The 2024 Festival of Monsters has ended. We will be back in 2025. Watch the Festival on our YouTube Channel.
Rising from the darkness, monsters bring to light the parts of our world we might rather see hidden. They come forth in times of growing prejudice, discrimination and othering. The 2024 Festival of Monsters (Academic Conference October 16-18) —hosted by the UC Santa Cruz Center for Monster Studies — explores the way monsters and tropes of monstrosity pervade our culture.
Held on the beautiful UC Santa Cruz campus, the 2024 Festival includes the conference, plus a performance, a live podcast recording and the Monsters Ball. This year's academic conference includes panels on monstrous ecologies, black monstrosity, zombies, body horror and more. Independent video game designer and activist mattie brice and Professor Jerry Rafiki Jenkins (author of Anti-Blackness and Human Monstrosity in Black American Horror Fiction) will give the keynote talks.
The conference is $185-$235 for non-UCSC affiliated faculty and students. Register at https://bit.ly/2024Eventbrite.
The conference is free for current UC Santa Cruz students, faculty and staff. Free registration does not include breakfast or lunch on the conference days, only the panels, discussions and performances. Register at https://bit.ly/MonsterUCSC
(If you are a UCSC-affiliated presenter at the conference, please register on Eventbrite. Contact Renee for a code to access a complimentary ticket.)
The 2024 Festival of Monsters is grateful for the support of Porter College; Oakes College; The Arts Research Institute; The Humanities Institute; Sigfried and Elizabeth Mignon Puknat Endowment; University of California Humanities Research Institute; the UC Santa Cruz Department of Literature; the UC Santa Cruz Department of Performance, Play and Design; Crown College; Good Times; Trick or Treat Studios; Bookshop Santa Cruz; Atlantis Fantasyworld; James Gunderson and Peter Coha.