fan studies and fandom

CFP ReFocus: The Films of Xavier Dolan

Ever since his first feature film J’ai tué ma mère premiered at Cannes in 2009, where it received an eight-minute standing ovation and three awards, every film from the prolific and precocious 28 year-old Québécois director Xavier Dolan has generated significant buzz. A recipient of numerous international awards, Dolan has recently taken his career into genre filmmaking (with Tom à la ferme, which premiered at Venice and garnered the prestigious FRIPESCI prize) and to an international level, with his first English-language feature The Death and Life of John F. Donovan now in post-production.

In the last two decades, scholarly attention to transmedia storytelling (TS) has increased dramatically. Approaches to the topic vary widely, ranging from a focus on the effects of TS on narratives and texts (Harvey, Mittell); explorations of paratexts, metatexts, intertexts, and pretexts (Gray, Clarke); and the increase in fan participation and agency with regard to narrative agency since the transmedia turn (Jenkins, Geraghty, Hills). More recently, scholars such as Raúl Rodríguez-Ferrándiz have returned to what might be considered the beginning, looking to Gerard Genette’s discussion of paratexts and building on Genette’s print-bound ideas with transmediated frames.

American Literature and Culture Secton (Department of English Studies, University of Wrocław) and New Media and Popular Literature Secton (Department of Polish Studies, University of Wrocław) invite paper abstracts for “Generaton BioWare,” a conference focused exclusively on the Canadian developer and their games.

Penny Dreadful (2014-2016) has become one of the most critical well-regarded shows of the post-millennial Gothic television revival, drawing explicitly on classic tropes, texts and characters throughout its three-season run. However, despite the show’s critical success and cult following, a substantive academic examination of the show has yet to be undertaken.

With the proliferation of global media on the Internet, Korean television dramas have quickly become a popular phenomenon.Not just permeating Asia, but also appearing in the U.S., the Middle East, Europe, and Spanish-speaking countries among others, these dramas lead to fans scrambling to provide subtitles in their own languages. Along with being enthralled with characters and storylines, fans find themselves listening to soundtracks and following their favorite actors to other Korean dramas.

Call for Papers

Asian and Asian American Culture Area

2017 Midwest Popular Culture Association/Midwest American Culture Association Conference

Wednesday-Sunday, 18 - 22 October 2017

St. Louis, Missouri

Hyatt Regency St. Louis at the Arch

Deadline: April 30, 2017

The Asian and Asian American Culture Area of the Midwest Popular Culture Association/Midwest American Culture Association is now accepting proposals for its upcoming Conference in October 2017.

Proposals will be accepted from any area relating to Asian and Asian American cultures.  Potential topics could include, but are not limited to:

CORRUPTIBLE SEED: Literary, Political, and Historical Perspectives on Bob Dylan

Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Richmond B.C., September 22-23, 2017

Bob Dylan, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in November 2016, is one of the seminal figures of contemporary culture. Aligning with the 50th anniversary of his landmark album John Wesley Harding, this conference will explore perspectives on Dylan’s work from a variety of disciplines. Proposed papers should deal with any aspect of Dylan’s career and oeuvre, whether from a political, historical, or literary standpoint. More musicological analyses are also welcome.

This edited volume focuses on the new cultural phenomenon of binge media and the concomitant patterns of consumption--the viewing of or listening to a series of episodes in rapid succession. With the rise of streaming digital media such as podcasts, aggregated TV series, and other immersive media forms, new textualities and temporalities shape popular narrative forms. Self-directed consumption of digital media series means that audiences are dispersed, as viewing and listening become compressed or extended according to personal choice. The textual artifact is reconstituted through the erasure or alteration of the temporal gaps between weekly installments, and, most notably, by the compression or disappearance of commercial interruptions.

Steampunk: Then, Now, and Then Again

Bishop Grossteste University, Lincoln

25th – 27th August 2017

‘The past is a kind of future that has already happened.’

Bruce Sterling, Co-author of The Difference Engine

CORRUPTIBLE SEED: Literary, Political, and Historical Perspectives on Bob Dylan

Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Richmond B.C., September 22-23, 2017

Organisers: Tracey Kinney (Department of History, Kwantlen Polytechnic University), Gregory Millard (Department of Political Science, Kwantlen Polytechnic University), and Heather Cyr (Department of English, Kwantlen Polytechnic University).

The Fan Studies Network 2017 Conference
24-25th June 2017
Centre for Participatory Culture,
University of Huddersfield, UK

Keynote Speaker: Dr Louisa Stein (Middlebury College, USA) 
Plenary Address: Professor Matt Hills (University of Huddersfield, UK)

MOSF Journal of Science Fiction @ Escape Velocity 2017

The MOSF Journal of Science Fiction is accepting 250 word proposals for 15-20 minute papers for this year’s Escape Velocity Conference in Washington, D.C, September 1st – 3rd.

The topic of this literature panel is “Technology of the Soul,” and aims to discuss posthumanism and metaphysics. More specifically, we would love papers discussing the boundaries of what we might consider the human “soul” and where we locate the parameters of personhood in a technologically enhanced world.

Call for Essays: Stranger Things: Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence

I am looking for proposals for chapters for a book on the Netflix series Stranger Things to be published by McFarland & Company. As the book title suggests, the overarching theme of the volume is how the series creates, evokes, uses and exploits the eighties, eighties culture and contemporary nostalgia for both. Successful proposals will link an aspect of Stranger Things with an eighties counterpart and explore how the series engages that aspect of Reagan-era culture.

The editors of Between the Lines, an academic Hebrew journal dedicated to the study of children's and YA literature, invite submissions for its second volume. All venues of exploration are welcome: theoretical, comparative, interdisciplinary, new readings of canonical texts for children, etc.

Please note that while we welcome articles that explore children's and YA literature from all ages and cultures, we publish in Hebrew.   

All articles will be blind-refereed.

Between the Lines is published both in print and as e-journal. Contributors are encouraged to visit our first issue, at:   http://shaanan.ac.il/?page_id=24075

General Guidelines: