Drood_serial_coverTo celebrate the official launch of The Drood Inquiry (www.droodinquiry.com), this one-day conference will explore the mysterious world of Drood and its solutions. Further details and updates can be found on our blog at http://cloisterhamtales.wordpress.com/category/the-drood-conference/

Venue: Institute of English Studies (IES), School of Advanced Study, University of London.
Senate House, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7H

Date and time: Saturday 20 September 2014, 09:30 – 17:45.

Register via Eventbrite here.

Ticket prices include lunch and refreshments throughout the day – please contact the organisers to notify of any special dietary requirements. In addition to the above, two exhibitions will run during the day showcasing Drood-related treasures from the Senate House Library and original artwork by Alys Jones.

Draft Programme

09.30-10.00 Registration
10.00-10.45 Introduction: The Heritage of Edwin Drood

(Chair: Dr Pete Orford, University of Buckingham)

Keynote: Reflections on past and present Drood scholarship

Professor Don Richard Cox, University of Tennessee

10.45-11.35 Panel 1: The Solutions of Edwin Drood

(Chair: Dr Pete Orford, University of Buckingham)

Imitating the inimitable: attempts to complete Edwin Drood

Dr Camill Ullelan Hoel and Dr Tor Nordam, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

M R James and the Edwin Drood Syndicate

Jane Piddock, University of Aberystwyth

11.35-11.45 Coffee break
11.45-12.30

 

 

 

Q & A: Finishing Edwin Drood
Discussion session with David Madden, author of The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Unthank Books, 2012) andGwyneth Hughes, screenwriter of the BBC adaptation of the Mystery of Edwin Drood , 2012.
12.30-13.30 LUNCH
13.30-14.45 Panel 2: The Appropriation of Edwin Drood

(Chair: Professor John Drew, University of Buckingham)

Premonition of the End: Fictionality in Dickens’s Edwin Drood and Gissing’s Henry Ryecroft

Tom Ue, University of Birkbeck

‘Another kind of immortality, more essential and more strange’: Dick-ensian hauntings, in the works of Susan Howe and Jean-Piere Ohl

Clemence Follea, Universite Parie Diderot

Evidence, storytelling, and the resistance of closure in Dan Simmon’s Drood

Dr Anne-Marie Beller, University of Loughborough

14.45-15.00 Coffee break
15.00-16.15 Panel 3: The Characters of Edwin Drood

(Chair: Professor David Paroissien, University of Buckingham)

From ‘universal terrorist’ to ‘tragic anti-hero’: John Jasper as a villain of the times

Dr Jonathan Buckmaster, Royal Holloway

The Identification of Sapsea

Sven Karsten, Independent

The Mystery of Heads in Drood

Emma Curry, University of Birkbeck

16:15-16:25 Coffee break
16:25-17:15   Panel 4: The Locations of Edwin Drood

(Chair: Dr Hazel Mackenzie, University of Buckingham)

‘The great black city cast it’s shadow on the waters’: Jasper’s London in The Mystery of Edwin Drood

Hadas Elber-Aviram, University College, London

‘Venerable, Architectural and Inconvenient’: The Rented Spaces of Edwin Drood

Ushashi Dasgupta, University of Oxford

17:15-18:00 Round table: The Digitalisation of Edwin Drood

(Chair: Dr Hazel Mackenzie, University of Buckingham)

Discussion from the Drood Inquiry team on digitalising Drood

Dr Pete Orford, University of Buckingham, Alys Jones