popular culture

Due in part to well-publicised advancements in generative AI technologies such as GPT-4, there has been a recent explosion of interest in – and hype around – Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. Whether this hype cycle continues to grow or fades away, AI is anticipated to have significant repercussions for fandom (Lamerichs 2018), and is already inspiring polarised reactions. Fan artists have been candid about using creative AI tools like Midjourney and DALL-E to generate fan art, while fanfiction writers have been using ChatGPT to generate stories and share them online (there are 470 works citing the use of these tools on AO3 and 20 on FanFiction.net at the time of writing).

With 2017’s Get Out, Jordan Peele burst out of the confines of sketch comedy and announced himself as one of the most original voices in contemporary cinema. Part and parcel of Peele’s success was his undeniable mastery of–and facility with–generic conventions. Get Out has been ascribed a range of genre labels, from psychological thriller to political horror, black comedy to sci-fi, zombie movie to horror verité. Peele himself has added fuel to the fire by musing that his film is a “social thriller” and a “documentary” that “subverts the idea of all genres.” Since the success of his first film, Peele has released a pair of even more generically ambitious and ambiguous films: Us (2019) and Nope (2022). 

Dear Friends

I am extending the CFP for 'The E.T Book: New Perspectives on the Classic 1980s Blockbuster' till the end of November.

We have several abstracts on Childhood, merchandising, the video game, as well as on John Williams Score, unmade ET, cinematography etc

I would love to have some abstracts which focus on aspects of the film itself (textual, narrative, thematic) and its production contexts.

Please do feel free to send me any ideas you have

Dr Matt Melia
Kingston University

The ET Book: New Perspectives on The Classic 1980s Blockbuster

Editor: Dr Matthew Melia (Kingston University)

Publisher: Bloomsbury

We are delighted to announce two new Book Prize Awards, under the auspices of the UK-based Victorian Popular Fiction Association (VPFA): the VPFA First Book Prize and the VPFA Second Book Prize awards. These book prizes will be awarded in alternate years, beginning in 2023 with the First Book Prize, followed in 2024 by the Second Book Prize. The VPFA First Book Prize is intended for the first book of an early-career scholar; the VPFA Second Book Prize is for a second book by scholars at any career stage.

Submissions for the 2023 VPFA First Book Prize are now open, with a deadline of 31 December 2023. The winner will be announced in the spring of 2024.

Panel Organizer: Monica Sousa, York University, msousa93@yorku.ca

Panel to be held at ACCUTE 2024, in Montreal, Canada 

The ACCUTE Conference runs June 12- 15, 2024 at McGill University. 

We would like to invite humanities and social science scholars to contribute to our edited volume, ‘Oceans Seas and Shorelines in Film’, to be published in 2024/25 by Routledge in the Oceans Seas and Shorelines: a natural and cultural environmental history series.

Film is the most influential of all of the cultural media, combining powerful audio and visual formulas to recreate the world for the purpose of telling a story. It implicitly and explicitly conveys important aspects of real and imagined social change and exchange within a variety of environmental contexts, but the role of the environment and the impact of human agency on the environment has rarely been a focus of critical enquiry. 

This is a Call for Papers for an online workshop titled Laughing in the Face of Evil: Humorous Perspectives on Perpetrators in Contemporary American Literature and Popular Culture. The workshop asks what humor can contribute to our understanding of perpetrators by examining a selection of works from contemporary American literature and popular culture. Does humor help demythologize certain perpetrators whose international fame turned them into quasi-mythical figures? Can the ownership of humorous content about a traumatic situation or process endured by a specific marginalized community be transferred to other communities?

SF and Societal Vulnerability: Fragility, Collapse, and Transformation 

The last few years has given education a great insight into its own practices. Between online classrooms during the pandemic and the rapid emergence of more and more powerful technologies, we educators have seen a growing need to reevaluate our classrooms, as well as work with new tech to enhance these learning environments.

As hip-hop turns 50 in 2023, there is much to celebrate and reflect on, including its impact on higher education. This session is engaged with questions about the latter: what is hip-hop doing in our classrooms and conversely, what are we doing with it in our teaching practice?

Seeking proposals for a roundtable discussion on defining qualities of 21st Century African American literature and cultural production and the process of creating collaborative scholarly projects on this emerging, multifaceted, and evolving body of work.

Prominence and Precarity is the name of the seventeenth volume of the Cambridge University Press series African American Literature in Transition. Focused on 21st century African American literature and cultural production, the chapters in this volume explore the tension between African American cultural prominence and African American vulnerability and precarity in contemporary US society. 

The Comics Arts Conference is now accepting 100- to 200-word abstracts for papers, presentations, and panels taking a critical or historical perspective on comics (juxtaposed images in sequence) for a meeting of scholars and professionals at WonderCon, in Anaheim, CA, March 29–31, 2024.  We seek proposals from a broad range of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives and welcome the participation of academic and independent scholars.  We also encourage the involvement of professionals from all areas of the comics industry, including creators, editors, publishers, retailers, distributors, and journalists.  The CAC at WonderCon does not accept virtual submissions.  The CAC is designed to bring together comics scholars, professionals, critics, and historian

CFP – Reading Black Mirror

Drawing its inspiration from Edward Said’s discussion of the ways in which texts become ‘worldly’ through a series of filiations and affiliations, the ALA invites papers and panels that address such relations in all their forms. What are the filial structures that a text brings to its readers? What kind of affiliative readings might a critic bring to the text to disrupt the filial ties? What are the stakes in engaging in the traffic between filiative and affiliative readings? Beyond considerations of (a)ffiliated critical practice, how do literary and other cultural texts represent filiations and affiliations and in what ways do they constitute such relations?