INVASION MONTREAL : First International Conference on Zombies
Montreal, Canada, July 2-4th 2012
Since Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero, 1968) there are few images in the contemporary aesthetics of the corpse as significant as the transmediatic and truly global figure of the living dead. After a decade marked by the “death” of zombies (the 1990s) in the medium that had previously been the most welcoming to them, the creature has returned more eagerly (and hungry) at the turn of the millennium. It has now invaded the most diverse aspects of our global iconosphere.
Further details after the jump
Symptomatically it is a new medium, the video game, which somehow launched the revival of this figure which has never fully integrated the Gothic literary tradition. The success in 1996 of The House of the Dead and Resident Evil marked the comeback of a creature that would eventually recontaminate the big screen. In the aftermath of September 11 and in the shadow of the SARS pandemic, a true “zombie-mania” began. The Zombie Movie Database ZMDB lists over a hundred films between 2002 and 2009, and more than twenty productions are planned for 2012.
In the wake of M. Brooks’ The Zombie Survival Guide (2003), a curious “zombie literature” (the label exists now in several online catalogues) emerged, with such viral effects as the amazing bestseller of S. Grahame-Smith, who literally zombified the canonical Jane Austen classic (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, 2009). Comics, the medium that had previously been instrumental in the mythopoetic transformation of the modern zombie, were in turn invaded by the new wave with the now famous saga of R. Kirkman The Walking Dead (2003 -) in an unprecedented frenzy zombiephile which in turn feeds the other major postmodern media, television. We are also seeing a plethora of critical studies analyzing this figure that had been so far relatively disdained by the academic institution.
Following this invasion of “zombie studies,” the time has come to confront the living dead question. This first international conference on zombies will try to analyze this amazing and viral figure in all spheres of our culture.
We invite all those who wish to do so to propose a communication falling within the broad guidelines of the conference:
Disciplinary fields
Anthropology / Cultural Studies / Epistemology / Aesthetics / Philosophy / Politics / Sociology / Theology
Media covered
Comics / Movies / Video Games / Literature / Television
The organizing committee is also open to any proposal that falls within the general spirit of this call for papers.
Please submit your proposals no later than September 15, 2011 at the following address: zombiemontreal@gmail.com
Notifications of acceptance or rejection of proposals will be sent in October.
Your proposal must include:
1. The title of the paper and an abstract (500 words maximum).
2. Your status, your home institution, your department and your contact details (postal address, phone number, fax number and email address)
3. A brief biography highlighting your accomplishments in the study of the zombie (250 words maximum).
Organizing Commitee
Samuel Archibald, Universite du Quebec a Montreal
Antonio Dominguez Leiva, Universite du Quebec a Montreal
Barry Keith Grant, Brock University
Tanya Krzywinska, Brunel University West London
Denis Mellier, Universite de Poitiers
Shawn McIntosh, Columbia University
Bernard Perron, Universite de Montreal
Details available here:
http://www.ludicine.ca/en/2012-conference