I'm going to Bristol!

[rm]

I've been making a lot of noise about Bristol, but today I can finally say my abstract has been accepted to the conference, Desiring the Text, Touching the Past: Towards An Erotics of Reception.

A Tangible Reality of Absence: Fan Communities and the Mourning of
Fictional Characters

Audiences, particularly those segments that self-identify as fans,
often respond strongly to the deaths of beloved characters in the
narratives of popular television, film, and book series. In some
cases, these audiences react to fictional deaths by engaging in
traditional mourning rituals, including memorial ceremonies and
displays, charity tribute funds, and personal presentation
modification.

Through these acts, audience members stake claim to otherwise
inaccessible desired bodies while also creating a dialogue that
eroticizes the deceased. These displays of desire also serve to claim
status within fan communities: after all, mourners are traditionally
not just lovers, but also friends, colleagues, and family members.
Thus, the mourning activities of the fan community become an act of
partial defictionalization, moving the desired bodies of personal and
narrative fantasy into a tangible reality of absence.

Not all fictional deaths, however, elicit such reactions. Rather,
whether audience-led mourning rituals occur is dictated by narrative
context, including the degree to which death is fetishized in the
source material and the accessibility of the character's flesh in the
canonical story.

By highlighting fan responses to the deaths of Ianto Jones from
"Torchwood," Hoban Washburne from "Firefly," and Severus Snape from
the "Harry Potter" series and comparing these responses to historical
incidences of mourning for literary characters, this paper seeks to
address the phenomenon of non-fictional mourning for fictional
characters and examine the narrative features that provoke these acts
of eroticization, which are often perceived as transgressive by those
outside of the participating communities.

That I'm getting to do this means a lot to me. Mourning as a lens through which to view the world, fictional and not, is this weird thing that's always been intrinsic to my nature. When this CFP came up right around the same time I was being utterly taken with/touched/fascinated by the Mermaid Quay display for Ianto Jones, this thing just sprung into my head, and all the preliminary research I did made it just stronger and more specific and fascinating and weird than anything I could have imagined.

To get to do something like this as an independent scholar without an advanced degree (I'm on a panel with three professors and my paper is paired with something related to Augustine (and thank god, I have more of a background in that than I should)) is huge. To get to do something like this about stuff I love, (and about characters I've mourned; 2009 has been a weird year) and at a conference that notes (in a manner that implicitly smacks down the notion than fannishness is weakness or sin) in the CFP that "many classical and medieval authors recount embodied and highly emotional encounters with religious, fictional or historical characters," is something I don't even really know how to emotionally react to yet.

But I wanted this like mad, and now have a lot of hard work ahead of me. This is the beginning of something awesome and something I deserve, and oh shit, now this means I'm going to England twice next year!

Some of you may be hearing from me with some requests for favors, or warning that I want to cite one of your fics (actually, I think there's just one of you I have to email about that). I also have to begin the great death fetishization re-watch/re-read of all this stuff (mmmm, science-y). Meanwhile, and this isn't even a joke -- this shit is fraught for me for I hope obvious reasons -- what do I wear?

Comments

[ladyaelfwynn.livejournal.com]

Congrats!

Wish I were going to either Bristol for whatever it is or Infinitus but 2010 is our quieter year with the biggish trip being Atlanta for DragonCon.

When talking HP don't forget Lupin and Tonks. When I found out through an accidental spoiler what happened, I was at work and had to go lock myself in a bathroom stall and sob as quietly as possible. I was in tears the whole metro ride home. A part of me realized just how goofy it was. I kept thinking, "How in hell am I going to explain this if anyone at work should ask why I'm so upset?" Replying, "My most favorite fictional character just died," would get me laughed at even though Lupin's death was a tangible thing to me. I've mourned more for Lupin than some of my own family.

What to wear...hmmm...do you have a linen suit? Do you want to look professorial? Do you want to play up or play down your femininity? What else is going on at the conference? Will you be cosplaying at all? How scholarly do you want to look?

I know it's a lot of questions but each of those impact on the choices you make. For what it's worth, I'm envisioning you wearing a lovely pale cream/white (whatever that pale neutral whitish shade is that best suits your complexion) linen suit with perhaps a deep mint/sage green dress shirt and a dark tie.

Good luck!

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

It's an academic conference, there is no cosplaying.

The land of HP is strange, and I may do a version of this for Infinitus, but there's been, as far as I can tell a marked difference in acts of mourning deaigned to defictionalize as regards Snape vs. the rest of the really high HP bodycount.

As someone who cried at work over the Ianto thing, I so hear you in the sense of "and what do I say about this?"

[ladyaelfwynn.livejournal.com]

Being in the States and far away from anything physically related to HP, there hasn't been any way for me to defictionalize my mourning for any of the HP characters. I've figured out about where I think Grimmauld Place was (not far from where I lived my semester in London). Were I there, I'd probably leave flowers or something.

We did, however, celebrate Lupin's birthday, one year. With a cake and singing him the birthday song. And, in case you aren't familiar with constellations, that is Canis Majora (of which Sirius is the brightest star).