GIFCon
Keynote Speakers
GIFCon 2024 is excited to announce our three fantastic keynote speakers for this year.
PROFESSOR EMILY SELOVE
Title: “Translation as Conjuration: Conversations with a 13th-Century Sorcerer”
Wednesday May 15, 13:30 – 14:30
Emily Selove (PhD 2012, UCLA) is an associate professor in Medieval Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Exeter. She is also the convener of the University of Exeter’s Centre for Magic and Esotericism. Her most recent publication is a short monograph for the Cambridge Elements Series: The Donkey King: Asinine Symbology in Ancient and Medieval Magic. She was the PI of a Leverhulme-funded research project, “A Sorcerer’s Handbook,” (2019-2022) which will create an edition and translation of Sirāj al-Dīn al-Sakkākī’s (d. 1229) magic handbook, Kitāb al-Shāmil wa-baḥr al-kāmil (The Book of the Complete). Her early research focused on the figure of the uninvited guest (or “party-crasher”) in medieval Arabic literature, and especially on the 11th-century work Ḥikāyat Abī l-Qāsim. Her translation of another 11th-century book of party-crashing is titled Selections from the Art of Party-Crashing in Medieval Iraq. She also co-authored a textbook to introduce beginning students to the city of medieval Baghdad, Baghdad at the Centre of a World: 8th-13th Century, and has created a collection of cartoons titled Popeye and Curly: 120 Days in Medieval Baghdad to accompany this textbook.
Suggested Reading List
by committee member Grace Worm:
- Explore Professor Selove’s 13th century sorcerer on her blog here. There are amazing visuals and interesting research as well a collection of her publications and presentations.
- Her 2020 article “Magic as Poetry, Poetry as Magic: A Fragment of Arabic Spells” is available on Muse if you have access through an institution! This article weaves discussions of magic, poetry, language, theology, and translations.
- Professor Selove’s book Baghdad at the Centre of a World, 8th-13th Century: An Introductory Textbook is a fascinating exploration of historic cultural productions happening in Baghdad during this time and the significant impact these productions had on the formation of Europe.
- And Professor Selove’s newest published novel The Donkey King: Asinine Symbology in Ancient and Medieval Magic (Elements in Magic), besides having an amazing title, this book is an extremely interesting examination of methods for contacting jinn in 13th century Arabic grimoires. She interrogates symbols of donkeys in summoning jinn (hence the title) and makes connections between history, cultural, magic, demons, theology, the occult, humor, literature, and artistic symbols in fascinating ways.
DR C. J. COOKE
Title: “Writing Creatures and Worlds”
Thursday May 16, 15:00- 16:00
C. J. Cooke, also known as Carolyn Jess-Cooke, is an award-winning poet and novelist published in 23 languages. Her works is often categorised as feminist gothic with fantasy and supernatural elements, and two TV adaptations of her books are currently in development, with a third novel being developed as a feature film. Cooke is Reader in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. Her most recent book is A Haunting in the Arctic, which was an Indigo Best Book of 2023.
Suggested Reading List
by committee member Will Sherwood:
- C.J. Cooke’s critically-acclaimed Gothic novels are a excellent starting point. Although each novel is self-contained, I would highly recommend reading them in publication order as it allows you to follow how Cooke’s thoughts evolve on the interactions between the genre, motherhood and femininity, and trauma. Each book also includes an ‘Author’s Note’ at the end where Cooke reflects on the book’s inspiration, writing process, and themes. Start with The Nesting before moving onto The Lighthouse Witches, The Ghost Woods, and finish with A Haunting in the Arctic.
- Recently, Cooke was interviewed by Quills & Chills (link here) where she discussed her earliest writing memories, what brought her to the Gothic genre, and what attracted her about the themes that connect her four Gothic novels.
- Before publishing her novels and poetry, Cooke established an influential position in the Film studies, exploring the portrayal and adaptation of Shakespeare on Film and the critical value of Film Sequels.
- Besides her Gothic novels, Cooke has also published four novels and three poetry collections. We Have To Leave The Earth is a poetry collection split into three parts. Its interlocking concerns with the environment, family, and identity are harnessed to explore the virtues and flaws of human activity and how our actions find their consequences in the people and landscape around us.
