It‘s an almost impossible task to summarize the past year in just a few lines, but I feel that I should at least emphasize the challenging but stellar work I‘ve done in the academia:
– presented at three conferences in France (one on Giger and another one on Lovecraft, no less!)
– researched intriguing representations of multimodal figurativity in John Carpenter‘s “In the Mouth of Madness“ and Drew Goddard‘s “The Cabin in the Woods“
– prepared a couple of articles for peer review/publication
– became a member of AFLiCo – French Association for Cognitive Lingustics
– last but not least, acquired new acquaintances among fellow researchers
I‘ve also caught up with professor Zoltán Kövecses, who was a plenary speaker at the conference here in Lyon, and years ago one of my professors during the PhD studies in Croatia. Indulging in passionate conversations about genre movies and dark art with esteemed colleagues such as professors Gilles Menegaldo (who invited me to present at the incredible “H.P. Lovecraft and the Sciences“ conference in Poitiers), and Christopher Robinson has been nothing short of spectacular, and an especially lovely addition to these amazing encounters has been Kathy Lenze, an artist and animal rights activist who was simply like a breath of fresh air and I’m truly hoping our paths cross again soon. With new prospects on the horizons, I‘ve finished the year extremely grateful and inspired, all in the serenity of my home.
One of the other highlights has been traveling with my mom to Paris (hours spent at the Louvre, sightseeing and eating delicious vegan food!), with my husband to Amsterdam (what a lovely weekend getaway that was!), and with my best friend to the Weekend of Hell convention in Germany (see below). Animal rights activism deserves a bunch of special posts, but for now I‘ll say that this year I‘ve also been organizing/coorganizing a lot of events and actions and have come to an even deeper understanding of the speciesist bonds that tie and hide the need for animal liberation, and how to make this need truly apparent in our society. As with each year that passes, I hope for health of my loved ones and myself, serenity and success in all fields. And of course, that we get closer to a vegan world in which all animals are safe! God willing!
Exactly six months ago (on October 25, 2017), I successfully defended my PhD thesis titled “Monomodal and Multimodal metaphor and Metonymy in the Art of H.R. Giger” in front of the PhD committee, my professor and supervisor Mario Brdar, and my family, friends, and students at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Osijek, Croatia. The whole thing felt appropriately surreal and magical, and unlike anything else so far in my life – this is it, the final step! My dream and what feels like a culmination of my academic interest and personal love came true. I owe eternal gratitude to my dear supervisor, professors in the committee and everyone who supported my PhD journey. In two days I’ll have my promotion and I’m pretty excited – the announcement, the throwing of hats (at least I think we’ll throw them)! I hope another two years don’t pass till my next post, though. =)
How did it all came to be? Marco Witzig, curator and Giger collector (and my dear friend who has helped me tremendously with the corpus for my PhD thesis) put me in touch with the festival organizers in order to do something regarding their homage to H.R. Giger (which included the screening of the „Dark Star“ documentary, short films and music videos). In a matter of hours and some email exchange later – it was all set: I was to present a lecture under the title „
