Hey! I'm in there! One of those people is me! (there is the occasional perk to being an academic)

mosie | March 02, 11:22 CET

Congrats, mosie!

Invisible Green | March 02, 11:40 CET

Oh, MissKittysMom. Oh. I really, really wanted to go to this. And if I could have, I would have been torn between your subject (....the Buffyverse as Medieval Carnival!!!!) and another one at 10:45--the one about decorative bookbindings. I saw so many things I'm interested in that I would have had to clone myself several times just to take it all in.

Do you know when/if the papers will be available online at the Slayage site? Sorry. Guess I could go to the site and try to find out. Gettin' lazy. Gettin' late, for that matter.

Hope you and mosie enjoy yourselves!

SangChaud | March 02, 11:53 CET

Wow - have fun MKM and mosie - I'm so jealous! When are they gonna have one of these for free in my living room (while I'm dreaming).
And 'Faith as an evil dead lesbian cliche'? Unmissable stuff!

lone fashionable wolf | March 02, 13:20 CET

*jaw drops* What an amazing line-up of talks!

Congratulations on being in the program, MissKittysMom and mosie! :-)

billz | March 02, 14:35 CET

My goodness, I might even be able to go to this. It would be such a change from the boring discipline-specific academic conferences I attend. The problem I would share with others is the desire to hear every panel. But this looks like fun.

palehorse | March 02, 17:02 CET

As I understand it, some of the papers will be published in Slayage, and other papers may be posted on the Slayage site. All of this will be some time after the conference, since we don't turn in our papers until we're on-site for the conference.

I'm building my paper around the works of Mikhail Bakhtin, a Russian literary theorist who provides some interesting tools for exploring multilayered, larger-than-life stories such as the Buffyverse. His carnival theory covers a number of things, including death and rebirth, the use of parody and the grotesque, and the relationship between popular culture and high culture. There have been some previous uses of carnival theory in analyzing Buffy, but this will go whole-hog, so to speak.

Bakhtin's theory of polyphonic narrative (dialogism) provides a tool for linking multiple points of view with the many subtexts in the Buffyverse. I'm hoping to pull off a linkage between subtexts and multiple dimensions in the 'verse, but that's the part of the paper that I really haven't gotten started on yet.

For anyone speaking or attending, it would be fun to have a Whedonesque meet-up while we're there!

MissKittysMom | March 02, 17:28 CET

"Joss Whedon has a Problem with Authority"

They should get Armin Shimmerman to present this piece of work.

delirium_haze | March 02, 20:04 CET

Only if he gets eaten during the presentation.

MissKittysMom | March 02, 20:29 CET

*chimes in* I'm in there, too. *grin*

And, I would love to meet up with the fellow Whedonesquers. ;)

ctofine | March 02, 20:32 CET

Oooh, fun topic! I'll be touching on the topic of fools with the carnival aspect, also.

MissKittysMom | March 02, 20:48 CET

My wife and I went to the first Slayage Conference a couple of years ago and loved it. We've been registered for this second one for some time now, and I'd love to shake hands with some fellow Whedonesquers myself. Unfortunately my wife didn't submit HER paper (on faith and "religion" in the works of Whedon) in time for it to make it onto the schedule... although that does give us more time to see all the other papers being presented. Unfortunately there are still a few conflicts for us in the schedule, so we may end up having to split up and take thourough notes to share with each other later.

(Anyone know if we're allowed to bring audio recorders to the sessions? Or even better yet, video recorders?)

It's a shame that there's not more work focusing specifically on Angel though. I knew this would happen... at the first conference Angel had just ended and none of the fans from "across the pond" had seen it yet, so we weren't allowed to talk about the last season. And THIS year Angel has been off-air long enough to be "forgotten" and Serenity is still fresh enough that it will be getting a lot of attention.

So again my Angel love goes more-or-less unrequited. :(

[ edited by Haunt on 2006-03-02 19:55 ]

Haunt | March 02, 21:54 CET

Since this is my first conference...ever, I needed to pick something I adored and was familiar with--thus Anya and and The Fool aspect. MKM, I'm glad I'm not the only one dealing with fools in the 'verses! :)

I would love to do a paper on Shakespearean elements in Angel, however...at some point. I wondered at the lack of Angel, as well. I'm glad to see that there are so many diverse topics, if not so much diversity in the shows, per say.

ctofine | March 02, 22:17 CET

i'm traditionally a Buffy girl, but I've recently been trying my hand at Firefly. My paper's Friday evening on the feminist geography of Firefly and Serenity (tosses anonimity to wind--so long anonimity!). Have been toying with the idea of a Cordy paper down the line to round out the triumvarite.

Perhaps next year, for Haunt.

mosie | March 02, 22:34 CET

Ctofine, are you familiar with the Russian holy fool, yurodivy? That's kind of the direction that I'll be coming from. Xander, Spike, Lorne, Andrew, Wesley, Harmony.... so many fools to choose from!

MissKittysMom | March 02, 22:36 CET

MissKittysMom, you have an e-mail coming your way. Hope you don't mind!

ctofine | March 03, 01:00 CET