ZEN CHO
Title: “Worlds inside Worlds, or, Conjuring Pasts”
Friday May 17, 12:30 – 13:30
Zen Cho writes fantasy and romance. Her newest novel, The Friend Zone Experiment, is a contemporary romance set among London’s East and Southeast Asian community. Zen is a winner of the Hugo, Crawford and British Fantasy Awards and the LA Times Ray Bradbury Prize, as well as a finalist for the World Fantasy, Ignyte, Lambda, Locus and Astounding Awards. She was born and raised in Malaysia, resides in the UK, and lives in a notional space between the two.
Suggested Reading List
by committee member Georgina Gale:
- Zen Cho reflects on her stories, career and the publishing world in her blog posts here. Her posts range from candid thoughts on the challenges of writing a novel, to discussing her experiences as a POC writing fantasy.
- One of Cho’s most recent novels, Black Water Sister, was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award in 2022. Jessamyn Teoh is a jobless, broke, closeted lesbian moving back to Malaysia with her family. But she soon finds herself pulled into a world of gods, spirits, and family secrets after hearing the voice of her grandmother’s ghost.
- If you prefer shorter fiction, read Cho’s ‘If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again’, which won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 2019. This fantastic story centres on an imugi repeatedly striving to defy the laws of heaven and become a dragon.
- Already enjoyed all Cho’s own works? Why not try Kelly Link’s The Book of Love. Cho describes this novel as “Pure enchantment—a tale of love, death, magic and teenagers being teenagers, rich with fairy strangeness and told in sentences like jewels strung on a chain”.
- Another novel praised by Cho, Sue Lynn Tan’s Daughter of the Moon Goddess is inspired by the myth of Chang’e, the moon goddess. “A stirring romantic fantasy set in a richly realised world inspired by Chinese mythology” (to cite Cho), it is a reimagining of one of the most famous Chinese Gods.
Call For Papers
GIFcon 2024: Conjuring Creatures and Worlds
Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic, University of Glasgow
The deadline for submissions has passed.
Conference date: 15th-17th May 2024 (hosted online)
The Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic is pleased to announce a call for papers for Glasgow International Fantasy Conversations (GIFCon) 2024, to be held online on 15-17 May, with the theme of ‘Conjuring Creatures and Worlds’.
Fantasy is inherently an act of conjuration. When we create, dismantle, or engage with fantasy, we are conjuring magic: the impossible, the mysterious, the unknown, and the indefinable. Conjuring fantasy is an act of creation not necessarily defined by our existing modes of being or reality, yet it is always in conversation with our own world. Thus, when we enter fantastika, we necessarily enter a conjured world that invites us to reimagine fundamental aspects of our existence. One way it effects this is by encountering seemingly nonhuman creatures, through which we meet the magical, the uncanny, the monstrous, the Other, and perhaps most uncomfortably, ourselves. Brian Froud writes in Good Fairies Bad Faeries (1998) that “like any supernatural encounter, meeting a fairy—even one who is gentle and benign—is never a comfortable experience”. Samantha Langsdale and Elizabeth Coody argue in Monstrous Women in Comics that “the monster is difference made flesh”. The same is often true of the worlds these creatures exist in. Conjurations, then, are not wholly foreign; their components are knowable. Through fantasy we can conjure, and therefore communicate, with the necessarily mysterious, the otherwise ineffable.
The act of conjuration is an ambivalent one, being both beyond and outside our own world yet inherently connected to it and therefore susceptible to the same limitations and preconceptions. In Race and Popular Fantasy Literature, Helen Young argues that “the logics of race and racial difference are so deeply ingrained in Western society that it is extremely difficult, often even for members of marginalised racial groups, to imagine worlds that do not have those structures.” Indeed, Fantastika has often been concerned with narratives where creatures “function as recognizable stand-ins for majorities and minorities and the inevitable conflicts that emerge between identity groups”. We are interested in explorations of marginalised identities, including creatures, systems of magic, and worlds concerned with (but not limited to) race, ethnicity, gender, queerness, class, and (dis)abilities. These conjured creatures and worlds offer an alternative viewpoint into other modes of identity and being. Additionally, the ways in which these fantasies are conjured is important. The medium through which the reader (in the broadest sense of the word) encounters and interacts with the fantasy affects its meaning.
