DePaul: A celebration of Disney

This weekend was the 7th annual DePaul Pop Culture Conference and like each of the past years, it was a great time. For me, it was a little different because for the first time I was on the other side of the table as a presenter.

The panel I was on "Disney and Feminism" went well and we had a good blend of topics. At one point I was a little worried because someone else had a similar sounding topic using a more academic lens but we each took different angles and did well.

A longer version of my talk "Moana and the Importance of Female Support Networks" is presented in this years "A Celebration of Disney DePaul Pop Culture Conference 2019" book. I have been told soon it will be available on Amazon.  Check it out.

Other Panels

I went to the Panel Women in Animation which gave a history of women animators from the beginning when they were not allowed to be involved in the creative process* (see the picture below), to the indie women animators of today.

The Academic Keynote was by Dr Rebecca Williams on The Haunted Mansion. It was interesting to learn how fans gave this ride a lot of outside meaning/storyline. It is also interesting like how some details are still being debated today between the creators of the ride and the marketers of the ride. 

The Profesional Keynote was by Philo Barnhart who was an animator on The Little Mermaid among other projects. Most of the panel became him showing how quickly we recognize these characters (often with a sketch of only a few shapes and a line or two and we were able to identify the character) and then went into how to draw these characters. 

I enjoyed the panel on Fandom and the Disney Industry which covered everything from how Disney has been using copyright to shrink the public domain and how they are legally stealing our common heritage of stories to how Disney movies are translated overseas. Sometimes details like what food a character does not like to eat (from broccoli to green pepper) and sometimes changing the language in such a way it accidentally references language used by Hitler yuck. I ended with 2 interesting panels one on Disney Brand Extensions and one on seeing the other in Disney.

So once again DePaul Pop Culture Conference had a hit. Hope to see you all next year.