Schedule 2022

Work in teams to test your knowledge of Les Mis in its many forms and we’ll find out who is the biggest Les Mis nerd of them all!

Let’s talk costumes! From the stage musical to cosplay, from canon era to modern AU, the Les Mis characters have all donned a wide variety of outfits over the years that give us insight into who they are. You’ll be able to hear from some designers about their process, and you might even walk away with some tips and tricks for your latest cosplay.

This presentation will discuss what the legacy of Les Misérables can contribute to how we understand adaptation as a cultural process. Drawing on research into the afterlives of Hugo’s novel and the growth of adaptation studies as an academic field, Stephens asks: who gets to decide if an adaptation is good or bad, or indeed if an adaptation even is an adaptation in the first place, and why do these questions matter to fans and scholars alike? Neither the 1995 Claude Lelouch film or the 2019 Ladj Ly film retells Hugo’s novel straightforwardly, yet both play with and invoke its social conscience, dramatic characterisation, and artistic imagination. In constrast, the BBC/PBS TV 2018 miniseries, written by Andrew Davies and directed by Tom Shankland, positions itself as a faithful and definitive retelling of Hugo’s story; Davies laid claim to offering a ‘proper’ or ‘classic’ adaptation while openly mocking the stage musical as a ‘shoddy farrago’. Such a legitimising claim can be challenged for its artistic and ideological assumptions about how adaptation should work, and for how it can divert attention away from the creativity that all adapters rely on. Through these contrasts and the tensions they generate, Stephens emphasises the ways Les Misérables invites us to ask how we personalise stories and make them meaningful to ourselves and to one another as part of its humanitarian spirit.

Reset is a multimedia collaboration that explores the struggles of a modern-day Enjolras with a failed barricade and the hardships of coping with defeat. Come watch as canon era Enjolras guides him through the grieving process (with a little help from his friends), then stick around after to hear the collaborators (author ShitpostingFromTheBarricade, filmmaker TheCandlesticksFromLesMis, and artist ThePiecesOfCait) discuss the process behind developing and executing this project.

One of the great attractions of Les Misérables is its array of thrilling escape scenes, most of which feature the outlaw hero, Jean Valjean. In a database of 2000 texts from nineteenth-century U.S. periodicals that focus on Hugo’s novel, half of the references to Valjean invoke his escape wizardry as a way of framing local events. From New York to Kansas City to Fort Worth, St. Paul, and New Orléans, Hugo’s character inspired not just prison breaks but also penitential lives in a clear illustration of what Michel Espagne terms ‘cultural transfers’ [’les transferts culturels’]. In this paper, Grossman looks at these American stories in relation to Hugo’s text from the viewpoint of both reception and adaptation studies, the better to understand how Les Misérables was read early on in the States — and in how it was reworked in the public mind in accordance with the American national mythology.

A short analysis of apartheid and South African imagery & narratives in Liesl Tommy’s 2014 production of Les Miserables at the Dallas Theatre Company. Topics covered will include discussion of its representation of toyi-toyi and other features strongly associated with the struggle against apartheid, as well as a brief history of South Africa and terminology. There will be time at the end for questions and audience contributions.

Survival alternate universe (AU) fics are a cornerstone of Les Mis fandom: full or partial Ami survival, post-Seine Valjean and Javert, reincarnation AUs, and AUs bridging the Old Man and Ami sides of fandom by including the larger cast. Two writers of multi-chapter survival AUs will discuss the opportunities and challenges of writing beyond the barricade: What opportunities do the characters have for new interactions and growth—and how do they deal with trauma and loss? How do historical events influence your choices—what do the characters do politically after 1832? What are the logistics of survival—for the characters, and for the author, picking who lives and who dies? And what does it do to the themes of Les Mis if more characters get to live and, maybe, finally, be happy!

In this illustrated talk, Bellos will recapture the aural environment of Hugo’s novel by identifying the many popular songs that the characters sing and hear, and offer a challenge to fans to create a new musical version more faithful to its nineteenth-century roots.

Les Misérables has travelled all over the world and been translated into over 20 languages–and Valjean and Javert have been facing off with each other on stage for nearly four decades. Author Ruth Kenyon will present highlights from her research into the history of the show’s staging, with a focus on “Confrontation,” and discuss how performers have negotiated directing and acting choices over time in the effort to make conflict visible and understandable.

How does Les Mis fit into the literature and society of the time in which it was published? In this panel we’ll take a look at how Romanticism came to France from Germany and England, and what makes up the themes and conventions of the movement. Other talking points include the Preface of Cromwell, Cenacle, Hernani, and Petit Cenacle, and of course, we’ll look at some examples from Les Mis itself.