HauntingIssues

Haunting Issues: Children, Spectrality and Culture @ahrcpress Research Network is live! Exploring the child at the boundary of life and death in literature & culture, relationships between nationality and spectral children, and between care-giving and the missing child.

Such a pleasure to introduce our final screening for the Spectral Child on Screen series. Abrahamson’s ‘The Little Stranger’ remains profoundly eerie, poignant and beautiful. Huge thanks to @HydeParkPH for collaborating with us.

Ahead of our 'Spectral Child on Screen' film festival @HydeParkPH @spectres_of has written a contribution to the Hyde Park Picture House journal, on the phenomena of the cinematic ghost child in contemporary film. You can read it here: hpph.co.uk/journal/phanto…

Our programme has been chosen to explore the various ways in which, historically and culturally, the ghostly or spectral child has functioned as a motif in international cinema. We hope you can join us!

The following week, on Sunday 22nd September the series will culminate in a screening of Lenny Abrahamson's adaptation of Sarah Waters' 'The Little Stranger' (hpph.co.uk)

Join us this Sunday for the first of our 'Spectral Child on Screen' events @HydeParkPH ! On the 15th September we will be hosting a double bill of Peter Medak's 'The Changeling' and Guillermo del Toro's 'The Devil's Backbone'. See hpph.co.uk for tickets!

For more details and precise dates email @spectres_of (lucy.arnold@worc.ac.uk)

Lit and film folks in the north! @HauntingIssues are looking for academics to give intros to 2 of our ‘Spectral Child on Screen’ film screenings this September! If you can speak to Abrahamson’s ‘The Little Stranger’ or del Toro’s ‘The Devil’s Backbone’ we want to hear from you!

Of course after all that a little refreshment was necessary

@DrDominicDean rounded out our discussion panels with a fascinating paper on spectres of the climate crisis.

The excellent @Emily__Vincent starting our first academic panel with a discussion of the spectral child and the eco gothic.

Our second session of the morning saw colleagues from @NewWritingNorth update us on one of the engagement projects which has emerged from the network - a creative writing initiative with students from the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community.

A wonderful welcome to Newcastle and to the day from our Co-I @ProfKatyShaw who gave an exciting update on what the network has achieved to date.

@HauntingIssues have our final workshop today at the wonderful Common Room, Newcastle. Looking forward to a day with of discussions around the Spectral Child and the Anthropocene.

Scholars of childhood, borders and haunting: Following @HauntingIssues workshop 1 in June 23, abstracts are sought for a proposal for a special issue of @ChildrensGeogs ‘The Spectral Child at the Border’ See link for further details of the proposed issue: 1drv.ms/w/s!Al7Lm7fsUV…

Visit our Blog for a new post from @spectres_of on ‘The Kids Who [Don’t] Come Back: Thoughts on “Ghost Children” and the Post-Covid Education Landscape’ sway.cloud.microsoft/GDltIdiqxke4eZ…

Enormous thanks to all of our speakers for their generous and insightful contributions.

The conversation was enormously rich and we hope to be able to share some of the insights which emerged in a full event write up very soon.

@spectres_of had the great pleasure of joining legal scholar Dr Andrea Mulligan, midwife and law PhD candidate Julika Hudson, and authors Jessica Traynor and Alice Kinsella last night for a fascinating discussion on the subject of the child in Irish law, culture and society.

Delighted to be in Dublin for a round table on The Spectral Child and the Law. This conversation will bring together creative writers, clinicians and legal scholars to think about a range of topics pertaining to the law and the child, both historically and in our present moment.