Fairy Tale Economies Conference: Oct. 1 & 2, 2009

This is very late notice--I only learned about it a few days ago and Once Upon a Blog beat me to posting it first (Hi Gypsy!). However, I want this blog to be a place to learn about these events and since it's only a few months old, three actually, I don't feel too badly. Still, if I had known earlier, I probably would have made a trip down to Mississippi since I am in Tennessee and such a trip would be driveable for me.

And I've always wanted to visit the de Grummond Children’s Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi. Really. It's been on my list for almost two decades now since I first learned about it as a precocious undergraduate student who studied Children's Lit at much as possible. I'd go crazy in there. My hubby would go along just to watch me be excited like I was in the Reading Room of the British Museum several years ago. I think he took more pictures of me wandering around, reading names and looking at first editions (behind glass) than of the actual place. But I have really digressed...

Anyway, USM is hosting the Fairy Tales Economies Conference this Thursday and Friday. Here's an article. Here's a press release. Here's an official site. Here's a schedule.

The list of papers to be presented is not on the schedule. I'll print one here if anyone has a list to share. I wish there was an online repository for fairy tale related conference papers that are never formally published. I'd host those on SurLaLune if I saw a true interest. (I have an old moldering one about Nancy Drew I presented years ago at a conference so I know they disappear just as often as not. More often actually.)

Keynote speaker Dr. Jennifer Schacker, author of National Dreams: The Remaking of Fairy Tales in Nineteenth Century England, will deliver a highly visual presentation about Victorian fairy tale pantomime theatre. Schacker is an associate professor and director of undergraduate studies at the University of Guelph in Ontario.

And the exhibit of tale artwork, titled "The Alphabet of Fairy Tales," developed by Ellen Ruffin, curator of the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection at Southern Miss, will be available for viewing during the reception. Another treat.

Attendance is free, a boon to those who are in the area and can attend.