The 2012 Midwest Popular Culture Association (MPCA) conference will be held Friday-Sunday, 12-14 October 2012 at the Renaissance Columbus Downtown Hotel in Columbus, Ohio. Those interested should review the information here (http://mpcaaca.org/columbus-2012/2012-cfp/) to include relevant details on their submission entry. Submissions should be made electronically via our online submission system (http://submissions.mpcaaca.org/). Deadline for receipt of proposals is April 30, 2012.

Forgoing more of the Iiterary angles of representations of 9/11 (like DeLillo's Falling Man and Updike's Terrorist), this area interested in essays that explore the intersections between 9/11 and popular culture. These can be depictions from disparate media such as television, film, comics, music, video games, and non-canonical literature, such as more mainstream fiction, and how they interpollate the central trauma of 9/11. How do these texts react to, displace, and complicate the first readings of 9/11 suggested by Baudrillard, Zizek, Jameson, and trauma theorists? For that matter, how do other countries' texts respond to these issues? Those who want to comment on 9/11 and cinema should broaden the level of inquiry beyond United 93 and World Trade Center, thinking about Adam Lowenstein's concept of "the allegorical moment," for example, although this concept could also be fruitfully expanded out to include other media.

The 9/11 and Popular Culture area is purposely broad so as to develop a fuller range of texts concerning 9/11 that, regardless of media, comment upon and critique administrative, cultural, or international failings. How do these more liminal interactions reveal new facets of study, recover neglected media, and otherwise recalibrate what we mean when we talk about 9/11?