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The 2025 Afterlives Conference will take place November 15, 2025 at Forest Lawn Museum, 1712 S. Glendale Ave, Glendale, CA 91205.

8:30 – 8:55 REGISTRATION and CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST 

8:55 – 9:00 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

9:00 – 10:30 SESSION ONE 

Literary Alterities
Chair: TBD
Location: Forest Lawn Museum Gallery
Chelsea Henson (El Camino Community College), Afterlife or Life After?: The Bright Sword and Letting Arthur Go
Heather Blurton (UC, Santa Barabara), Plots: The Afterlife of a Medieval Anti-Jewish Conspiracy
Nancy McLoughlin (UC, Irvine), Deadly Sin and Crusading from Deguilevilles (1330) to Le Guin (1965)

Constructing and Reconstructing
Chair: TBD
Location: Hall of Crucifixion-Resurrection
Alison Perchuk (CSU, Channel Islands) and William Eggleston III (Independent Artist/Scholar), Los Angeles’s Linear Memories: A Photo Essay 
Alba Menéndez Pereda (UC, Los Angeles), The Contemporary Coricancha: Making an Inca Temple in the Twentieth Century
Kathryn Chew (CSU, Long Beach) and Ilan Mitchell-Smith (CSU, Long Beach), The Medievalish Book: Pedagogical Approaches to Reconstructed Medieval Manuscript

10:30 – 10:40 BREAK

10:40 – 12:10 SESSION TWO 

Recasting the Renaissance
Chair: Peter Weller (Independent Scholar)
Location: Forest Lawn Museum Gallery
Mark Bayer (University of Texas at San Antonio), HBO’s Succession and Shakespeare’s King Lear
Jiayue Liu (University of Southern California), Recasting Cleopatra: Female Sovereignty and Dramatic Afterlives in Neo-Senecan Tragedy
Adam Rzepka (Montclair State University), “An inward wish”: The Homuncular Fantasy from Lingua to Inside Out

Afterlives in and of Rome
Chair: Heather Graham (CSU, Long Beach)
Location: Hall of Crucifixion-Resurrection
Hilary Barker (University of Chicago), Roman Construction Professionals as Students of Antiquity: The Deconstruction, Reuse, and Revival of Ancient Architecture in Renaissance Rome
Kirstin Noreen (Loyola Marymount University), Saving the Nuns of San Sisto: The Sack of Rome and its Afterlife
Anna Uhlig (UC, Davis), A Victorian Grotto of the Underworld: Merging Museum and Theme Park in Damien Hirst’s The Treasures of the Wreck of the Unbelievable

12:10 – 1:00 LUNCH

1:00 – 2:00 TOUR OF FOREST LAWN

James Fishburne, Forest Lawn Museum Director
Behind-the-scenes tour of Forest Lawn’s Great Mausoleum. Highlights include Romanesque and Gothic Revival architecture and numerous full-scale Michelangelo replicas. 

2:00 – 2:50  KEYNOTE

Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank (Independent Scholar), We Take What We Fancy: How Disneyland Pirates the Global Middle Ages and Renaissance

2:50 – 3:00 BREAK

3:00 – 4:30 SESSION THREE

Modern Readers of the Past
Chair: Ilan Mitchell-Smith (CSU, Long Beach)
Location: Forest Lawn Museum Gallery
Jennifer Smith (Pepperdine University), From Quills to Queries: Generative AI and the Translation of Middle English
María Sánchez-Reyes (CSU, Long Beach), When Language Fails
Michael Calabrese (CSU, Los Angeles), Adaptation, Translation, and the Afterlife of Piers Plowman in the Cal State LA Classroom

Communal Memory and Public Identity
Chair: Heather Graham (CSU, Long Beach)
Location: Hall of Crucifixion-Resurrection
Michelle Craig (Cuesta College), On the Money: Representations of the Qarawiyyin Mosque as Icons of Moroccan Excellence
Babak Rahimi (UC, San Diego), The Passion of the Uncanny: The Oberammergau Passion Plays, 1634-2022
Felicia Else (Gettysburg College), Afterlife of a Colossus: The Popular Traditions and Political Re-imaginings Behind “Biancone”

4:30 – 4:40 BREAK

4:40 – 6:00 ROUNDTABLE 

California Medievalisms: Memorializing and Forgetting the Past
Organizer:  Roland Betancourt (Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts)
Moderator: Alison Locke Perchuk (CSU, Channel Islands)
Location: Hall of Crucifixion-Resurrection
Shannon McHugh (The Huntington Library)
Bryan C. Keene (Riverside City College)
Wallace Cleaves (UC, Riverside)
Larisa Grollemond (J. Paul Getty Museum)

6:00 – 6:45 RECEPTION