cfp.english.upenn.edu

At the Mercy of the Masses? – Popular Culture and Academia

April 12-13, 2013
Keynote Speaker: Prof. George Yúdice, University of Miami

Popular culture makes up a large part of our society, from bestsellers, graphic novels and video games, to social media and wildly popular television series and movies. Critical scholars have viewed popular culture as an area of negotiation, in which meaning is both constructed and contested. This conference seeks to address these and other complexities in the study of popular culture.

For this interdisciplinary conference, the graduate students of the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Maryland invite papers that examine and/or challenge the role of popular culture within society, history, literature, and the classroom. Papers that deal with popular culture during all historical periods and from all theoretical perspectives and departments are welcome. We especially encourage panel submissions. All abstracts and papers must be written in English. Please send abstracts of 250 words by December 20th to sllcgradconference@gmail.com.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

- (Re)Defining popular culture, subculture, and mass culture
- The politics and ideologies of popular culture
- Popular culture through the centuries: A historical perspective
- Popular culture and Cultural Studies: Challenging the parameter
- Literature these days: The success of crime, romance, and fantasy
- Popular but frowned upon: The two sides of pop music
- Popular Culture and sociolinguistics
- Popular culture and its audience
- Popular culture and identity formation
- Popular culture in the context of cultural globalization
- Teaching popular culture
- Popular culture and the electronic age
- Love, Sex, Drugs, and Rock’n’Roll: Top themes of popular culture
- Pop culture within popular culture