Three academic talks:
Gillian Polack: Jewish Cultural Representation in Novik’s Spinning Silver.
Foodways are integral to interpreting the use of food. How Jewish characters and culture are depicted in Spinning Silver through foodways demonstrates how Novik depicts cultures and religious values in the novel. Viewing foodways in the context of the culture of Jewish Lithuania in illuminates Novik’s invented Litvas.
Alison Baker: Folklore in Three British Children’s Fantasy Books.
In this paper I will be discussing the use made of three characters from folklore (the Black Dog, the Headless Horseman and the Brownie or Hob) in Briggs’ Hobberdy Dick, Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Pratchett’s The Wee Free Men. I will outline the use the authors make of folklore to underpin or under cut the sense of Britishness and social class.
Eugen Bacon: African Creation Mythologies.
Aligned with cultural influences on international genre works, this paper will gaze at creation mythologies in the African continent. It showcases the rich belief systems that carry across Africa and the diaspora, and that might inform current and future black speculative fiction.