SC2: The Slayage Conference on the Whedonverses

May 26-28, 2006 | Gordon College, Barnesville, Georgia, USA]

Keynote speakers will include Roz Kaveney, editor of Reading the Vampire Slayer, and Michael Adams (North Carolina State University), author of Slayer Slang: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon.

Go here to open and print a copy of the CFP in PDF (Acrobat Reader required).

Rhonda Wilcox and David Lavery, coeditors of Fighting the Forces: What’s at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies (www.slayage.tv), solicit your proposal for the second Slayage Conference: The Slayage Conference on the Whedonverses (SC2), sponsored by Gordon College and Middle Tennessee State University. This conference dedicated to the imaginative universe of Joss Whedon—the Jossverse or Whedonverse—will be held on the campus of Gordon College in Barnesville, Georgia, May 26-28, 2006. We welcome a proposal of 200-300 words (or an abstract of a completed paper) on any aspect of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly or the forthcoming movie Serenity, his comics (e.g. Fray), or any element of the work of Joss Whedon and collaborating creators such as writer Jane Espenson, composer Christophe Beck, production designer Carey Meyer, actor James Marsters, or director of photography Michael Gershman. We invite presentations from the perspective of any discipline: literature, history, communications, film and television studies, women’s studies, philosophy, religion, linguistics, music, cultural studies, and others. We invite discussions of the text, the social context, the audience, the producers, the production, and more. For a lengthy but not exhaustive list of possible topics, see www.slayage.tv; consider also consulting the work-in-progress Encyclopedia of Buffy Studies, also at the Slayage journal. All proposals/abstracts should demonstrate familiarity with already-published scholarship in the field—in Fighting the Forces, in Reading the Vampire Slayer (both editions), in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy, in Slayer Slang, in Slayage, etc.

Papers are limited to a maximum reading time of 20 minutes. Send title, proposal/abstract of 200-300 words, and requests for AV (VCR/monitor, DVD player, overhead projector, and slide projector only) along with contact information: (1) name, (2) institutional affiliation (or notation that you are an independent scholar), (3) email address typed within the body of the message, (4) snail mail address, (5) telephone number. Submissions by undergraduates and graduate students are welcome; however, undergraduate students should provide the name, email, and phone number of a faculty member willing to consult with them (the faculty member does not need to attend). Both the proposal/abstract and the contact information must be included in the body of an email message; also include both the proposal/abstract and contact information in a Microsoft Word or Rich Text Format attachment. (The attachment is optional; the inclusion of the proposal/abstract and contact information in the body of the email is required.) Please submit your proposals to wilcox.rhonda@gmail.com. (Please note that another person possesses the email address with the surname second.) If you wish to propose a prearranged, complete session of multiple presenters, make sure to include the contact information for all presenters.

Proposals must be submitted by October 31, 2005.