Sirens Conference 2012: Tales Retold

It's Thursday! Must be conference day! I don't know if you've noticed but somehow most of the conference announcements on the blog occur on Thursdays. It wasn't planned but it kept happening that way--such as receiving emails on Wednesdays--although this one arrived a few days ago and I am just finally sorting through to it. Thanks to Valerie Frankel for sharing this one and another one I will announce when I learn a bit more.

This one, however, sounds wonderful! Read on for more information:

Sirens Conference 2012:

In fantasy worlds, women embark on daring adventures. They slay dragons and lead nations, spark revolutions and solve riddles. In their worlds, beauty is nice, but cleverness, perseverance, and fairness are nicer. They are wise, powerful, stubborn, charming, shy, angry, changeable. So are the women who write them. And so is Sirens.

Sirens is a conference on women in fantasy literature. We are part scholarly examination, part networking weekend, part personal retreat—and always a chance to discuss fantastic women. We welcome adult readers of all types, including scholars, authors, librarians, educators, and publishing professionals. We encourage all attendees, regardless of background, to share their perspectives as part of our conference, and all attendees are welcome to submit presentations for our programming.

Within our focus on fantastic women, each year Sirens features a fantasy-related theme—and in 2012, that theme is "tales retold." Women have been storytellers, oral historians, and eloquent entertainers for thousands of years, and in 2012, Sirens will celebrate—and participate in—that tradition. Within the larger question of women in fantasy literature, we will examine and dissect retellings of tales from around the world: fairy tales, certainly, but also myths, legends, and folklore. To further our discussion, we have invited three guests of honor, each of whom has brilliantly retold classic stories, to join us: Kate Bernheimer, Malinda Lo, and a third, yet unannounced guest.

In 2012, Sirens will take place October 11–14, at the Skamania Lodge in the Columbia River Gorge. Located in Stevenson, Washington, Skamania is a resort in the style of the grand Pacific Northwest lodges, with a soaring foyer, a roaring fire, and expansive views of the Columbia River. Your free time during the conference can be spent either chatting with other attendees or rejuvenating your spirit in the spa, the woods, or the library.

Our website's sections describe the many aspects of Sirens, so please use the navigation bar above to learn more about our conference, programming, registration, traveling to Skamania, and connecting with other attendees. If you would like to learn more about our three previous years of Sirens, please visit our archive. If you need more information or assistance, we look forward to hearing from you. We hope you join us!

The Bluebeard Series by Sarah Chambers D.C.H.P.

Behind Closed Doors

The Bluebeard Series

Empowering women to rediscover their authentic self

By Sarah Chambers D.C.H.P.

Bluebeard - Audio Story For Wild Women

This package offers you the audio story/analysis of Bluebeard and is for women who feel the wild energy of their soul calling them to action, but has yet to take on the challenge of waking to their authentic self. For the evolution of a woman's consciousness to develop and expand she must wake up and become conscious that change is needed in her life and not deny it or run from it.

Her captor, the thing that confines her may be a a partner, husband, child or a one of her family members. It may also be a culture or religion. But the captor can also be inner negative complexes or self sabotaging destructive ways of thinking or behaving or any unconscious suppressed way of living and being.

Bluebeard is more than a man he is the captor, that inner aspect that controls us through fear. Open the door and shine the light into the dark corners, you are so much more than you think you are and can be so much more than that!

Anima - Inner feminine side of man. Animus Inner masculine side of woman.

Animus-Anima - Awakening Feminine Consciousness
Development of the Self - Beyond Conditioning and Social Hypnosis
This recording is about animus, the masculine soul energy within woman the strong and powerful force that drives her instincts for growth and personal development. It is that unconscious part of her that longs to feel the wind of freedom. It is the light that shines deep in her soul that stirs her to action. It is the doorway to gaining understanding of the deeper levels of her self.



