This conference offers a serious opportunity to bring together academics, enthusiasts, creative practitioners and popular writers in a shared discussion about the cultural legacy of Sherlock Holmes. The Strand Magazine and the Sherlock Holmes stories contribute one of the most enduring paradigms for the production and consumption of popular culture in the twentieth- and the twenty-first centuries. The stories precipitated a burgeoning fan culture including various kinds of participation, wiki and crowd-sourcing, fan-fiction, virtual realities and role-play gaming. All of these had existed before but they were solidified, magnified and united by Sherlockians and Holmesians in entirely new ways and on scales never seen before. All popular culture phenomena that followed (from Lord of the Rings to Twilight via Star Trek) shared its viral pattern. This project aims to unpick the historical intricacies of Holmesian fandom as well as offering a wide variety of perspectives upon its newest manifestations. This conference invites adaptors of and scholars on Holmes, late-Victorian writing, and popular culture internationally to contribute to this scholarly conversation. Our aims are to celebrate Conan Doyle’s achievement, to explore some of the reasons behind Holmes’ enduring popularity across different cultures and geographical spaces, and to investigate new directions in Holmes’ afterlife. This conference will precede Holmes’ 160th birthday in 2014. It will launch a new volume of essays on Holmes co-edited by Dr. Jonathan Cranfield and Tom Ue, and form part of the larger celebrations in London and internationally.
Location:
Senate House, London
Dates:
21 and 22 June 2013
Possible Topics:
- Holmes and Detective Fiction
- Holmes and Science
- Becoming Holmes
- Holmes and Gender
- Holmes’ Costume
- Holmes in Retirement
- Holmes and His Boswell
- Holmes and Steampunk
- Holmes and Philosophy
- Holmes and Moriarty
- Holmes computer games
- Holmes/Victoriana in the graphic novel (From Hell, Grandeville...)
- Post-2000 film and television adaptation
- Fan letters addressed to Holmes
Submit proposals of 350 words and biographies of 150 words by email to BOTH Jonathan at J.L.Cranfield@ljmu.ac.uk AND Tom at ue_tom@hotmail.com by 15 January 2013.