fan studies and fandom

Special Issue: Nostalgia and Popular Culture  
Abstract submission deadline: 10 May 2020
Full article (6,000-7,000 words) submission deadline: 19 July 2020
Issue Guest Editors: Carmel Cedro (Auckland University of Technology) and Blair Speakman (Auckland University of Technology)

Due to the current circumstances, the deadline for submitting a paper for this panel has been extended to May 31.

Last year, when Fox canceled the television show Lucifer, a fan campaign to save the show resulted in Netflix picking it up for another season. This was not an isolated incident. Collectives of fans, gathering both online and in person, often influence the longevity, the content, the dispersal, and the afterlife of their favorite shows, games, songs, and other popular culture artifacts. In response to the conference theme “Cultures of Collectivity,” the popular culture permanent session invites papers that investigate how both planned and spontaneous groups appropriate or influence popular culture.

We seek papers that explore all aspects of Children’s and Young Adult Literature, as well as those addressing the conference theme of cultures of collectivity. Considerations may be given to audience, race, technologies, body image, sexualities, disabilities, literacies, socioeconomics, immigration, rural/urban spaces, posthumanism, regionalism, and any other critical issues in children’s and young adult literature from any period and genre. Panel proposals are also welcome. The MMLA conference will take place in Milwaukee, WI November 4-8, 2020. Inquiries and/or abstracts of 250-300 words should be sent to Dr.

Organizer: Denise Du Vernay, Loyola University Chicago

In all of Atwood’s works of fiction, cultures are created (usually with their own vernacular) whether they are the post-apocalyptic survivors of the Maddaddam trilogy, the mean girls of Cat’s Eye, the academics of The Edible Woman and Life Before Man, or Mayday in The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments, Atwood’s works are rife with cultures of collectivity.

Call for Abstracts - Edited Collection on Father Figures in Animated/Cartoon TV Shows for Mature Audiences

 “The handy thing about being a father is that the historic standard is so pitifully low.”

- Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize Winner

The trope of the “hapless dad,” clumsy and useless with his own children, appears in storytelling across several mediums—especially in animated cartoons on TV. For many contemporary cartoon shows for adult audiences, however, this trope appears especially pronounced, often leaning into the stereotype that competent childrearing is "women's work" for the benefit of comedy.

From the early Atari single-player arcade game Outlaw to more recent videogames such as Activision Blizzard’s multiplayer Overwatch, modern digital outlaws have long been popular characters in gaming culture. These characters often work to resist authoritarianism within their respective gaming worlds, and they frequently evoke much older outlaw representations, such as the Robin Hood of medieval ballads, by embodying popular definitions of justice and communal welfare. 

This special issue of The Bulletin of the International Association for Robin Hood Studies

The Fan, Fandoms, and Celebrity Studies area encourages submissions that focus on interrogating the ideas and the ideals of fans and fandoms, and why we idolize celebrities. We welcome submissions from all theoretical and philosophical perspectives. We are open to submissions in any area of fan and celebrity studies including but not limited to:

Call Extended!  New Due Date for Abstracts is April 20, 2020

Videogames are a powerful storytelling medium—but what are the stories we tell about videogames, with videogames, around videogames?

While there is an extensive body of scholarship on the way that videogames create worlds, construct characters, and explore themes, there has been almost no scholarship on the representation of videogames in literary texts.

The confluence of sports culture and sociopolitical issues has a long history. Memorable examples of athletes of yesteryear embracing activism include Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their fists against institutional racism, Muhammad Ali opposing the Vietnam War, and Billie Jean King fighting for gender equity. Contemporary examples include Colin Kaepernick protesting police violence against people of color and the U.S. women’s national soccer team charging U.S. Soccer with gender discrimination. Each example underscores the reality that athletes are so much more than the games they play. Many authors have honored this tradition through the fictional athletes they portray in contemporary sports-related young adult literature (YAL).

We are pleased to announce that we will be hosting a symposium at the York Centre for Writing, York St John University. PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS CONFERENCE HAS BEEN POSTPONED AND THE CFP EXTENDED. WE WILL PROVIDE YOU WITH A NEW CONFERENCE DATE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

The daytime Horrifying Symposium event is free to attend (lunch is provided). There will be a ticketed event in the evening with very special guests, Scarred for Life.

Our symposium is intended to span academic and popular responses and we would welcome contributions from academics, practitioners, broadcasters, writers and fans. Proposals can be for critical papers and other mixed-mode presentations and submissions that blur the boundaries.

Given the evident command of the celebrity in 20th- and 21st-century media cultures and following modern trends toward trans-medial and inter-generic production, this traditional session calls for papers that explore the relationships between celebrity and generic scandals. How have filmmakers, television writers, tabloid/entertainment journalists, novelists, essayists, biographers, memoirists, and other cultural creators depicted celebrity scandal while pushing the limits of their given genre or medium? While the 20th and 21st centuries are the focus of this call, media and literary scholars of all periods are welcomed to apply. History-bending is happily encouraged alongside genre-bending. Scandals could involve:

Submissions for our first issue (Harry Potter) will be open from February 1 until April 1.  Submissions can focus on the Harry Potter books, films, other media, or any expressions of the fan cultures of Harry Potter, including fan fiction, art, sports, or fan communities of other kinds.  

You may submit once per issue for each category (creative non-fiction and academic essays). We are not interested in publishing fan fiction or poetry.

Submissions must be 2500-7500 words and, if scholarly, must be in MLA citation format. Please use Times New Roman 12 pt font. Current undergraduates and graduate students in any major or field are eligible to submit, as are holders of master’s degrees.

2020 MPCA/ACA Conference: Animation and Anime

Call for Papers. The Midwest Popular Culture Association/Midwest American Culture Association seeks proposals for papers and panels both on Western animation and on anime for its 2020 Conference, to be held Friday-Sunday, 2-4 October 2020 at the Westin Minneapolis in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  As animation and anime cover all kinds of storytelling, topics may include but are not limited to the following suggestions:

Extended Deadline - Ghost Stories Call for Submissions

Tell me a story. A simple request made by children across the world every night and one we seek to fulfil even as adults. But… it is the stories that excite, that make our hearts beat faster, and the hairs on our necks stand on end that bewitch us most. It is these stories we want to hear. Spectral Visions Press (University of Sunderland) are now accepting submissions for a short story collection, Spectral Visions: Ghost Stories. Due to the fantastic response, we've extended the deadline in hopes of a bumper collection or even a separate poetry collection.