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Conference details

Fear Studies in an Age of Fear

A One-Day Conference at the University of Warwick
31 January 2025

‘Fear Studies in an Age of Fear’ is the inaugural event of the ‘The Fear Network’: a cross-faculty research group at the University of Warwick bringing together people interested in how ‘negative’ emotions — fear, anxiety, humiliation, disgust, and so on – shape cultural and political life.

Please find the conference programme below. It is being held at the University's dedicated conference facilities in Scarman house, which can provide bed and breakfast accommodation. See here for more details of how to book this.


Provisional registration is now open and can be completed here. The booking form to pay the conference fee will follow in a separate email before January to those that have registered.
The conference fee is:

Full-time/permanent staff: £30

Students and contractual staff: £20

Online attendance: £10

For those attending in person, this includes lunch as well as refreshments in the morning and afternoon.

Conference Programme


8.30-9.00: Registration and coffee

9.00-9.15: Welcome

 

9.15-10.30: World-Gothic/Grotesque/Horror: Fictions of Fear in an Age of World-Ecological Crisis

World-Gothic in Theory

Rebecca Duncan, Linnaeus University

 

Extraction, Banquets, and the World-Grotesque in Gwledd/The Feast (2021)

Elliott Berggren, Linnaeus University

 

World-Horror and the World-Food-System Crisis

Johan Höglund, Linnaeus University

 

10.30-10.45: Break

 

10.45-12.15: Narratives of Fear, Survival, and Socialization: Exploring Memory, Violence, and Anxiety in Conflict-Affected Spaces

Fear in the Field: Reflections on Narratives of “Peace” in Colombia

Jamie Shenk, University of Warwick

 

Decolonial Critical Theory: A Dialectic of Survival

Teodora Todorova, University of Warwick

 

Political Socialization: Analysing Age, Period and Cohort Effects on Worry about Crime and Disorder

Emily Gray, University of Warwick

 

Murmurations From an Abusive Flock: Fear, Belonging and the Police

Dipbuk Panchal, University of Warwick

 

12.15-1.15: Lunch

 

1.15-2.45: Histories of Fear

Civilizing Fear: Virtue and Terror in Classical Greece and Revolutionary France

Xavier Buxton, University of Cyprus / University of Warwick

 

Savage Encounters, Fear and the Evangelical/Modern Subject

Claire Blencowe, University of Warwick

 

The Anxiety and Fear of Communication: What Can We Learn from Eighteenth-Century Letters?

Rachel Bynoth, Bath Spa University

 

Fear and the Environment in the 1800s U.S. Plantation South

Mia Edwards, University of Warwick

 

2.45-3.00: Break

 

3.00-4.15: Embodying the State: Presence, Disgust and Outrage in the Performance of Power

Political Affects and Embodied States

Henrique Carvalho, University of Warwick

 

Disgust at the Border: Border Work as Dirty Work

Ana Aliverti, University of Warwick

 

Circuits of Outrage Against and Within the English State of Homelessness

Simon Tawfic, University of Warwick

 

4.15-4.30: Break

 

4.30-5.45: Psychologies of Fear

What are We Anxious About? Applying Philosophical Insights to Psychology

Maria Balaska, University of Hertfordshire / Åbo Akademi University, Finland

 

What Do I Want (You) To Feel? Investigating Emotion Goals in Children, Adolescents, and Adults

Michaela Gummerum, University of Warwick

 

(How) Can We Study Horror Better?

G. Neil Martin, Regent’s University London

 

5.45: Close and drinks