Our Director, Ljubica Matek, participated on 14 December 2022 on an online symposium on Shirley Jackson, organised by the School of English, Trinity College Dublin, in association with the Trinity Long Room Hub.
The House that Jackson Built is the second online symposium dedicated to exploring the status of Shirley Jackson’s writing in the work of scholars, creative practitioners, and the general public. Over the past two decades, Jackson’s reputation has undergone a truly remarkable transformation. Despite being one of the most prominent (and commercially successful) American authors of her era, critical interest in Jackson’s work declined in the decades immediately following her death in August 1965. While her works of horror and Gothic fiction have long been held in high esteem by genre aficionados, she was, for quite some time, unfairly considered by many to be a relatively ‘minor’ writer. However, the twenty-first century has seen an explosion in the level of critical and public interest in Jackson’s work, and she is arguably one of the most significant American writers of the present day, as well as her own.
December 2021’s inaugural Jackson symposium focused upon the past, current, and future state of Shirley Jackson studies. This year’s event, entitled ‘The House that Jackson Built’, further celebrated and interrogated Jackson’s renewed significance in the twenty-first century. This time, the participants explored the ways in which her writing has influenced the current literary and popular-culture landscape, particularly works and writers that situate themselves within the Horror, Gothic, and Fantasy traditions, and by discussing the vital contributions that Jackson’s family and literary estate have made towards the distribution and promotion of her work.
PROGRAMME:
4:30-4:40: Welcome/Ground Rules
4:40-5:40: Panel 1: Jackson’s family: Laurence Jackson-Hyman, Barry Hyman, Gretchen Hyman and Miles Hyman
5:40-5:50: Break
5:50-6:50: Panel 2: Folk Horror: Kevin Corstorphine and Faye Ringel
6:50-7:00: Break
7:00-8:00: Panel 3: Fictional Impact: Ellen Datlow, Elizabeth Hand, and Paul Tremblay
Shirley Jackson
