popular culture

CFP: Popular Culture and the Classroom
SWTX PCA/ACA February 2010
Papers (panelists) needed to examine role of popular culture in today's classrooms (which includes secondary classrooms or college classrooms) at the Southwest and Texas Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Annual Conference, Feb. 10-13, 2010 in Albuquerque, NM (Hyatt Regency Hotel, Albuquerque).

Here's a quick test for today's educators:
Facebook, "American Idol." "Lady Gaga, "Jon and Kate Plus Eight," "Lost." Ipods. Celebrity Weddings and Break-ups. "Twilight," Twitter, Instant Messaging, Reality Television. Superhero Films. Comic Books and Graphic Novels. X-Box. "LOL and IM Speak" Cell phones. Text messaging. Advertising and Stereotypes.

We are accepting submissions for a collection of stories, essays, and poems for a proposed book on comparative American spatial concepts, partially titled "Stories the Land Holds." The editors are looking for texts variously addressing "stories in the land," from origin stories, fiction, creative non-fiction, essays, etc. What are the stories the land tells? Vine Deloria has warned us of problems that result from a perspective that is not fundamentally spatial, and such has been the case for current problems that range from ecological disaster to fanatical environmentalism and bundled mortgages. We believe that these complex and problematic American events can be understood more fully from a Native American perspective.

Call for Papers: Skepticism and Culture
2010 Southwest/Texas Popular Culture/American Culture Association

31st Annual Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico
February 10-13, 2010

The 2010 SW/TX PCA/ACA Conference will be held in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the Hyatt Regency downtown. Further details regarding the conference (listing of all areas, hotel, registration, etc.) can be found at http://www.swtexaspca.org.

Proposals are now being accepted for a Skepticism and Culture panel in the American Studies area. Listed below are some suggestions for possible presentations, but topics not included here are also welcome:

The editors of CJFS/RCEC -- Charles Acland (Communication Studies) and Catherine Russell (Film Studies) at Concordia University, Montreal -- seek submissions of manuscripts in film and moving image studies for the following special refereed topic issues. The recommended maximum length for articles is 6000 words. We publish work in English or French.

Submission and Registration Deadline – December 15, 2009

Call for Papers/Proposals for the Children's and Young Adult Literature and Culture Area of the 31st Annual Meeting of the SW/TX PCA/ACA

February 10-13, 2010
Hyatt Regency Albuquerque
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Conference web site: http://www.swtxpca.org/

E-mail submissions preferred:
Dr. Diana Dominguez
Area Chair
gypsyscholar@rgv.rr.com

Please put SWPCA Submission in e-mail subject line.

Southwest/Texas Popular & American Culture Associations 31st Annual Conference: http://www.swtxpca.org/
Albuquerque, NM February 10 - 13, 2010
Hyatt Regency Albuquerque
330 Tijeras
Albuquerque, NM 87102
Phone: 1.505.842.1234

** 10th International Conference on Diversity in Organisations, Communities and Nations**
19-22 July 2010
Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland
www.Diversity-Conference.com

This Conference is to be held in Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, 19 to 22 July 2010. This Conference will address a range of critically important themes in the study of diversity today. Plenary speakers will include some of the world's leading thinkers in the field, as well as numerous paper, workshop and colloquium presentations by researchers and practitioners.

** Eight International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities **
29 June to 2 July 2010
University of California, Los Angeles, USA
www.Humanities-Conference.com

The Conference will address a range of critically important themes in the various fields that make up the humanities today. Plenary speakers will include some of the world's leading thinkers in the humanities, as well as numerous paper, workshop and colloquium presentations by teachers and researchers.

Modern German cities, particularly regional and national capitals, have often been studied in relation to German national identity. For this reason, cultural displays (for instance, films and exhibitions) in and of these metropoles are often seen to demonstrate unique brandings, unique particularizations of space that define major cities with respect to each other and their national cultures. Much recent scholarship on post-unification Berlin, for instance, evidences this kind of perspective and has furthered a unifying comprehension of the new Republic as it is manifested in the re-made city. Our panel seeks to unsettle such predominant spatial analysis through focusing more closely on the heterogeneity of urban branding practices.

The society for the study of Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture (EPTC) invites papers discussing any aspects of existential or phenomenological theory or culture. For example, papers dealing with theoretical or cultural issues in relation to authors such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Beckett, Husserl, Heidegger, Jaspers, Levinas, Malraux, Marcel, Buber, Frankl, Sartre, Camus, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir, Irigaray, or Laing are all welcome. Submissions from all disciplines are welcome. EPTC will meet at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, in conjunction with the Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities of Canada, from May 31 to June 3, 2010.

Proposals are now being accepted for the Children in Film Area of the SW/TX PCA/ACA conference Feb 10-13, 2010 in Albuquerque, NM.(www.swtxpca.org) Submissions pertaining to any aspect of children's studies in relation to film are desired. Of special interest are contributions that explore and interrogate the representations of children in Hollywood film, independent film, foreign film and/or children's identity construction as represented in film.

The 2009 EAPSU (English Association of Pennsylvania State Universities) Conference will be held at Shippensburg University, October 22-24, 2009. The conference theme is "Making Our World: Language, Literacy and Culture."

DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS EXTENDED TO AUGUST 1, 2009.

We invite proposals from faculty and students for presentations, roundtable discussions, and workshops that address how the work of English studies continues to make and remake our communities, our classrooms, and the world around us. Topics include, but are not limited to: Literatures, Popular Culture & Film, Composition and Pedagogy, and Creative Texts: Fiction, Creative Non-Fiction, and Poetry.

The 10th Annual New Voices Conference focuses on representations of the Apocalypse as they manifest throughout history, across cultures, and in language. The conference committee invites papers dealing with any aspect of mankind's conception of the End-of-Days. Individual papers or panel proposals may center upon any time period and any culture or people. They may furthermore draw thematically from such academic disciplines as literary criticism and theory, poetry, fiction, philosophy, religious studies, medieval and renaissance studies, art history, biblical history, cultural geography, and folklore.

Solicitation for articles to be included in a collection of essays that considers the inherent quality of meta-fiction in 20th century solder narratives such as Vonnegut's, Slaughterhouse-five; Ambrose's, Band of Brothers, and the works of Tim O'Brien. French philosopher Jean Baudrillard discussed the postmodern qualities of texts that blur the lines between fiction and non-fiction, saying that a sort of hyper-reality is created. Among the possible questions presenters might address are these: What is the nature of the interplay between fiction and experience within the soldier-memoir, soldier-account, and soldier-novel? What are the genre distinctions at work in the soldier narrative as non-fiction or fiction?