ICFA Post-Game Report
Yes, I know it’s a week past due, but better late than never. Besides, I was busy enjoying 80 degree sunny days on the Gulf of Mexico, which even in California are a rarity right now. So I couldn’t very well spend them sitting at a computer.
But here we are, a week after my first time attending the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts (or ICFA, for the multi-syllabic challenged) and I’m happy to announce that I had a wonderful time.
I have to admit, I was a felt a little out of my element about attending an academic conference of literature students and scholars, since I am neither an academic nor a scholar. Especially when I needed a dictionary and an interpreter just to understand some of the titles for the papers, like:
Languages, Litanies, and the Limit: Mathematics as Discourse in Neal Stephenson’s Anathem
I still have no idea what that means.
In any case, with four days of round table panels, author readings, and academic papers, I had the opportunity to meet a bunch of great people, make a lot of new friends, share my thoughts on humor in horror on my panel, and even attend a couple of papers on zombies that referenced Breathers, including:
The Decomposition of the Contemporary Family: Zombie’s Role in the Transmogrification of the Nuclear Family (by Emily Mashak);
and The Politics of Zombie Love: Subversion, Self-Actualization, and Erotic Zombies in S.G. Browne’s Breathers (by Professor Franc Auld).
It was interesting to sit in on the papers and hear someone else’s interpretation of Breathers, which is another blog post entirely, but I very much enjoyed the conference and I’m looking forward to going back to ICFA again next year.
I’ll just make sure to bring along an interpreter.
