The “2009 Rod Serling Conference: Celebrating 50 Years of The Twilight Zone” will explore the work of one of television’s most honored and most prolific writers.

Rod Serling won an unprecedented six Emmy Awards… was the first writer honored with the Peabody Award… and was a pioneer in the “Golden Days of Television.” By the time The Twilight Zone premiered on October 2, 1959 -- nearly 100 of Serling’s scripts had been produced.

This conference will examine episodes of this ground-breaking series as well as Serling’s other work -- which includes movie screenplays such as “Planet of the Apes.”

CONFERENCE SESSIONS:

• War and Remembrance: Examining the Impact of War on Rod Serling’s Life and Work
Tony Albarella
• Stark Humanity: Serling’s “Requiem for a Heavyweight”
Barbara Audet
• What Goes Around: Comeuppance and Schadenfreude in The Twilight Zone
Jeffrey J. Bianchine
• From Serling to Simpson
Diana DePasquale
• Early Attempts at Science-Fiction and Fantasy
Amy E. Boyle Johnston
• Living in a Twilight Reality: Rod Serling, Television, and Cold War America
James Jones
• Don’t Assume the Current Norm Shall Be Your Norm
John Keshishoglou
• “It’s a Cookbook!” Gender Anxieties in The Twilight Zone’s “To Serve Man”
Adam Knee
• Adapting The Twilight Zone to Graphic Novel
Mark Kneece
• How Parenting Is Represented in The Twilight Zone
Douglas C. MacLeod Jr.
• Speak Your Mind
Patricia Dawn MacLeod
• Underneath the Mask: Using Rod Serling’s “Eye of the Beholder” to Teach about Appearance versus Reality
Timothy J. Madigan
• The Symbiosis of Rod Serling and Charles Beaumont
Keith Muchowski
• Surviving The Twilight Zone: An Alternate Reality with Alternate Rules
Samuel B. Prime and Dave Stinton-Czuprynski
• Divining Rod: Illumination and the Twilight Zone Experience
Richard Rees
• Second Chances: Rod Serling, Redrafting, and Adaptation
Andrew T. Smith
• Time Enough at Last
Ed Uszynski
• The Twilight Zone on Videotape: Is the Medium the Message?
Gordon C. Webb
• Scriptwriting Competition Winners Panel
Excerpts from this year's winning scripts will be read and discussed by some of the winning writers and members of the judge's panel.

Registration fee: $80 Registration and Binghamton Bus Trip (includes bus and boxed lunch): $90 Limited seats available on first-come, first-served basis. No refunds can be made for participants who can not attend the conference, but your registration fee can be transferred to another party.