Programme

Thursday 23 May

11:30 Registration and Welcome (tea and coffee)

12:30 Parallel Panel Sessions

PANEL A – Alien and Audiences (Cinema)

Martin Barker (Aberystwyth University) – ‘“Professional” Audiences and Alien

Kate Egan (Aberystwyth University) – ‘Allowing “us to just LIVE there”: Atmosphere, Authorship and Audience Evaluations of the Alien Film Series’

Filipa Antunes (UEA) and Alec Plowman – ‘Alien identities: genre, young audiences, and a franchise’s split personality’

PANEL B – Alien’s Progeny (PL2)

Kenneth Sloane (Dundalk Institute of Technology) – ‘Archetypes at the Crossroads: How divergent creative aspirations and global political upheaval shaped, and misshaped, the development of Alien 3

Carrie Lynn Evans (Université Laval, Quebec) – ‘Finding Fractals in the Chaotic Universe of Alien, Prometheus and Covenant

Zoë Wible (University of Kent) – ‘“What the hell is that?”: A cognitive approach to species categorization in the Alien transmedia franchise’

14:00 Parallel Panel Sessions

PANEL A – Alien and Feminism (Cinema)

Rona Murray (Lancaster University) – ‘I’m a Stranger here Myself: Sigourney Weaver and feminist agency in the Alien franchise’

Frances A. Kamm (University of Kent) – ‘“A Gothic Set in Space”: Alien and the Female Gothic’

PANEL B – Alien and Gaming (PL2)

Bronwyn Miller (Sydney University) – ‘Remediating Ripley: Negotiating the Male Gaze in Alien: Resurrection’

Reuben Martens (KU Leuven) – ‘Hissing in the Air Vents: On the Relation of Fear and Narrative in Alien: Isolation

Eoin Murray (Bangor University) – ‘Giving Power to the Powerless: Player engagement and agency in Alien: Isolation

15:30 Tea/Coffee

16:00 Parallel Panel Sessions

PANEL A – Alien Futures (Cinema)

Peter Hodges (University of South Wales) – ‘Loving the Alien: How sound brings life to the fantastic’

Kieran Nolan and Kenneth Sloane (Dundalk Institute of Technolgy) – ‘Retro Videogame Aesthetics and the Alien Universe’

PANEL B – Alien: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (PL2)

Metamorphosis (David Shepherd, Bangor)

Artificial Intelligence (Bill Teahan, Bangor)

17:00 Preview screening: Alien on Stage: The Documentary (PL2)

Including Q&A with director/editor Danielle Kummer and director/producer Lucy Harvey

Supper / Refreshments18.00

GUEST SPEAKER: Colin Arthur (Visual Effects Artist on Alien) (PL2) 19.00

Film Screening: Alien (Cinema) 20.15– tickets sold separately

Friday 24 May

09:00 Parallel Panel Sessions

PANEL A – Alien, Art and Literature (Cinema)

Amanda Potter (Open University) and Tania Evans (Australian National University) – ‘Spawn on Alien: The Monstrous Feminine in Homer’s Odyssey, Alien [1979], and Siren [2018- ]’

Gareth Halliwell (Edge Hill University) – ‘At the Mountains of LV-426: Ridley Scott’s Alien in H.P. Lovercraft’s ‘At the Mountains of Madness’’

Christopher L. Robinson (École Polytechnique) – ‘The Father of Alien: Visualizing Alien as an H.R. Giger Painting’

PANEL B – Alien: Promotion, Paratexts and Transmedia (PL2)

Tonguç Sezen (Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences) – ‘Intradiegetic Paratexts of the Alien Franchise’

Cormac Donnelly (Futureworks Media School) – ‘Selling the “Star Beast”’

Kim Louise Walden (University of Hertfordshire) – ‘Prometheus’ Promotional Campaign: Where ‘the advertising is part of the picture’’

Tea and coffee10:30

11:00 Parallel Panel Sessions

PANEL A – Alien and Theory (Cinema)

Dominic Lash (University of Bristol) – ‘Bursting through: two ruptures of (and in) Alien [1979]’

Mario Slugan (Ghent University) – ‘Melodrama of the Unknown Woman Lost in Space: A Cavellian Reading of Alien

Jocelyn Dupont (University of Perpignan) – ‘Alien and Georges Bataille’s Eroticism’

PANEL B – Alien and Bodies (PL2)

Fran Pheasant-Kelly (University of Wolverhampton) – ‘Reframing the Abject: Alien, the Bodily Turn and a “Structure of Feeling”’

Sara Wheeler (Glyndŵr University) – ‘Boundaries of viscerality: a sense of abjection regarding “the perfect organism”’

Nicola Pasqualicchio (University of Verona) – ‘A struggle of the archetypes: Ellen Ripley between virile heroism and monstrous motherhood’

12:30 Lunch

13:30 Parallel Panel Sessions

PANEL A – Alien and Identity (Cinema)

Steven Davies (Glyndwr University) – ‘The Space Jockey and the Selfie’

David Ellis (Bangor University) - ‘Would an Encounter of the Third Kind be the Last Kind we ever have?: Moral considerations on the human and alien communication’


PANEL BAlien, The Maternal and The Paternal (PL2)

Amanda DiGioia (University College London) – ‘Postmodern Prometheus and the perversion of male creation: examining motherhood, fatherhood, and birth in the Alien series’

Alice Haylett Bryan (King’s College London) – ‘“Would you go back for Newt?”: Watching the Alien franchise as a mother’

14:30 Tea and coffee

15:00 KEYNOTE ADDRESS

Dr Rikke Schubart (Syddansk Universitet/University of Southern Denmark)

‘Here, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty: The AlienFilm Franchise as Interspecies Human-Alien Pet Play’

** CLOSE **