popular culture

The Writing, Speaking, and Argument Program, along with the Department of English and the Film and Media Studies Program at the University of Rochester are pleased to announce an upcoming undergraduate conference on horror, to be held October 23-25, 2026. The conference will featuring a keynote address by the University of Rochester’s own Jason Middleton, author of numerous articles on horror films, co-editor (with Aviva Briefel) of Labors of Fear: The Modern Horror Film Goes to Work (U of Texas P, 2023), and a featured expert on the AMC series Eli Roth’s History of Horror.

LFA 2026: ADAPTATION/NATION

LITERATURE/FILM ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE

Elon University, Elon, NC

October 1st – 3rd 2026

"Melville Revivals"

PAMLA 2026

November 12-15, 2026

Seattle, Washington (Hyatt Regency Seattle, 808 Howell Street)

Call for papers

Architectures of Deceit:

Impostors and Con Artists in Contemporary Film and Media

This panel title borrows from the article "Granola and Guns: The Rise of Conspirituality" hosted on McGill University's Office for Science and Society that attempts to define and locate in American society a perplexing mindset that blends countercultural mystical thinking and conservative paranoia. "Conspirituality," which PennState defines as "a belief system that blends new age spiritual beliefs and conspiracy theorizing," has also been branded the "crunchy-to-fascism" pipeline, demonstrating how an openness to crystal healing, chakra opening, sonic baths, and celestial alignment has led many—often well-to-do white women—towards "Pastel QAnon," anti-vaxx, and an embrace of alt-right beliefs.

2026 Global K-Culture Conference

August 20 (Thu.) ~ August 22 (Sat.), 2026 (3 days)

Chungbuk National University, Korea

Korean, English, or the presenter’s preferred language

Deadline for submissions: May 31, 2026

The Department of Global K-Culture at Chungbuk National University is pleased to invite submissions for the upcoming Global K-Culture Conference, aimed at fostering meaningful dialogue and the exchange of ideas among instructors and researchers working across diverse educational and cultural contexts.

CFP: Football and Performance

Editors: Eero Laine, Noe Montez, and Shannon Walsh

We are currently seeking chapter abstracts for an edited volume on football and performance. Theatre and performance studies allow us a unique view towards the ways that sports extend into civic space, politics, and daily life. How can the disciplines of theatre, dance, and performance studies serve as an analytic for sport, generally, and American football, in particular?

Travel and Tourism Studies as a discipline continues to gain popularity in academia, in part because of its inter-disciplinary nature. The Travel and Tourism area seeks papers that discuss and explore any aspect of travel and/or tourism. Topics for this area include, but are not limited to, the following:

- travel and gender/race/class
- personal travel narratives
- heritage tourism
- material culture and tourism
- the impacts of the political climate on travel

2027 marks the 50th anniversary of the film now generally known as Episode IV: A New Hope, the first instalment in the hugely successful Star Wars franchise created by George Lucas. As beloved as it is divisive, Star Wars now straddles multiple decades and generations while proliferating across narrative media (novels, comics, games, animation, TV). It provides a series of compelling case studies in the relationship between creativity and commerce, from the foundation of Lucasfilm during the New Hollywood period to the 21st century Disney-era, and it has developed via a complex interplay between cutting-edge technological innovation, nostalgia, and mythmaking.

Intégrité is a scholarly journal published biannually by the Faith and Learning Committee and the Humanities Division at Missouri Baptist University in St. Louis, Missouri. Published both online (https://www.mobap.edu/about-mbu/publications/integrite/) and in print, it welcomes essays for a special issue (Fall 2027) on “Elvis Presley and Theology.”

2027 marks the 50th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death on August 16, 1977.

Second and Final Call for papers

Sensation: The Sounds, Visions, and Words of David Bowie

Academic conference, University of Agder, Norway 29. – 30. September 2026

Call for Chapters
Edited Volume: Chornobyl in Video Games: Memory, Simulation, and Post-Apocalyptic Play

Editor: Yaraslau Kot
Affiliation: Assistant Professor at University of Warsaw; Researcher at European Humanities University
Publisher: [TBA]

Chênière journal call-for-papers

Volume 10

Chênière, an online, interdisciplinary undergraduate journal based at Nicholls State University, invites papers for its tenth volume. Chênière is an MLA-indexed journal that welcomes submissions from any humanities field, broadly speaking, from history, communication, English, religion, art, music, and everything in between. The journal welcomes submissions from any undergraduate work but particularly caters to students from the Gulf Coast and the American South, broadly speaking. The subject matter for this issue is completely open topic.

We invite proposals for a small number of additional chapters for an edited volume on animal adaptations, edited by Justyna Włodarczyk (University of Warsaw) and Michael Fuchs (University of Innsbruck).