Sideways in Time Schedule

The Sideways in Time schedule it out now! You can check out the international slate of alternate historians set to present on March 30-31 (including yours truly):

Sunday, March 29

5.00pm: Free Pre-Conference Social: Stephen Baxter and Adam Roberts discuss their fiction at Waterstones Liverpool One

Monday, March 30

8:30am–9:30am: Registration

9:30am–10:30am: Keynote: Karen Hellekson, “Agency and Contingency in Televisual Alternate History Texts”

10:30am–12:00pm: Panel 1 – Examining Female Perspectives of Alternate History

• Amanda Dillon, University of East Anglia (UK), “Speaking Unspoken Timelines: Feminist Time Travel and Alternate Histories in Kage Baker’s The Company”
• Rosie M. Lewis, Durham University (UK), “Re-envisioning Female Subjectivity, Aesthetics and Collective Resistance in Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames”
• Sarah Lohmann, Durham University (UK), “On the Edge of Time: Feminist Utopias, Complexity Theory and Parallel Future Histories”

12:00pm–1:00pm: Panel 2 – Responses to the Enlightenment

• Alex Broadhead, University of Liverpool (UK), “The Romantics in Alternate History from Hawthorne to Card: Beyond Enlightenment Historiography”
• Jim Clarke, Coventry University (UK), “Unwriting the Reformation: Anti-Catholic uchronias in Science Fiction”

1:00pm–1:45pm: Lunch

1:45pm–2:45pm: Keynote: Stephen Baxter, “Alternate Cosmologies”

2:45pm–4:15pm: Panel 3 – Moments and People of Power

• Francis Gene-Rowe, Birkbeck College (UK), “Blasting Open the Historical Continuum: Antihistoricism in Benjamin, Dick & Le Guin”
• Fred Smoler, Sarah Lawrence College (USA), “Refiguring the Heroic in Two Alternate Histories: Stephen Vincent Benét and Harry Turtledove”
• Jonathan Rayner, University of Sheffield (UK), “‘Forever being Yamato’: Alternative Pacific War Histories in Japanese Film and Anime”

4:15pm–4:30pm: Break

4:30pm–6:00pm: Panel 4 – Alternate History in Europe

• Mikhaylo Nazarenko, Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University (Ukraine), “Post-colonial alternate history: the case of Ukrainian literature”
• Marzena Sokołowska-Paryż, University of Warsaw (Poland) “Ideological (Mis)Uses of Genre: Dystopian Visions of the ‘Past-Present’ in Daniel Quinn’s and Stephen Fry’s Alternate Histories”
• Chris Pak, (UK), “‘It Is One Story’: Writing a Global Alternative History in Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt”

Tuesday, March 31

8:30am–9:00am: Registration

9:00am–10:30am: Panel 5 – Examining the Place of Alternate History

• Daniel Dohrn, Humboldt University of Berlin (Germany), “Counterfactuals in Historiography – A Philosophical Assessment”
• Matt Mitrovich, (USA), “Warping History: An Overview of Fans and Creators of Alternate History in the Internet Age”
• Ursula Troche, “Alternate History as re-imagining/re-writing: with particular reference to Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ and Evaristo’s ‘Blonde Routes’”

10:30am–12:00pm: Panel 6 – Blurring the Boundaries of Alternate History

• Pascal Lemaire (Belgium), “Our world, really ? Techno Thrillers and Alternate History”
• Andrew M. Butler, Canterbury Christ Church University (UK), “Quest for Love: A Cosy Uchronia?”
• Leimar Garcia-Siino, University of Liverpool (UK), “Alternate [un]Realities: The Possibility and Impossibility of the Fantasy Alternate History”

12:00pm–1:00pm: Keynote: Adam Roberts, “Geoffroy, Tolstoy and the Fragile Solidity of History”

1:00pm–1:45pm: Lunch

1:45pm–2:45pm: Panel 7 – Different Landscapes

• Alan Gregory and Dawn Stobart, Lancaster University (UK), “The Survival of a President: Rewritten American Histories and the Failed Assassination of John F. Kennedy in Stephen King’s 11/22/63”
• Laura Ettenfield, Leeds Beckett University (UK), “‘The sea is everything… the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence… it is the Living Infinite’: the alternate reality of subaquatic space in Nineteenth-century literature”

2:45pm–3:45pm: Panel 8 – Alternate History after 9/11

• Anna McFarlane, (UK), “Lavie Tidhar’s Osama (2011) and Alternate History After 9/11”
• Rachel Mizsei Ward (UK), “Impotent in the face of history – How superhero narratives (didn’t) engage with 9/11”

3:45pm–4:00pm: Break

4:00pm–5:30pm: Panel 9 – How Do We Know?

• Chloe Alexandra Germaine Buckley, Lancaster University (UK), “Cthulhu versus Sherlock Holmes: Shadows over Baker Street, epistemological disruption and the ‘willing surrender of disbelief’ in postmillennial alternative-history Weird fiction”
• Hellen Giblin-Jowett, (UK), “A ‘whiff of printer’s shrapnel’: HG Wells and the nostrils of divergence”
• Molly Cobb, University of Liverpool (UK), “‘Time is a private matter’: The subjective nature of time and the lack of a universal continuum”

5:30pm–6:30pm: Wine Reception

I'm going to be missing some of the pre- and post-conference events because I want to sight-see a little on my first visit to Britain, but there seems to be a lot of interesting topics to enjoy. I can't wait!

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update and a blogger on Amazing Stories. Check out his short fiction. When not writing he works as an attorney, enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana and prepares for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. You can follow him on Facebook or Twitter.