How do academics, creative practitioners, and fans conjure (and understand the conjuration of) fantasy, creatures and worlds? Fantasy and the fantastic have the capability to conjure the ephemeral and the horrific, the indefinable and the real, the Other and ourselves, but how do we understand these creations? And how do these encounters with creatures, magic, and worlds conform or challenge our understanding of the fantastic?
GIFCon 2024 is a three-day virtual conference welcoming proposals for papers relating to this theme from researchers and practitioners working in the field of fantasy and the fantastic across all media, whether from within the academy or beyond it. We are particularly interested in submissions from postgraduate and early career researchers, and researchers whose work focuses on fantasy from the margins. We ask for abstracts for 20-minute papers. Submissions for this application are closed but GIFCon is an anual event.
We also ask for workshop descriptions for 75-minute creative workshops, for those interested in exploring the creative processes of conjuring these creatures and worlds into being from a practice-based perspective. Submissions for this application are closed but GIFCon is an anual event.
If you have any questions regarding our event or our CfP, please contact us at GIFCon@glasgow.ac.uk. Please also read through our Code of Conduct.
We look forward to your submissions!
Suggested Topics
Suggested Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Fantasy texts and media by creative practitioners from marginalised backgrounds, and from beyond the anglophone and Anglocentric fantastic
- Creatures as corporeal and/or spiritual beings
- Worlds and magic as material or conceptual spaces, realms, or structures
- Multi-media representations of creatures, worlds, and creators
- Creating and recreating race, class, queerness, (dis)ability and other marginalised identities in fantasy
- Explorations and representations of the Other in fantastika
- Attraction to, repulsion or rejection of creatures and the nonhuman
- Depicting alienation, body dysphoria, body swapping and transformation in fantasy
- The anthropomorphising of objects and creatures
- Human and nonhuman binaries, hierarchies, and dynamics
- Conforming to and challenging conventional depictions of creatures e.g., mythic and supernatural traditions, folklore, fantastic tropes and iconic and archetypal characters
- Representations of fantastical creatures for example cryptids, fae, magical creatures, supernatural beings, the undead, humanoids, animals, hybrids, AI, extraterrestrials, demons, monsters, horrors, boogeymen
- Environments, alternate worlds, ecocriticism, posthumanism, the Anthropocene
- Conjuring futures and pasts
- Organic vs. artificial worlds, spaces and creatures
- Conjuring as a destructive or creative act
- Conjuring magic and magic systems
- How fandoms and scholars recreate, reinterpret, or conjure creatures, worlds and magic systems
Submission Guidelines
Submission Guidelines
- For paper submissions, please submit a 300-word (maximum) abstract including title and references, if any
- For creative workshop submissions, please submit a 100-word (maximum) abstract
- You will also be asked to submit 100-word (maximum) biographical note written in 3rd person and indicating your preferred pronouns. If you would like to remain anonymous during the event, please let the GIFCon Committee know via email
- Please use UK spelling and grammar conventions
- Please take time to read GIFCon’s Code of Conduct to ensure your submission complies with our symposium’s CoC
Follow the link to our paper submission form here.
Follow the link to our workshop submission form here.
Deadline for submissions: 5th January 2024, midnight (GMT)
Advice for First Time Submissions
The GIFCon committee especially welcomes proposals from postgraduate students and early career researchers. We have provided some advice below for those submitting their first paper or workshop proposal. Please note that this guide is intended for our event and should not be considered as universal advice, as each conference/symposium establishes its own rules and guidelines.
There are three key things to consider for paper submissions:
- Paper’s Fit to the Theme
- A Clear, Concise Argument
- Paper’s Fit to the Timeslot
1) Paper’s Fit to the Theme
How does your paper fit in with the conference theme? Clearly and concisely explain in one or two sentences how your paper suits GIFCon’s theme. You can also pop a key word from the CfP in your title, if that is suitable for your abstract.
2) A Clear, Concise Argument
Outline in your abstract your paper’s argument. You can include where it sits in the field, why you are exploring this aspect of your topic, which texts you are looking at, and what you hope to illuminate by doing so. Your argument will help the committee to grasp what you are intending to do in your paper and how to best place it in our programme, especially if your paper covers a niche within your subject. If the abstract requires technical terms specific to your area or subject, please clearly define them.
