fan studies and fandom

PopCRN is delighted to announce a conference dedicated to the cult phenomenon, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. This free, online event will be held on Wednesday 27th and Thursday 28th of November 2025.

One Short Day: An Online Symposium Celebrating Wicked

Deadline: May 30, 2025

Conference Date: June 27, 2025

Format: Online (via Zoom, Pacific Time)

Abstract: 150 words + 50 word biographical statement + Time Zone

Submit to: Noah Gallego @noahrgallego@gmail.com 

Organizers: Noah Gallego, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona & Layal Dahi, California State Polytechnic University 

This session invites paper submissions that explore the intersections of queer studies, film, media, and digital culture. In connection with this year’s conference theme, we particularly welcome papers that focus on palimpsestic media: how queer narratives have been remediated through new forms, how queer histories have been reimagined, rewritten, or overwritten in works of film, television, video games, and other forms of new media, broadly defined. Papers addressing other aspects of queer identities, communities, readings, and experiences are also encouraged.

Call for Book Chapters
on Fans, Fandoms, and Tabletop Roleplaying Games

Deadline for submissions: Sunday, June 15, 2025

Contact email:fans.fandoms.and.ttrpgs@gmail.com 

Editors: 

Maria K. Alberto, University of Utah

Adrianna Burton, University of California – Irvine

We are seeking proposals for chapters to be included in a peer-reviewed edited collection on fans, fandom(s), and tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs). The University of Michigan Press has expressed interest in this collection and the book proposal is currently underway. 

CFP: Virtual Crime and Detection

The 122nd annual conference of the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) will be held from Thursday, November 20, to Sunday, November 23, 2025, at the InterContinental Hotel, San Francisco, California.

Exploring The Murderbot Diaries:

Since the publication of All Systems Red in 2017, Martha Wells’ The Murderbot Diaries series has come to include seven books, three related short stories, and an upcoming Apple TV+ adaptation starring Alexander Skarsgard. The series has won four Hugo Awards, two Nebulas, and four Locus Awards, with Wells often turning down subsequent award nominations.

Popular culture serves as a powerful pedagogical force, often subtly and overtly shaping our understanding of the world, ourselves, and others. From the narratives we consume in film and television to the interactions we engage in on social media, popular culture offers frameworks for understanding social norms, historical events, scientific concepts, and the very nature of identity itself. This session aims to unpack the processes through which knowledge is produced, validated, contested, and internalized within and via popular culture, as well as how these processes intersect with the lived experiences and representations of various identities.

Possible Panel Topics May Include, but are not limited to:

CALL FOR BOOK CHAPTERS

Psychoanalyzing the Post-Apocalypse:

Psychoanalytic Approaches to 21st Century Fiction and Film

 “Under Strong Interest” by McFarland’s Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy series

CFP CLOSED - THANK YOU FOR YOUR INTEREST -

Editors’ Introduction

Higher, faster, more expensive: At the latest since the era of the insurgent streaming wars, excess has become a leitmotif of modern television culture (cf. Maeder 2021, 11–14). As an "oversized audiovisual narrative" (Bandirali/Terrone 2021, 14), series indulge in dramatic opulence, preferably becoming entangled in a dynamic of exposed exaggeration, trying to compete not only with other shows but also with themselves (cf. Sudmann 2017). In this context, excess seems inevitably linked to the discourse of narrative quality, which increasingly demonstrates that "size matters" (Jahn-Sudmann/Kelleter 2012, 209).

Open Call for Current Topics in Visual & Cultural Studies

Submissions requested by May 15. Rolling submissions accepted until June 15.

InVisible Culture is accepting essays (4,000-10,000 words) and artworks addressing issues in visual and culture studies for an upcoming general issue. The journal welcomes authors from the disciplines of film and media studies, art history, anthropology, and visual studies to submit work on any topic. Academics and artists at all stages in their careers, as well as independent scholars, are encouraged to apply. We particularly encourage submissions by graduate students.

Articles

This is an updated version of a previously submitted CfP for Planet Flanagan, a collection examining the Netflix series of Mike Flanagan. The call for chapters was very successful and we have some great work in progress, but we are still missing chapters covering two key content areas:

• Gender/Sexuality
• Space/Architecture

So, this is a specific call for submissions for chapters of about 10,000 words looking at these topic areas across all five of Mike Flanagan's Netflix series. The original call for chapters is replicated just below to give more detail.

The way our current globally interconnected and digitally enabled capitalist formation continuously reshapes itself to reinforce categories of class and overarching capitalist structures requires analyses that engage and critique these adaptive forces of capital. Responding to this need, this seminar seeks to examine the relationship of texts to a global capitalist economy by asking how class and capitalism function within and exert force upon texts and their contexts—in film, literature, art, video games, social media, and other extratextual spaces such as fan sites.

What Ever Happened to Gary Cooper?

How 21st Century American Television Shaped a Political Revolution

Fandom | Cultures | Research is the first international journal based in Germany for scholarship in the fields of Fan, Audience, Media, and Cultural (Data) Studies. With the multiplicity of accepted formats – ranging from full papers to reviews, conference reports, and data papers – the journal fosters academic discussion across these disciplines, especially regarding methodological questions: Each issue will consist of double-blind peer-reviewed full papers, alongside an editorially reviewed section that may contain data papers (data sets and complementary text), book reviews, conference reports, and interviews. Other creative format suggestions are also welcome. Furthermore, we invite themed guest sections for every issue.