The Emergence of Self - discovering your soul purpose
This is a wondrous journey of self discovery into your wild and intuitive self, uncovering the pearl within, access your power, your mystery. You can find in the depth of your soul the creative inspiration needed to re-create your own personal world. On this journey you may glimpse images, catch sounds, touch feelings within your body, that your inner self will guide you to experience.

You can unlock positive awareness, and what you need to learn will come to you, in just the right way, and at just the right time. Your inner treasure room awaits you, it has always been there, waiting patiently for you.

Open the door, listen, and trust your intuition to guide you in whatever way is right for you. Remember, we are much more than our bodies, our emotions, our thoughts and behaviours, so much more. Just allow the ordinary everyday world to disappear, let your cares and worries just melt away, fade from your mind. Be gentle guided and supported within the flowing vibrant colours and let the process of inner healing begin.

All of this was copy and pasted from the publisher's page. Pricing information is available there. I haven't tried these, but wanted to share in the interest that I share fairy tale related stuff and always find Bluebeard fascinating myself. And it is just happy coincidence that I am also posting about Von Franz's work today, too.

Library Essentials Month: From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers by Marina Warner

From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers by Marina Warner was another book that I acquired during the first stage of creating SurLaLune. (My brain has been attacking this theme chronologically to start, but that will change in a few more days, I'm sure.) The book was a few years old at the time and it was a wondrous discovery in my new found enthusiasm for everything fairy tale. Up to that point, most of my fairy tale studies had been in the psychological bent, thanks to Bettelheim and company during my undergraduate schooling. Finding this book at my local Borders during grad school was a revelation, a good one, never mind that it had nothing to do with my studies. Even the initial HTML project wasn't about fairy tales, it was about programming HTML. I could have used a paper written for another class. I wanted to do a fairy tale instead. I spent more time on the ungraded content than the HTML, obviously. At least I got an A...

This book also qualifies as one of the most often recommended books on SurLaLune, not just by me. Reader comments and users on the SurLaLune Discussion Board often sing its praises. If you are wanting to read about women and fairy tales, this book is a must, an essential. Leaving it out of a bibliography is a mistake.

Book description from the publisher:

In this landmark study of the history and meaning of fairy tales, the celebrated cultural critic Marina Warner looks at storytelling in art and legend-from the prophesying enchantress who lures men to a false paradise, to jolly Mother Goose with her masqueraders in the real world. Why are storytellers so often women, and how does that affect the status of fairy tales? Are they a source of wisdom or a misleading temptation to indulge in romancing?

Some reviews that explain it better:

From Publishers Weekly:

Notwithstanding the prominence of the Grimm Brothers and Charles Perrault, most narrators of fairy tales, asserts Warner, have been women--nannies, grannies, 18th-century literary ladies, sibyls of antiquity. In this richly illustrated, erudite, digressive feminist study, cultural historian Warner (Alone of All Her Sex) argues that instead of seeking psychoanalytic meanings in fairy tales, we must first understand them in their social and emotional context. In her analysis, "Bluebeard" and "Beauty and the Beast" reflect girls' realistic fears of marrige in an era when women married young, had multiple children and often died in childbirth. Her delightfully subversive inquiry profiles reluctant brides, silent daughters, crones, witches, fates, muses, sirens, Saint Anne (image of the old wise woman), the biblical Queen of Sheba and Saint Uncumber, who grew a beard to avoid marriage but was crucified for her rebellion. Angela Carter's fiction, surrealist Leonora Carrington's comic fairy tales, Walt Disney movies and French aristocratic fairy tales of veiled protofeminist protest by Marie-Jeanne L'Heritier and Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy provide grist for her mill.

