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

[rm.livejournal.com]

Weirdly, I feel really comfortable about the format, because it's so much closer to what I normally do at cons and pop-culture-y things. Which is a stroke of luck considering how intense the people on my panel are. I'm sort of getting the sinking feeling I may be the only person with no advanced degrees at the thing.

[byzantienne.livejournal.com]

I've never done panels at a con! And my professional conference experience has all been the stand-up-at-a-lectern-and-perform sort of deal (which I'm innately more comfortable in -- performance is easy, conversation which has to carry meaning is difficult.)

Might I ask who is on your panel? Email me (quantumseraph at gmail) if you don't want to say in public.

-- also, I bet there are some others. And hey, some of us don't have any advanced degrees yet. *grins*

[rm.livejournal.com]

Sent.

And seriously, for values of easy, this stuff is easy. You're having a dinner party, on stage! It's all performance.

[byzantienne.livejournal.com]

And sent you mine.

-- actually that does make me feel better. I can do that. I hope. I think.