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CfP: We Love Monsters: Reception of Ancient Monsters International Conference, Nafplio (Greece), 26-28 May 2027

November 15

Ancient monsters are never far away, or as Liz Gloyn finds, in her 2020 monograph Tracking Classical Monsters in Popular Culture they are ‘everywhere‘ (p. 2). Over time our heroes fight them, like Odysseus with his unnecessary parting shot of an arrow aimed at the blinded Polyphemus in Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey (2026) or try to understand and live in harmony with them, as the young heroine Princess Nausicaa does in Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984). We love the monsters as much as (and perhaps even more than) we fear them, from the Labubu doll that hangs from our handbag, the wide grin and pointed teeth perhaps reminiscent of the Gorgoneion, to the mind-controlling Sirens who turn out to be helpful allies in the Netflix series Wednesday (2022-). According to Cohen’s seven theses the monster is ‘born again’ across different times and cultures and will ‘always return’, helping us to question who we are and what our place is in the world (pp. 5, 20).

​In this international conference we would like to build on the work of Gloyn, in tracking ancient monsters as they are received across media, from late antiquity to the present day. We invite proposals from students and scholars in all stages of their careers, covering aspects of the reception of ancient monsters. Suggested topics are below:

  • Ancient monsters and monster theory
  • Feminist and queer readings of ancient monsters
  • Ancient monsters across as they appear across different cultures
  • Depictions of ancient monsters in the late antique and early modern periods
  • Ancient monsters in film, TV, video games, comics, manga, anime

Please email an abstract of 300 words for a 20 minute paper or 150 words for a 5 minute lightening talk, together with a short biography, to the conference organisers: Guen Taietti gtaietti@liverpool.ac.uk / guendalina.taietti@uab.cat and Amanda Potter amandapotter@caramanda.co.uk by 15 November 2026.

This is an in-person event in Nafplio, Greece, coorganized by the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the University of Liverpool, and supported and hosted by the Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies in Greece (CHS Greece).

Bibliography

Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome (1996) ‘Monster Culture (Seven Theses)’ in Monster Theory: Reading Culture, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ed., Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 3–25.

Gloyn, Liz (2020) Tracking Classical Monsters in Popular Culture, London: Bloomsbury.

 

Guen Taietti, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona & University of Liverpool, and Amanda Potter, Open University

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