From Library Journal:

In this scholarly, original, and insightful study, Warner (Alone of Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary, 1983) explores the relationship between fairy tales and their historical and social contexts. She persuasively demonstrates that the teller of the tale-whether a prophesying enchantress luring knights to their doom or the jolly old beldame, Mother Goose-inevitably reflects the prevailing social prejudices for and against women. Warner first traces the "layered character of the traditional narrator" and the interconnections between storytellers and heterodox forms of knowledge. In the second half of the book, Warner takes up a sampling of tales and demonstrates in them such adult themes as the presense of painful rivalry and hatred between women (Cinderella). Finally, she explores the association of blondeness in the heroine with preciousness and desirability. Highly recommended for all readers who wish a deeper understanding of the fairy tales and cultural icons that have shaped us. Marie L. Lally, Alabama Sch. of Mathematics & Science, Mobile

Reading this will get you thinking about the meaning behind fairy tales, the feminine perspective, historical and gender interpretations of the tales. It is not light reading, but it is highly readable. And it is definitely a library essential. I don't reread it very often now for I have absorbed much of it although I have been contemplating a reread in the near future since it has been several years since I've done more than go straight to the index and look up a direct point or browse through my margin notes. I don't often write margin notes in my books, but this book required it.

I just wish this one was available as an ebook to make its text even more searchable. The index is excellent, but a search function would be even better.

The Story Behind the Stories: A History of the Fairy Tale Princess by Angela “Cookie” Oswald

Kate Crackernuts by Trina Schart Hyman from The Serpent Slayer*

Okay, this one made me happy all around. It is about fairy tales receiving the proper perception and it comes out of Maryville where I lived when I started SurLaLune. Maryville is about a fifteen minute drive from the UT Knoxville campus--or it was then--I don't know how many more lights might be along the Alcoa Highway now. John and I lived in a little cottage along a river, our little house of dreams as newlyweds back then. So cool beans and such but keep reading to see why I am even happier about the news story.
From MC history major receives top undergraduate award for essay by Chloe Kennedy:

Maryville College senior Angela “Cookie” Oswald won the “Top Undergraduate Paper Award” for her essay, “The Story Behind the Stories: A History of the Fairy Tale Princess,” at the Tennessee regional meeting of Phi Alpha Theta, a national history honor society.

****

Oswald, who is double majoring in history and English literature with a minor in American studies, presented an excerpt from her Senior Study, a 300-page “feminist, socio-cultural and historicist interpretation” of 12 fairy tales and folk tales she collected from France, Great Britain and Italy.

“I am particularly interested in doing research concerning the common misconception that most princess characters have been ‘damsel in distress’- type personalities until the Women’s Liberation Movement, when stronger female characters began to emerge in popular fairy tales,” said Oswald, MCHS president. “My argument is that strong female characters in fairy tales have always existed; they have just been forgotten or ignored over time, especially due to the influence of the Victorian era.”

****

Oswald said she agonized for weeks over which section of her thesis to present at the conference, and she ultimately chose one French fairy tale from the second chapter of her thesis.

“I discussed and explicated it from a historical perspective in order to provide an example of a fairy tale that features a strong female character in it so that I could illustrate the contrast between the fairy tales that I collected and the fairy tales that feature weaker female characters in them that most people are familiar with,” she said.

When Oswald presented, she was “very pleasantly surprised” by the positive reaction from the judges – two professors who specialize in women’s history.

Oswald’s paper and presentation received the highest score among all of the undergraduates who presented, earning the “Top Undergraduate Paper Award.”

Now I really want to read her paper and thesis. Congrats to Angela “Cookie” Oswald and thank you for furthering the fairy tale cause!

*Because Kate Crackernuts is a strong fairy tale heroine!

Film, Women and Fairy Tales

Yes, there are a lot of articles about Hollywood's explosion of fairy tale projects. Here are some excerpts from another interesting one. From From fairy tales to scary tales: Hollywood embraces dark fantasies by Liam Lacey:

What’s happening is the guys continue to enjoy fantasies of mid-air acrobatics, gun fights and explosions, while women are attached to supernatural tales of sex and terror.

