Description of the activity Both an artistic aesthetic and a framework for critical theory, Afrofuturism combines elements of science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction, Afrocentricity and magic realism with non-Western beliefs (Womack 2013, 9). Amber Johnson (2019) takes the concept a step further to look at how trans identities and bodily transitions across, between, within, and…

Description of the activity. This interdisciplinary conference aimed to interrogate the manifold ways bodies are produced, performed, and perceived through cultural, technological, medical, and political lenses.Paula García Rodriguez analysed the ageing female body as a site of capitalist and patriarchal inscription in contemporary horror. The paper focused on Tracy Fahey’s They Shut Me Up (2023)…

Description of the activity. From 12–14 November 2025, it took place the third annual Haunted Futures Conference, held in the Department of Film and Screen Media at University College Cork.The conference explored haunting as a powerful site for radical social transformation. “By disrupting hegemonic relationships to time, haunting opens pathways for imagining alternative futures within…

Description of the activity At the 48th AEDEAN Conference, Paula García Rodriguez presented a paper examining the subversive potential of body horror in contemporary feminist and queer narratives. The paper focused on Queen of Teeth (Hailey Piper, 2021), and explored how the novel reimagines the monstrous female body. The protagonist of the novel, Yaya Betancourt,…

Description of the activity. Drawing from Sarah Ahmed’s postulates about how the classification of beings into their usefulness results into processes of victimisation (2019), and Zygmunt Bauman’s critique of the modern production of “human waste” (2004), this paper aims examined the concomitance of notions of human categorisation and stigmatisation with practices of disposability and violence…