fan studies and fandom

As a sport, basketball follows a certain set of rules and conventions which serve as a framework for players, coaches, and teams to play the sport. By their very nature, these rules are meritocratic which means that all participants are equal on the court, play by the same rules, and the only relevant (read as: game deciding) factors are effort, skill, and fortune. Such a perspective on basketball and sports leads certain fans and observers to statements such as “politics should be kept out of sports”.

The call for papers for the next issue of the Australasian Journal of Popular Culture (Issue 11.1-2), on the general theme of 'narrative and identity', is now open.

Article submissions on any aspect of the theme are encouraged. The Issue's Editors particulalry invite articles on the following topics:

- self-representation on social media
- representations of disability and neurodiversity in popular culture
- re-inventions of genre and viewership/readership in popular culture
- alternative realities and modes of storytelling in (video) games
- online fandoms and identity
- popular icons

Call for Submissions

Here for the Right Reasons: The Bachelor at Twenty

On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the premiere of The Bachelor (March 22, 2002), we seek submissions of abstracts for articles for a Contemporaries cluster devoted to the franchise. Since its premiere, the show has spawned a legion of spinoffs (The Bachelorette, Bachelor Pad, Bachelor in Paradise, Winter Games) as well as imitators and fictionalizations (Love Island, FBOY Island, UnREAL). The franchise also comprises a prodigious fanbase known as Bachelor Nation that encompasses a cottage industry of influencers, podcasters, and recappers.

This edited collection seeks to examine the intersections between two significant media systems: stardom and the franchise. It will explore the convergences, tensions and inter-dependences that star-driven texts and franchise cultures have constantly negotiated within the entertainment industry, on a global, historical and multiplatform scale. It aims to analyse franchise sites and strategies as significant nexus where an understanding of stars is created, managed and interpreted, and to analyse the place and value of the star to media franchise production.

Call For Interest

Chapters on Guerrilla Games Horizon series

Please distribute widely

This call is to assess interest in scholarly contributions for an edited volume on the

Horizon franchise. Released in February 2022 Horizon Forbidden West became an immediate

best-seller and with Zero Dawn is now part of one of PlayStation’s strongest new intellectual

properties.

This call is to assess whether there would be enough scholars interested to doing a chapter for an

edited volume on the franchise. Attention to the games, comics, board game, marketing, and all

We are delighted to announce that the Departament de Filologia Anglesa i Alemanya at the Universitat de València and the Institut Interuniversitari de Llengües Modernes Aplicades de la Comunitat Valenciana (IULMA) will be hosting, on the 19th-21st of October 2022 in Valencia, Spain, the II International Conference on Discourses of Fictional (Digital) TV Series.

This second edition will focus on the representations of Gender and Social Inequality in fictional DTVS narratives and discourses.

Gardeners of the Galaxies: How Imaginary Worlds Teach Us to Care for This One will be an academic, peer-reviewed collection of interdisciplinary essays, co-edited by Dr. Brenton Dickieson and Dr. Sørina Higgins. This volume will explore literature, film, the visual arts, and other creative works (especially Cli-Fi, genre fiction, and speculative lit) that imagine, invent, and embody environmental concerns.

Reminder:

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

FOLIO: STORIES OF AUSTRALIAN COMICS

How are Australian comics made, read, contested, thought about,
produced – what do Australian comics mean to you? We are a research
team called Folio; we are academics from three universities working
with a broader group of practitioners on an Australian Research
Council project to tell stories of contemporary Australian comics
1980-now. The project entails putting together an interactive history
and archive of the last 40 years of comics in Australia.

CALL FOR CHAPTER PROPOSALS

CALL FOR CHAPTER PROPOSALS
Moving Words: Multimodal and Digital Creative Writing Pedagogies 

We seek 350-word abstracts for approximately 5,000-word chapters for an edited book collection that explores the impact(s) of multimodal and digital media on the teaching of creative writing.

Rationale:

October 20-22, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC*

Plenary Speakers: Kristen Carella (Assumption University), “Crossing Every Border: Transgender Identity from Merlin to Laura Jane Grace;” and Orville Hicks, renowned Appalachian storyteller

Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association (MAPACA)

2022 Annual Conference

November 10-12, 2022

Princeton, NJ -- Princeton Marriott at Forrestal 

Call for papers:

Proposals are welcome on all aspects of popular and American culture for inclusion in the 2022 Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association (MAPACA) conference in Princeton, NJ. Single papers, panels, roundtables, and alternative formats are welcome.

Volume to be Published in November of 2022

The Journal of Anime and Manga Studies (JAMS) is eager to announce a Call for Papers for our third volume.

The Journal of Anime and Manga Studies is a double-blind peer reviewed, open-access journal published by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. JAMS is dedicated to publishing scholarly works concerning anime, manga, cosplay, and the fandom surrounding these areas. As an open-access journal, JAMS aims to reach an audience of scholars both inside and outside the academe, encouraging public engagement through the digital humanities.

In today's culture, it's almost impossible to avoid "monsters."  Straight from mythology and legend, these fantastic creatures traipse across our television screens and the pages of our books.  Over centuries and across cultures, the inhuman have represented numerous cultural fears and, in more recent times, desires. They are Other. They are Us. This panel will explore monsters--whether they be mythological, extraterrestrial, or man-made--that populate fiction and film, delving into the cultural, psychological and/or theoretical implications.

Science fiction (and its cousin genres, fantasy and horror) have long explored what it means to explore the unknown. In particular, some of SF’s familiar narratives have pondered life beyond our world, grappled with the vast expanse of the universe and the many things to be discovered there, and tackled complicated meetings with other beings and other ways of life. Beyond the SF bubble, fantasy has imagined entire worlds and wondered at a cosmos of gods and magic; meanwhile, horror has teased at the edges of its genre cousins, offering disturbing visions of space and other forms of travel and exploration in which the unknown is often waiting with jaws wide open.