Looking at the recently minted celebrities associated with these projects, you get a clue to the audience for these new films: Stewart, Seyfried, Hudgens, Gomez, an Olsen twin. They’re all stars to girls and young women. The Twilight movies, which have made almost $1.8-billion worldwide, are the model for girl movies that mark the transition from fairy tales to horror.

According to the Motion Picture Association of America’s numbers, almost half of the movie-going audience in the United States and Canada is under 24 years old (though the total audience is only a third of the population) and a slight majority of them is female, including the horror fans.

For decades, it was assumed that horror movies were outlets for young males to watch girls in their underwear getting chased by masked knife-wielding maniacs. But nowadays women under 25 constitute about 52 per cent of the horror market and studios are increasingly catering to that group. Orphan (2009), written by Red Riding Hood’s David Johnson, is typical of the trend of creating horror films with a female heroine – it stars Vera Farmiga as a mother defending her family from her evil adopted child.

The distance between fairy tales and scary tales isn’t that long in a girl’s life. Particularly successful for studios are scary movies that earn the PG-13 rating in the United States, or parental guidance for those younger than 13. In other words, these are first-date movies. In an Entertainment Weekly story, Mandate Pictures president Nathan Kahane, who produced The Grudge movies and Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell, put it this way: “Girls are driving the ideas for those early dates. There aren't that many social opportunities to be in the dark holding hands, and that's what the PG-13 horror film offers.”

So fairy tales are Hollywood's way of marketing to women? They aren't being ignored? At least not the older ones who spend money. Then there's the recent studies that horror jumpstarts women's libidos and women make up 52% of the horror viewing audience. (Sorry I lost the reference on this computer.) So we have most of these being made into horror type films. This is much more than Twilight influences. Discuss...

New Book: Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture

Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein is officially released on Tuesday. I received a review copy of this through Amazon's Vine Program, wondering how much it would pertain to fairy tales and SurLaLune readers. Well, actually, it does much more than I expected. The topic of fairy tales and their influence on children, especially girls, as well as pop culture is one of the more popular topics on SurLaLune. I had to build pages to Children and Fairy Tales and Women and Fairy Tales to help answer all the many, many queries I receive about these topics. Then there's the whole kettle of fish under Disney and Fairy Tales, too. This book can be added to all three lists to some degree.

The book developed from a somewhat famous article by Orenstein in the New York Times on December 2006, What’s Wrong With Cinderella? It is no surprise it developed into a book deal. The article is rather inflammatory and received quite a bit of response on the web.

One of my complaints about these types of articles and books--usually--is the lumping of fairy tales in general with Disney fairy tales in particular. Orenstein avoids this. In her book, she discusses Disney as a separate entity and also goes back to the source tales. Of course, most of the direct fairy tale interpretation and criticism she invokes is Bettelheim, no surprise really, despite Bettelheim's fall from grace with academia. Not that the there is much discussion of fairy tales at all, some pages, not even a full chapter. The relief is that fairy tales are not really blamed for anything, treated more as symptoms and representations of issues. The focus is on Cinderella with Little Mermaid, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty getting pretty much equal second billing together. She admits that not all Cinderellas are created equal. She is actually somewhat enamored with Aschenputtel.

That said, fairy tales are not really the case in point here although they are represented. The book covers Orenstein's interactions with Disney, American Girl, Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana, beauty pageants and even Twilight. The surprise to me was that despite my assumptions from the book description as well as the original inspiration article, the book is not very inflammatory. Orenstein is sincere and tries to find a balance between the extremes as she explores American pop culture of young girls and its influence upon them. She doesn't offer solutions--which other reviewers have wanted--but she makes the point that parents pretty much have to circumnavigate this difficult period in history to their best style and choices according to their daughters, and sons for that matter.

