popular culture

CALL FOR PAPERS, ABSTRACTS, AND PANEL PROPOSALS

Midwest Popular Culture Association/

Midwest American Culture Association

2023 Conference

East Asian Studies

Deadline: April 30, 2023

Event Dates: Friday-Sunday, 6-8, October 2023 

Location: DePaul University, Chicago, IL (in-person)

Online Conference Date: TBA

Registration is free to attend.

Call for papers

In our fourth annual event, we will examine the theme of 'connections, interconnections, and disconnections' in festive and celebratory culture.

International conference

November 27-28, 2023

Alcalá de Henares, Madrid ES

The conference will focus on how the American imagination has shaped—and, in turn, has been shaped by—its frontiers and borderlands, marked by an intrinsic peripheral quality, sociocultural porosity, and a diverse range of experiences and identities. As Lee Bebout (2016) has highlighted discussing the US–Mexico border, representations of frontiers, the “other side,” and the people inhabiting these regions have been historically deployed to construct a dominant national identity—often exploiting, invisiblizing, or neglecting local identities in the process.

Call for Papers: James Bond Studies Conference

30th June – 1st July 2023

University of Roehampton, London

In association with the Centre for Literature and Inclusion and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Roehampton, the International Journal of James Bond Studies will host a 2-day international conference on the University’s beautiful parkland campus in South West London.

UW Seattle
Seattle, WA

Wednesday, October 4th — Friday, October 6th, 2023

UW Bothell
Bothell, WA 

Saturday, October 7, 2023

On_Culture Issue 16 (Spring 2024): Ways of Reading

With the sixteenth issue of On_Culture, we want to explore various approaches to reading cultural artifacts and events in an attempt to answer the question: What are the affordances of particular forms of reading and what do they bring forth? While the ability to decipher words and distinguish individual characters is perceived as a key skill and taught from an early age, philosophical traditions introduce us to critical approaches to interpreting broader cultural phenomena. 

CFP: Individuality and Community in Mid-Century American Culture (1945-1968)One-day symposium, October 27, 2023Lund University, Sweden Mid-century US culture tends to be described in both simplified and paradoxical terms. On the one hand, it is thought of as a period of ‘containment’ culture, ‘Red-Scare’ rhetoric, and McCarthyism: a time when norms were strong, and it was difficult to be different. On the other hand, it is a period romanticized as the great era of American exceptionalism and industry.

Call for Papers

Medievalisms Area

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

SWPACA Summer Salon

June 8 & 9, 2023

Virtual Conference

http://www.southwestpca.org

Submissions open on March 18, 2023

Proposal submission deadline: April 15, 2023

Abortion in International Popular Culture--Soliciting Abstracts

Call for Papers

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

SWPACA Summer Salon

June 8 & 9, 2023

Virtual Conference

http://www.southwestpca.org

Submissions open on March 18, 2023

Proposal submission deadline: April 15, 2023

A 1.5-day international conference at the University of Exeter and Exeter Library (UK)

12-13 September 2023

Keynote Speakers: Dr Mark Aldridge, Solent University and Prof. Michelle M. Kazmer, Florida State University

VIOLENCE OF MEMORIES: RECLAIMING SPACES AND LOST VOICES IN SOUTH ASIA

 Seeking abstracts for proposing a panel at UW-Madison Conference on South Asia, 2023. 

Panel Abstract: 

With its massive world, open-ended quests, and near-limitless options for customization, Elden Ring––the most critically acclaimed video game of 2022––is designed to be replayed. But it is also a text that demands to be reread. Whether we study its environmental storytelling or the lore in item descriptions, the game’s fragmented narrative fuels exegeses that resemble the long history of Biblical interpretation, midcentury criticism of modernist enigmas like Ulysses, and hermeneutic fandoms surrounding popular culture like Twin Peaks. Its spatiotemporally disjunctive universe frustrates efforts to interpret its world “realistically” and prompts one to place it in dialogue with theories of unconventional space and time.

Special dossier | edited by Marica Orrù and Igor Juricevic

A fundamental element of the American imaginary, superhero and heroic narratives have seen a new apogee since the turn of the century. New and old heroes and heroines have populated popular culture, giving rise to a variety of texts that tackle diversity, nostalgia, and the need for imaginaries and narratives that help us deal with the struggles inherent to our current times.

This two-part dossier, co-edited by Marica Orrù and Igor Juricevic, will collect essays on (super)hero figures in twenty-first century US popular culture, with a specific focus on diversity, cross-genre texts, and transmedia representations.