (Namik Kemal University)
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D) Mythic and Real (TBA)
Chair: TBA (TBA)
 “Animality in Discourses of Monstrosity: The Windigo In Joseph Boyden’s Three Day
Road” – Melanie Frederiksen (University of Manitoba)
 “‘Monsters and Prodigal Sons: Borders, Identity, and Change in the Discourse on
Wolves in the American West” – Ginna Husting (Boise State University) & Mary Frances
Casper (Boise State University)
 “The Werewolf in Script and Crypt: Fathers and Sons in The Wolfman (2010) and The
Wolfman (1941)” – Uwe Schwagmeier (University of Oldenburg)
11:00-11:30
Tea and Coffee (TBA)
11:30-1:30
PANEL SESSION SEVEN
A) Theory (TBA)
Chair: TBA (TBA)
 “Encountering Monsters at the Boundaries of Culture: Excess, Transgression and the
Limit-Experience” – Elaine Campbell (Newcastle University)
 “How to Create Musical Monsters: From Mythical Creatures to Surgical Procedure”
– Luminita Florea (Independent Scholar)
 “Originary Monstrosity: The Primordial, Corporeal Incarceration of the BodyModifier” – Will Johncock (The University of New South Wales)
 “Monstrous Deeds, Monstrous Actors?” – Andreas Prokop (University of Hamburg)
B) Nineteenth-Century (TBA)
Chair: TBA (TBA)
 “The Monster and the Wretch: Inmate Suicide and the End of the Gallows” – Richard
Bell (University of Maryland, College Park)
 “Re-thinking Crime in Early Nineteenth-century France in Light of the Monstrous” –
Anne-Emmanuelle Demartini (Université Paris-Diderot-Paris 7)
 “Monsters, Monstrosities, and the Reinvention of Drives” – Jan Niklas Howe (Freie
Universität Berlin)
 “The Story of Hetty Sorrel: The Female Monstrous in George Eliot’s Adam Bede” –
Nazan Yildiz (Hacettepe University)
 “Violent Heroes and Civilized Monsters: Reading Dracula and The Beetle in Light of
Kristeva’s Theories” – Susanne Zhanial (Vienna University)
C) Robots (TBA)
Chair: TBA (TBA)
 “What Do Anomalies in HRI Teach Us about the Fundamental Features of Being
Human” – Katarzyna Bajka (Jagiellonian University, Kraków)
 “Confluence of Art and Technology: Issues of Identity and (Dis)embodiment” –
Misty-Dawn MacMillan (University of Toronto)
 “Monsters and Neurotechnology: Popular Imagination and Reality” – Shivadatta
Prabhu (Grenoble Institut des Neurosciences)
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
“‘To Be Required to Validate Your Own Identity’: The Human, the Android, and the
Monstrous in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” – Josh Toth (Grant
MacEwan University)
D) Journalism (TBA)
Chair: TBA (TBA)
 “Picturing the Whitechapel Murders: Phantoms of Neglect in the City of Dreadful
Delight” – Mazy E. Hayes (Ohio University)
 “Monster or Man? Rapists in Contemporary British and American Press Coverage” –
Shannon O’Hara (University of St Andrews)
 “Monsters in a Cage: Convicts Sentenced to Death under Media Scrutiny in France in
the Twentieth Century” – Nicolas Picard (Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne)
1:30-2:30
Buffet Lunch (TBA)
2:30-4:00
Keynote Address (TBA)
Chair: Ingrida Povidisa (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
Peter Becker (Institute for the Sociology of Law and Criminology,
Vienna) –
“TBA”
4:00
Close of Conference
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