For now, here is a brief recap of the panels I attended, followed by additions to the reading list I started here and a list of the things I purchased (for cheap, I might add):
--The first panel I attended was on the work of Stephen King. I'm not much of a Stephen King fan, but I am a huge fan of the movie It. One of the presenters was talking about that book/movie in particular; she made the curious point that monsters in horror often act as a way for us to indulge in anti-social behavior and to release emotions through channels that don't threaten our subjectivity or social lives. I tend to agree, though I hope to get the opportunity to read the full paper soon.
--I had ulterior motives for attending so many horror panels at the PCA/ACA conference. I'm not a horror scholar, but, well, we'll just leave it at that. The second horror panel of the third day turned out to be equally as fascinating, dealing extensively with Stephen King's Pet Sematary, along with some other issues. There was some talk of adaptations of King's work into things like picture books and artwork, but the most interesting paper dealt with the nature of faces in Pet Sematary (he was dealing particularly with Deleuze and Guattari's discussions of faciality in A Thousand Plateaus). It was a fascinating panel.
--Probably the most useful panel for me was the publishing panel for the Journal of Popular Culture and the Journal of American Culture. I learned quite a bit about what they are looking for and so on. I'll be submitting something to the popular culture journal for sure.
--There was another panel I attended, but it was by far overshadowed by the showing of Killer Klowns From Outer Space in the late evening. I've never seen it before, and if you haven't, you should. It's the most ridiculous and hilarious horror farce I have seen in a long time. It does it's humor in a way that horror spoofs don't today. It was a blast being in a room of thirty people, and the fine folks at the hotel provided popcorn for the viewing. Plus, I won a copy of The Bride of Chucky! Good times!
Reading/Watching List:
--It by Stephen King
--Babcock on the trickster figure
--Duma Key by Stephen King
--The Dark Tower series by Stephen King
--George Beam/Beme's book on visual representations of Stephen King's work
--Lesley Fielder on the fall of innocence
--Joseph Campbell on the epic hero
--The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (popup book) by Stephen King
--Linda Hutcheons on adaptation
--Ursula K. Le Guin on the carriage bag theory
--Pet Sematary
--Deleuze and Guattari on faciality (A Thousand Plateaus)
--Slavov Zizek on Pet Sematary
--Jean Francis Lyotard on the inhuman
--Three Extremes (film)
--The Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, Old Boy, and Lady Vengeance (films)
--Fight Club (film)
--The Domino Men by Jonathan Barnes
--House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
--The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes
--The Transitionist by Iain M. Banks
--Dark Matter by Various
--Patricia Briggs' novels
--Stanley Fish on the authorial community
Books I Bought:
--History, the Human, and the World Between by R. Radhakrishnan
--Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction by Various (edited by Mark Bould and China Mieville)
--FemSpec Volume 3, Issue 2 (2002)
--Conversations With Ursula K. Le Guin edited by Carl Freedman
--Conversations With Octavia Butler edited by Conseula Francis
--Cylons in America: Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica edited by Tiffany Potter and C. W. Marshall
--Cyberculture, Cyborgs, and Science Fiction: Consciousness and the Posthuman by William S. Haney II
--Conversations With Samuel R. Delany edited by Carl Freedman
And there you have it. More to come!
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