3) Paper’s Fit to the Timeslot
We are looking for papers that can be presented within a 20-minute timeslot. One rule of thumb is to imagine 20 minutes as roughly 2000 spoken words. You can also practice reading your paper out loud to ensure it fits within the given time before the event.
Workshop proposals:
Workshop abstract proposals are 100-word (maximum) and also include a 100-word (maximum) bionote. If you are submitting a proposal for a workshop, please include the workshop’s title, the number of participants allowed, an outline covering what you will accomplish in the workshop, and what materials you would need (a zoom meeting setup, a shared document etc.).
Just as with paper proposals, the abstract should make it clear how your workshop fits to theme and demonstrates that the workshop aims are feasible to accomplish within the 75-minute timeslot.
Before submitting, please:
- Make sure your abstract does not exceed the specified word count. This word count includes title and references.
- Take the time to proofread your abstract for any grammar and spelling errors. At GIFCon we use UK conventions.
- Ensure that you have a 100-word maximum biographical note written in the 3rd person and indicating your preferred pronouns (see example). However, if you would like to remain anonymous throughout the event, please email us before the deadline for guidance on submitting anonymously.
We would also like to ask you to review our Code of Conduct prior to your submission in order to make sure your paper complies with our symposium’s CoC.
Finally, if you have any questions about submitting your abstract to an event, please get in touch with us via email at GIFCon@glasgow.ac.uk. We look forward to your submission!
Example of a 100-word max bionote:
Kisar Euric (he/they) is a 3rd year PhD candidate at Lepeig University on the planet Mars where they research pre-habitation Science-Fiction in the early 21st century and its effect on contemporary artwork. Kisar completed their Masters degree at the University of Glasgow, where they were a part of the 2085 Fantasy MLitt class. Additionally, Kisar runs the Forgotten Fans Group and has worked as the Administration Officer for the Cross-Fantastika Conference for two years. Kisar lives with their partners Nayla and Deri and their cat Greebo. Their holographic games fan fiction can be found online (if you look hard enough).
GIFCon Code of Conduct
GIFCon Code of Conduct
GIFCon aims to be an inclusive and diverse space for scholars, students, creatives, fans, and the general public.
As one of the flasghip annual activities of the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic, GIFCon is covered by the CFF Code of Conduct. Please take the time to read it carefully.
In addition, please note the GIFCon Netiquette below:
- The GIFCon Netiquette complies with the guidelines set out by the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic’s Code of Conduct.
- GIFCon acknowledges concerns regarding the circulation of recorded talks or written papers online. Speakers and Attendees will be asked for their permission to be recorded during any of GIFCon's online activities or events prior to such recording taking place.
- Speakers may choose to upload their paper or presentation to the platform of their choice and provide a URL link to be made available to Attendees. Alternatively, they can provide the GIFCon Organisers with a version of the presentation in advance for accessibility purposes.
- We are aware that platforms such as Zoom are not available globally and we are working on different alternatives to accommodate Attendees to all our events and activities. If you have any concerns in this regard, please contact GIFCon
Policy for Participation in Online Sessions (Panels, Keynotes, and/or Workshops)
- The default setting for Attendees should be to have microphones muted. This is to avoid background noises that may disrupt the sessions.
- For conferences and panels, Speakers will unmute to engage in presentation and/or discussion.
- Workshop organisers will instruct Attendees regarding the specific dynamics of their events.
- When the event platform and settings allow, Attendees can choose whether they wish to engage or not with the video component of the event. Both video options (on or off) are valid.
- If the Attendees’ video and audio has been muted, they can communicate and pose their questions via the chat function or the Q&A section. Otherwise, questions for sessions, panels, keynotes, or workshops will begin only once the moderator and/or organizers invite questions. Do not interrupt either speakers or moderators to pose questions.
- Screen sharing will be enabled only for Committee Members, scheduled Speakers, and/or Moderators. Once Speakers have finished with the presentation, they should end the sharing of their screen.
