Call for Papers

SPORTS AND POPULAR CULTURE

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

48th Annual Conference, February 17-20, 2027

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

https://swpaca.org/

Submissions open: September 1, 2026

Proposal submission deadline: October 31, 2026

Proposals for papers and panels are now being accepted for the 48th annual SWPACA conference. One of the nation’s largest interdisciplinary academic conferences, SWPACA offers nearly 70 subject areas, each typically featuring multiple panels. For a full list of subject areas, area descriptions, and Area Chairs, please visit https://swpaca.org/subject-areas/.

The chair for the Sports and Popular Culture area welcomes proposals from interested scholars for the upcoming Southwest Popular/American Culture Association virtual conference. We invite proposals pertaining to any aspect of the intersection of sports and popular culture, including (but not limited to): 

• Scandals (Lance Armstrong, Black Sox, Houston Astros)
• Films on a particular sport (Field of Dreams, Million Dollar Baby, The Blind Side)
• Separate but also unequal: pay disparities between female and male athletes
• Female boxers in popular culture
• Sports in anime
• “Friday Night Lights” and football culture in Texas
• Sports memorabilia in popular culture
• NIL policies in sports today
• Doping scandals and their effect on the fans 
• Legal cases and their effect on sports
• Fandom and sports
• Sports in literature
• Young adult sports fiction

All proposals must be submitted through the conference’s database at https://swpaca.org/app.

For details on using the submission database and on the application process in general (including submitting proposals for roundtables and preformed panels), please see the FAQS & Resources tab on https://swpaca.org/. Individual proposals for 15-minute papers must include an abstract of approximately 200-500 words and a brief summary of 100 words or less.

For information on how to submit a proposal for a multi-paper panel, please view the above FAQs & Resources link.  

The deadline for submissions is October 31, 2026.  

SWPACA offers monetary awards for the best graduate student papers in a variety of categories. Submissions of accepted, full papers are due January 1, 2027. More details are here: https://swpaca.org/graduate-student-paper-awards/.  SWPACA also offers travel fellowships for undergraduate and graduate students as well as contingent faculty: https://swpaca.org/travel-awards-students-faculty/.

Registration and travel information for the conference is available at https://swpaca.org/albuquerque-conference/. 

In addition, please check out the organization’s peer-reviewed, scholarly journal, Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, at https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dialogue/.

If you have any questions about the Sports and Popular Culture area, please contact its Area Chair, Stacy Fowler, St. Mary’s University, at sfowler@stmarytx.edu. If you have general questions about the conference, please contact us at support@swpaca.org, and a member of the executive team will get back to you.

This will be a fully in-person conference. If you’re looking for an online option to present your work, keep an eye out for details about the 2027 SWPACA Summer Salon, a completely virtual conference to take place in June 2027.

We look forward to receiving your submissions!