Overall, this is not a scientific book although Orenstein references some research and other sources, such as the well-reviewed Girls on the Edge. The examples are mostly anecdotal, and in this case that means the anecdotes are mostly from San Francisco and New York, not cities that represent most of the country's experience although there are certainly commonalities. That was also my issue with the Babies movie in which the children from tecnhologically advanced countries were from Tokyo and San Francisco.  Those children's experiences are almost as foreign to the average American kid as the Mongolian and African children. That said, I certainly enjoyed the movie all the same. Mostly, I don't know many children as materially privileged as the ones discussed in this book. This is a book for sparking thought and discussion, starting the discussion of girls' needs and wants under the influence of a supersaturated media culture. I can see it really sparking in a book club meeting. Nevertheless, many of Orenstein's anecdotal experiences are similar to my own. The Princess culture lives and breathes just about everywhere little girls live in the US.

So, yes, I recommend the book if the topic interests or even scares you. The book offers benefits to the princess culture--and surprisingly enough Twilight--despite the author's initial apprehensions. It doesn't celebrate, mind you, but it doesn't wholeheartedly condemn them either, seeing value. The nature vs. nurture debate is also strong and discussed--this is where the most scientific research is shared. There are no easy answers and Orenstein serves only to ask the questions and give a little comfort, surprisingly enough. She admits to her own imperfections and wobbles, too. In the end, she is another mom wanting her daughter to grow-up with the freedom and inspiration to be whoever and whatever she wants to be without insecurities or hang-ups, or at least the minimum amount possible.

The marketing, I admit, fascinates me for it is more inflammatory than the book itself. I fear it may alienate some of its needed audience, those who throw it all out due to the extreme sounding descriptions. I left the book with more of a loathing for marketing to children in general. I am of the last generation that didn't get the full court press from media marketing although I experienced my fair share. My younger siblings did get it in the 80s and I experienced a little bit of it with them. It's a scary, scary machine.
Product description from the publisher:

The acclaimed author of the groundbreaking bestseller Schoolgirls reveals the dark side of pink and pretty: the rise of the girlie-girl, she warns, is not that innocent.

Pink and pretty or predatory and hardened, sexualized girlhood influences our daughters from infancy onward, telling them that how a girl looks matters more than who she is. Somewhere between the exhilarating rise of Girl Power in the 1990s and today, the pursuit of physical perfection has been recast as a source—the source—of female empowerment. And commercialization has spread the message faster and farther, reaching girls at ever-younger ages.

But, realistically, how many times can you say no when your daughter begs for a pint-size wedding gown or the latest Hannah Montana CD? And how dangerous is pink and pretty anyway—especially given girls' successes in the classroom and on the playing field? Being a princess is just make-believe, after all; eventually they grow out of it. Or do they? Does playing Cinderella shield girls from early sexualization—or prime them for it? Could today's little princess become tomorrow's sexting teen? And what if she does? Would that make her in charge of her sexuality—or an unwitting captive to it?

Those questions hit home with Peggy Orenstein, so she went sleuthing. She visited Disneyland and the international toy fair, trolled American Girl Place and Pottery Barn Kids, and met beauty pageant parents with preschoolers tricked out like Vegas showgirls. She dissected the science, created an online avatar, and parsed the original fairy tales. The stakes turn out to be higher than she—or we—ever imagined: nothing less than the health, development, and futures of our girls. From premature sexualization to the risk of depression to rising rates of narcissism, the potential negative impact of this new girlie-girl culture is undeniable—yet armed with awareness and recognition, parents can effectively counterbalance its influence in their daughters' lives.

Cinderella Ate My Daughter is a must-read for anyone who cares about girls, and for parents helping their daughters navigate the rocky road to adulthood.

A Narrative Compass: Stories that Guide Women's Lives

A Narrative Compass: Stories that Guide Women's Lives edited by Betsy Hearne and Roberta Seelinger Trites is a book I only recently learned about and have added to my own list of "must acquire soon." It was released last year but I don't remember seeing it referenced anywhere.  Not that I get around all that much beyond the immediacy of fairy tale scholarship. Still, I would have noticed a book with one of Kay Nielsen's East of the Sun and West of the Moon illustrations on it. My brain is hard-wired to notice books like that after so many years.