- Attendees are welcome to post comments on the chat function of the platforms used by GIFCon during sessions, panels, keynotes, or workshops, as long as they abide by our COC.
- Q&A sessions and discussions must comply with our COC.
- During GIFCon, all backgrounds in Zoom, Discord, YouTube, and so on must adhere to our COC.
- Presenters will be able to request that Attendees refrain from live tweeting about their specific presentation for any reason. Attendees are expected to honour this request.
- Depending on the severity of the incident, violations to our Netiquette will be regarded as outlined by our Anti-Harassment and Anti-Bullying Policy. This can result in warning those concerned and asking them to modify their behaviour; restricting contact with Centre Members and Attendees, including banning those concerned from specific online sessions or the symposium altogether; and contacting University of Glasgow Authorities.
Equality, Diversity, and Accessibility Policy
Everybody can help
We believe everybody at GIFCon can contribute to making this event a safe and welcoming environment. Whether you are an Organiser, a Volunteer, Speaker, or an Attendee, please consider the following:
Conferences, Panels, and Workshops
If you are a Speaker at GIFCon, you will be given guidelines that include suggestions such as:
- If you are prerecording your presentation or would like your Chair to have a backup copy of your presentation materials, please send presentation materials to GIFCon@glasgow.ac.uk.
- If you are reading your presentation and are comfortable with showing your face during our online sessions, it is really helpful to keep your mouth visible when speaking for those who lip-read.
- Speakers also have the possibility of sharing their written paper with GIFCon attendees as a means to make their presentation more accessible for those with visual or hearing impairments. If this is something you would like to do, please contact our Committee.
For presentations with PowerPoint slides, please consider the following:
- If your slides include text, you can try to use it sparingly and in bold, large, and clear fonts in colours that have a high contrast with the background colour of your slides. Reading the text of your slides out loud during your presentation is helpful.
- Avoid red or green to either highlight or emphasise anything on your slides, as these colours can be difficult for those with visual impairments.
- The templates provided by PowerPoint, as they are pre-approved for screen readers and other accessibility devices.
- If your slides include images, please incorporate alt text (a brief one or two sentence description to accompany the image) or verbally describe the image during the presentation. This can be extremely helpful for Attendees with visual impairments and neurodiverse Attendees.
- If online events or activities take place on Zoom, the Deputy Chair will enable Zoom subtitles at the beginning of the event. You can personalize how subtitles appear on your screen by clicking the “Live Transcript” button on your Zoom menu.
- You can also help create subtitles in your PowerPoint slides to help people follow along. Instructions on how to do this can be found on the Microsoft Support website: Present with real-time, automatic captions or subtitles in PowerPoint.
- More information on how to create accessible PowerPoint slides can be found at the Microsoft Office Support website.
- If your presentation includes documents created with a Microsoft Office programme, we encourage you to use the Accessibility Checker.
- For more information, feel free to visit this site on dyslexia and this one on visual impairments.
- If your presentation, paper, or workshop covers sensitive materials or subjects, the GIFCon Committee asks that you give a trigger warning at the start of your talk.
- Please let the Committee know if you plan to use any flashing images or strobes so that Attendees can be advised in advance.
How to attend GIFCon 2024
Register for GIFCon 2024: Conjuring Creatures and Worlds here.
GIFCon 2024 Counjuring Creatures and Worlds will take place online.
GIFCon 2024 Committee
Chair/Programming: Will Tattersdill
Deputy Chair/Programming: Grace A.T. Worm
Accessibility and Diversity officer: Emma French
Administration officer: Georgina Gale
Communications officer: Will Sherwood
Events officer: Sam Tegtmeyer
MLitt Liason: Dulmi Wickremasinghe
Social Media officer: Hollie Willis
GIFCon Committee Bios
Dulmi Wickremasinghe is currently a student in the Glasgow Fantasy MLitt program, hoping to research the changing representation of women in fantasy from the 20th to 21st century, with a particular focus on 21st century YA fantasy. Her other research projects have largely been in cultural and medieval studies, and have explored topics such as skin lightening practices in colonial settings, queer representation in fantasy media, and alternative readings of the Middle English loathly lady tales.
