Cognitive Resonance

I'll be serving as the discussant for Frederik L. Schodt's book talk on Wednesday, October 2 at the Center for Japanese Studies at UC Berkeley. His new book is Professor Risley and the Imperial Japanese Troupe: How an American Acrobat Introduced the Circus to Japan--and Japan to the West.

It's at 4pm at the Institute of East Asian Studies, and the event is open to the public. I hope to see you there!

I got back from WisCon yesterday and I am still pretty tired. But, though I failed to see a good many people I would have liked to hang out with more, I had an awesome time overall.

I think my panels went, on the whole, okay. The Vid Party Discussion panel wound up being, at the mod's direction, mostly about the vids in the Premieres show, which was fine except that none of the Premieres vids hooked me in the heart emotionally in the way that some of the best vids I've seen have. But of course one's response to vids is highly subjective, and it was a really interesting panel, I thought.

LGB Characters in Anime & Manga was also fine. My fellow panelists, and in particular Emily Horner, said very smart things, and I was proud of my shutting down several problematic questions from the audience with what other people tell me was a modicum of grace. The main problem was that I was so tired--10:30pm panels haven't been a problem for me before, but coming off a solid week of action-packed traveling beforehand, I was pretty beat by the end.

Anime & Manga 101 was less good, I thought, though I think most people who came were not actually at the 101 level and were actually looking for a recs list, which we definitely gave them. I was annoyed at a fellow panelist for trying to monopolize the conversation with a fairly mainstream list of recommendations. My decision to sit at the end of the table made it hard to cut him off gracefully, since we were separated by two other panelists, and he would not take the lead-weighted hints I was dropping about shutting up, especially at the end of the panel. I'm sitting in the middle of the table from now on. I'm also going to try to be more like kate_nepveu, who is the mod I want to be when I grow up.

Personal shortcomings aside, I had an awesome time hanging out with people, and I am very excited to see everyone next year, when Hiromi Goto and N.K. Jemisin will be the Guests of Honor!

I'll be speaking for about half an hour (15 minutes talk, 15 minutes Q&A) about my work on the data side of the Fan Fiction and Internet Memory project under Gail De Kosnik next Wednesday at 3:00pm. If you're Berkeley-side, shoot me an email and I will send you the info.

I'll be speaking at the spring bakai at IEAS at Berkeley on Wednesday, January 30 at 4pm. My talk is called "Record of Dying Days: Ôoku as Alternate History," and is the next step of the talk I've been giving in various fora since last fall. The event isn't open to the public, but if you're a Berkeley grad student who wants to attend, drop me a line and I'll forward your RSVP. Brendan Morley and Michael Craig of EALC will also be giving talks.

I'm thrilled to be returning to the Sirens Conference again this year, now being held at Skamania Lodge in Stevenson, Washington. I'll be appearing on several panels: 


Beyond Werewolves: Telling and Retelling Shapeshifter Stories
Janni Lee Simner, Cora Anderson, Mette Ivie Harrison, Andrea Horbinski, Cindy Pon
From pookas and kitsune to selkies and frog princes, shapeshifters have long played a role in the stories we tell. Although wolves may be contemporary fantasy’s most beloved werecreatures, other animal shifters appear everywhere from Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea books to Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake novels. This panel will take a wider look at the range and nature of shapeshifters of all species in folklore and fantasy novels, at the varied stories different creatures lead us to tell and retell, and at where our fascination with taking on forms not our own comes from in the first place.

Fans and Fandom as (Re)Tellers of Tales
Andrea Horbinski, Marie Brennan, Rachel Manija Brown, Hallie Tibbetts, Sarah Rees Brennan
It’s a common jump from loving a book, a story, a TV show, or a movie, to wanting to play around with its elements oneself. Fandom offers many girls and women a space in which to do just that. This panel looks at fandom and fans as retellers of tales, asking questions such as: what kinds of stories do fans choose to retell? What are some of the most common, or most interesting, kinds of fannish retellings? What is the line between “fannish” and “professional” retellings of stories such as fairy tales? What makes fandom (and retelling) original and creative?

Retelling History
Marie Brennan, Andrea Horbinski, Mette Ivie Harrison, Juliet Grames
Whether it simply uses the culture of the period or features real people and events in starring roles, whether it hews closely to reality or flings in vampires and zombies, historical fiction takes the past and reshapes it for a modern audience. What methods do writers use to retell history in fiction? And what obligation does the writer have to their source?


This will be my third time attending Sirens, and though the con is slightly pricey compared to many other small conferences, I've been consistently impressed at the quality and caliber of the discussions among the attendees, not only on programming but at meals, in the hallways, and at the fancy dress ball. There are still a few on-site registrations available, and if you're in the area, I really do urge you to consider joining us, and if not, please do think about next year! It's a wonderful event for women in fantasy literature, and we'd love to have you.