Here's the book description from the publisher:

Each of us has a narrative compass, a story that has guided our lifework. In this extraordinary collection, women scholars from a variety of disciplines identify and examine the stories that have inspired them, haunted them, and shaped their research, from Little House on the Prairie to Little Women, from the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to Nancy Drew, Mary Jane, and even the Chinese memoir Jottings from the Transcendant's Abode at Mt. Youtai. Telling the "story of her story" leads each of the essayists to insights about her own approach to studying narratives and to a deeper, often surprising, understanding of the power of imagination.

Contributors are Deyonne Bryant, Minjie Chen, Cindy L. Christiansen, Beverly Lyon Clark, Karen Coats, Wendy Doniger, Bonnie Glass-Coffin, Betsy Hearne, Joanna Hearne, Ann Hendricks, Rania Huntington, Christine Jenkins, Kimberly Lau, Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, Maria Tatar, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, Roberta Seelinger Trites, Claudia Quintero Ulloa, and Ofelia Zepeda.

And here's the table of contents:

Introduction ix
Roberta Seelinger Trites
and Betsy Hearne 

Part 1. Finding the Compass

1. The Tea Fragrance Chamber 1
Rania Huntington
2. Academic Grief: Journeys with Little Women 8
Roberta Seelinger Trites
3. Girl: Stories on the Way to Feminism 19
Kimberly J. Lau
4. A Language Journey 31
Ofelia Zepeda
5. A Thousand and One Tales 39
Maria Tatar
6. A Passage to, and from, India 47
Wendy Doniger

Part 2. Literary and Critical Directions

7. Balancing on Interpretive Fences or
Leaping into the Void: Reconciling Myself
with Castaneda and The Teachings of Don Juan 57
Bonnie Glass-Coffin
8. Wet Work and Dry Work:
Notes from a Lacanian Mother 68
Karen Coats
9. The Pleasures of Dreaming:
How L. M. Montgomery Shaped My Lifeworlds 80
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas
10. Her Story and History: Journeys
with Laura Ingalls Wilder 96
Pamela Riney-Kehrberg
11. A Moral Compass: Dorothy Sterling’s Mary Jane 102
Deyonne Bryant
12. Uniquely Qualified 115
Ann Hendricks

Part 3. Escaping Home, Finding Home

13. Wondering with Alice 125
Beverly Lyon Clark
14. Romancing the Muse of History:
The Secret Garden, Mary Lennox, and Me 131
Christine a. Jenkins
15. The Ghost in the Borrowed Story:
A Mystery in Twenty Chapters 141
Cindy L. Christiansen
16. Generations of Melodrama: A Cinderella Story 156
Claudia Quintero Ulloa
17. My Journey Home 170
Minjie Chen
18. Birth Maps 180
Joanna Hearne
19. Bringing the Story Home:
A Journey with Beauty and the Beast 194
Betsy Hearne

Contributors 213
Index 217

So, yes, definitely a wonderful mix of personal essays about the impact of some of the most beloved literature of women. We get Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Hans Christian Andersen for the fairy tale fans.  We also get L. M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables and company), Little Women, Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Secret Garden, Nancy Drew, Alice in Wonderland and some lesser known favorites. Many of the same books that defined my own childhood and adolescent reading.

To supplement the book, a website was built for readers to contribute their own stories, but there doesn't seem to have been much traffic to it, only a few stories submitted.  Mostly there is just book promotion there, most of which I have summed up here.  Anyway, the reviews have been positive and the excerpts I've read from browsing through Look Inside on Amazon and the book website are quite promising.  Once I'm finished with Cinderella Tales, I think this will find a way to my house as a gift to myself...