Emma French (she/her) is a 3rd year SGSAH-funded PhD student at the University of Glasgow, researching how Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) consolidates our notions of fantasy, while enabling players to subvert established genre conventions. Her work addresses D&D’s treatment of race, gender, and sexual orientation; and looks at how players are using the game to address and repair the problematic legacies present within fantasy genre-culture. She graduated from Oriel College, University of Oxford, in 2015, and from the University of Glasgow with an MLitt in Fantasy in 2019. Her favourite fantasy authors include R.F Kuang, S.A. Chakraborty, and Silvia Moreno Garcia.
Georgina Gale (she/her) is a PhD researcher at the University of Glasgow and University of Stirling. Her project, ‘Chapters of Horror: Gothic Narrativisations of Gender Violence in Late-Victorian Journalism’, considers how newspapers used the rhetoric and motifs of contemporary gothic fiction when reporting on violence against women prior to the Whitechapel murders of 1888. She is also the creator of the Victorian Gothic Library, an index of open access digitised original copies of nineteenth-century gothic literature. In her spare time, she aggressively tweets spooky Victorian tidbits.
Grace Ann Thomas Worm (she/they) is a 3rd year PhD researcher on Female Fantasy in Tamora Pierce's fantasy world of Tortall at the University of Glasgow where she runs the Intersectional Fantastika reading group, is Vice Editor for the student journal Mapping the Impossible, and the Headquarters Officer for the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic and moderator of its Discord server. Grace is an English Literature International Bachelorette accredited secondary teacher who has taught across the U.S. This is her third GIFCon. Her teaching experience and research interests and publications cover fantasy, gender, race, class, ecology, YA, comics, video games, worldbuilding, neo-medievalism, poetry, theatre, and speculative fiction.
Hollie Willis is a 2nd-year PhD student at the University of Glasgow, and is part of the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic. Her PhD thesis explores representations of funerary rites in contemporary fantasy literature in the context of the Death Positivity movement. She is also a member of the Tolkien Society and has recently presented her research on the negative depiction of cremations in Tolkien’s legendarium through the lens of the Catholic Church’s Code of Canon Law. GIFCon 2024 is the first time Hollie has been a member of the GIFCon committee, working as the Social Media Officer.
Sam Tegtmeyer (he/him) is a PhD researcher at the University of Glasgow. His project ‘Opening a Canon of Maggots: Tradition, Innovation, and the Ideologies of Fantasy’ explores the pernicious persistence of problematic ideologies in the Fantasy genre and the ways authors conscious of that persistence have actively challenged it. He is a graduate of both the University of Glasgow’s English Literature: Fantasy MLitt and New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. You can summon him by asking "Who’s Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick?" three times into any mirror in Glasgow.
Will Sherwood is a PhD candidate researching J.R.R Tolkien and British Romanticism. The Education Secretary for The Tolkien Society, Will has presented at conferences on Tolkien, Romanticism, and Object-Oriented Ontology; his articles and reviews feature in various journals; and he has edited several books including Adapting Tolkien (2021), Tolkien and Diversity (2023), and Tolkien and the Gothic (2024). His latest project, The Romantic Spirit in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien, was co-edited with Dr. Julian Eilmann was a labour of love. You can find out more about Will and his work at http://will-sherwood.com
Will Tattersdill (he/him) is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Fantasy at Glasgow University, and the author of Science, Fiction, and the Fin-de-Siècle Periodical Press (Cambridge UP, 2016). He has taught and written on alternate history, museology, and animals in Star Trek, and is currently editing H. G. Wells for the Oxford World’s Classics series. His first children’s choose-your-own-adventure book (co-written with Sarah Crofton) was published last year.
GIFCon Volunteers
GIFCon could not run without volunteers, who help monitor social media, deal with Zoom headaches so you don't have to, chair panels, and help keep GIFCon running. From everyone on the GIFCon 2024 committee, thank you to all our wonderful volunteers this year.
Thank you to (in alphabetical order by first name):
Amber Pasternack
Catherine Hall
Chris Lynch Becherer
Diana Rotar
Hollyn Middleton
Karla Salinas
Olivia Cacciatore
Orla Davey
Maggie Naylor
Maidah Rihan
Rebeca Solomon
Robbin Dowling
Srishty Mahresh, &
Thomas Emanuel