Dickens Day
Saturday 14th October 2017
Dickens and Fantasy
Senate House (South), University of London
9.00am Registration (outside the Woburn Suite, ground floor)
9.45am Opening remarks – Bethan Carney and Ben Winyard(Woburn Suite)
10.00am: PLENARY PANEL (Woburn Suite)
– Bethan Carney (Dickens Day organiser), ‘Dickens and Goblins’
–Kate Newey (University of Exeter), ‘Dickens in Fairyland’
– Caroline Sumpter (Queen’s University, Belfast), ‘Time Travelling with Dickens: Between Realism and Romance’
Chair: Ben Winyard (Dickens Day organiser)
11.15am READINGS (Woburn Suite)
Readings organised by Tony Williams (the Dickens Fellowship and University of Buckingham) and given by invited readers.
11.30am Tea/Coffee
12.00pm PARALLELPANELS
A) Fantasy, Theatre and Spectacle (Woburn Suite)
– Jen Baker (University of Bristol), ‘The Ghost of Christmas Pop-Ups: A Not-So-Ghostly Spectacle?’
– Ahmed Dardir (Columbia University), ‘“They Prolonged Their Usual Orgies Late into the Night”: Dionysian Manifestations in ATale of Two Cities’
– Jennifer Miller (University of Leicester), ‘Fantasies of Domesticity in Victorian Theatrical Adaptations of Dickens’s Novels’
Chair: Kate Newey (University of Exeter)
B) Fantasy, Christmas and Festivities (Bloomsbury Room)
– HadasElber-Aviram (The University of Notre Dame London Global Gateway), ‘King, Carol and Custard: Dickens, Ruskin and the Rival Traditions of British Fantasy’
– Gloria Hoare (Birkbeck, University of London), ‘Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come and Nightmares of the Future: Precognition in Charles Dickens’s Christmas Stories’
– Stephen Roberts (Sheffield Dickens Fellowship), ‘“Fancy” and Charles Dickens’s Creative Process with Reference to the Composition of A Christmas Carol’
Chair: Cathy Waters (University of Kent)
1.15pm LUNCH (own arrangements)
2.30pm READINGS (Woburn Suite)
2.45pm PARALLELPANELS
A) Fantasy, Hallucinations, The Unconscious and Childhood(Woburn Suite)
– Emily Bell (University of York), ‘“A Holiday Romance” and the Fantasy of Childhood’
– Timothy Gao(University of Oxford), ‘“A Castle in the Air”: Constructive Hallucinations in Little Dorrit’
– Michaela Mahlberg (University of Birmingham), Peter Stockwell (University of Nottingham) and Viola Wiegand (University of Birmingham), ‘Textual Patterns of Dreaming and the Unconscious Mind in Dickens’
Chair: Tony Williams (the Dickens Fellowship and University of Buckingham)
B) Fantasy, Myth and Fairy Tale (Bloomsbury Room)
– Beatrice Ashton-Lelliott (University of Portsmouth), ‘“Something More Unmanageable”: The Dragons of Dickens and the Victorian Novel’
– Giles Whiteley (Stockholm University), ‘Fantasy and the Curse of Kehama: Dickens Reading Southey in The Mystery of Edwin Drood’
– Jeremy Parrott (University of Buckingham), ‘“A Valentine and Orson Business”: Variations on the Folk-Tale in Barnaby Rudge’
Chair: Helen Goodman (Royal Holloway, University of London and NYU, London)
4.00pm Tea/Coffee
4.30pm PLENARY (Woburn Suite)
– Simon J. James (Durham University), ‘The Ghosts of Dickens’s Memory’
Chair: Bethan Carney(Dickens Day organiser)
5.15 CLOSE