popular culture

This special session invites papers on zombies and the undead as figures through which literature, film, television, games, and popular culture imagine power, hierarchy, and social conflict. In keeping with PAMLA 2026’s theme, “Our Ruling Classes: Culture, Power, Conflict,” this panel explores how zombie narratives dramatize the fragility of social order, the failures of ruling elites, and the tensions between collective survival and unequal power.

Late Bowie: Legacy, Mortality and the Archival Impulse

Call for Papers

Kingston University, Tony Visconti Studio, 11-12 September 2026

Call for Papers

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

2026 SWPACA Summer Salon

June 25-27, 2026

Virtual Conference

https://swpaca.org/

Submissions open on March 30, 2026

Proposal submission deadline: April 27, 2026

This special session, taking its inspiration from the conference rubric “Our Ruling Classes: Culture, Power, Conflict,” invites presentations that explore the dynamics of power differentials in adaptations of any kind. Following David Mamet’s notorious maxim, “Film is a collaborative business—bend over,” it seeks to investigate whether the production and reception of adaptations are marked by inevitable power imbalances, how collaborations in making and making sense of adaptations address these imbalances, and whether collaborations among equals are either possible or desirable.

The 123rd Annual PAMLA Conference's Digital Studies session examines how digital technologies shape human life, culture, the environment, and academia. The area remains interested in a broad range of work at the intersection of the humanities, the arts, and digital culture. However, in line with this year’s conference theme (“Our Ruling Classes: Class, Power, Conflict”), we are particularly interested in the power structures that shape how technologies are used, by whom, and to what ends. Who is included in the design and implementation of digital technologies, and who is left out? Who benefits, and who pays the greatest costs?

For its forthcoming issue, Mise-en-scène: The Journal of Film & Visual Narration (MSJ) invites submissions that encompass the latest research in film and media studies. Submission categories include feature articles (6,000-7,000 words); mise-en-scène featurettes (1,000-1,500 words); reviews of films, DVDs, Blu-rays or conferences (1,500-2,500 words); interviews (2,500-5,000 words); undergraduate scholarship (2,000-2,500 words) or video essays (8-10 minute range). All submissions must include a selection of supporting images from the film(s) under analysis and be formatted according to MLA guidelines, 9th edition.

Call for Papers

Medievalisms Area

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

2026 SWPACA Summer Salon

June 25-27, 2026

Virtual Conference

https://swpaca.org/

Submissions open on March 30, 2026

Proposal submission deadline: April 27, 2026

Call for Papers

Horror (Literary & Cinematic)

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

2026 SWPACA Summer Salon

June 25-27, 2026

Virtual Conference

https://swpaca.org/

Submissions open on March 30, 2026

Proposal submission deadline: April 27, 2026

This edited volume is an offshoot of a panel that I proposed and chaired earlier this year (https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/12/08/infrastructural-flesh-the-plural-body-in-the-global-city). Due to the stellar response to that CFP, and from the conversations we had around the theme, it was decided that we will plan an edited volume around the theme.

Volume Rationale

Trans embodiments have been lived and conceptualized in multiple ways throughout the long and complex history of Southeast Europe. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, state institutions – through legal and medical frameworks grounded in early sexology – largely criminalized and pathologized transness. These classifications often entailed invasive and frequently involuntary legal and medical interventions, and were accompanied by profound social marginalization. At the same time, the reception and dissemination of sexological and juridical knowledge across Southeast Europe remained uneven, shaped by the divergent historical trajectories of the region’s post-imperial formations.

**DEADLINE EXTENDED to 13 April 2026**

Call for Papers: 

Listening to Possible Worlds 

Sound and Music in Speculative Literature and Culture 

22-23 October 2026, Leiden University, the Netherlands (in-person) 

Confirmed keynote speakers are Anna Snaith (King’s College London) and Chris Tonelli (University of Groningen) 

The Journal of Therapeutic and Applied Geek and Gaming Culture (TAGGC) is a new academic journal for professionals studying the intersections of Geek and Gaming cultures and mental health to share their work. 

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. In concert with this year’s theme, we also invite examinations of representations of the capitalist ruling class and the material and ideological effects of these representations.

The Dance and Movement Analysis Section of the American Folklore Society is looking for papers, panels, workshops, and lec/dems for the 138th AFS Annual Meeting, to be held at the Renaissance Asheville Downtown Hotel in Asheville, North Carolina from October 27–31, 2026. Deadline is April 6, 2026 for emailing us with ideas and questions, at dance.section@afsnet.org.