popular culture

The E. E. Cummings Society and the Society's journal, Spring, invite abstracts for 20- minute papers for the 38th annual Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, February 18-20, 2010, at the University of Louisville. Considering the range of Cummings' modernist experiments and re-imaginings of genre through language, typography, and many art forms (from the lyric to prose non/fiction, to stage plays, and to the visual arts), along with his transgressions of formal boundaries (including metrics and rhyme), we invite papers that examine Cummings' multi-faceted engagement with the modern, in particular, issues of nation, race, and war, as well as his exploration of the popular vernacular.

For its inaugural issue (Winter 2010), the Journal of Popular Romance Studies is now considering papers on representations of romantic love in popular media, now or in the past, from anywhere in the world.

Topics addressed might include:

REMINDER: Deadline is approaching soon---July 1.

Call for Participation

Institute for Comics Studies
Comic Book Convention Conference Series

DRAGON*CON 2nd ANNUAL COMICS & POPULAR ARTS CONFERENCE

Atlanta, Georgia September 4-7, 2009

The Institute for Comic Studies and Dragon*Con present their second annual academic conference for the studies of comics and the popular arts to take place at Dragon*Con, the largest multi-media, popular culture convention focusing on science fiction and fantasy, gaming, comics, literature, art, music, and film in the US. For more info on Dragon*Con, visit http://dragoncon.org/

Motion comics are (in most cases) digitized, panel-by-panel, animated translations of comic books or graphic novels. This new medium has gained high visibility most recently as a result of Warner Bros.' adaption of D.C.'s WATCHMEN into the motion comics format as part of the studio's overall efforts to promote the live-action film version of the famed graphic novel. Several additional comics have, however, been adapted into this format, including BATMAN: BLACK AND WHITE, STEPHEN KING'S "N.", I AM LEGEND, SPIDER WOMAN, and ASTONISHING X-MEN, among many others.

"Form in Space and Time"

In current debates about the War in Iraq, it has become commonplace for politicians and journalists to conjure the specter of the Vietnam War as a means of quantifying the impact of the current war in American culture and throughout the world. Surprisingly, though, few have scrutinized these comparisons to examine the differences between the popular music of the Vietnam era and the music of the current post-9/11 era. While the Vietnam era found countless bands and musicians responding in protest to that war, there has arguably been a significantly smaller amount of contemporary musicians who have taken overt stances, in their music, about the politics of post-9/11 life, in America and elsewhere.

How is digital technology changing methods of scholarly research with pre-digital sources in the humanities? If the "medium is the message," then how does the message change when primary sources are translated into digital media? What kinds of new research opportunities do databases unlock and what do they make obsolete? What is the future of the rare book and manuscript library and its use? What biases are inherent in the widespread use of digitized material? How can we correct for them? Amidst numerous benefits in accessibility, cost, and convenience, what concerns have been overlooked?

Papers are welcome on William Blake and his influence on any one of the many artists or movements he impacted, including not only literature but visual arts and music: including but not limited to the Pre-Raphaelites, the Ancients, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Ginsberg and the Beats, Van Morrison, Billy Bragg, Patti Smith, composer William Bolcom, -- not to mention popular writers like Joyce Carol Oates, Thomas Harris, etc. What do the artists "half create/And what perceive" in their own vision of William Blake? What is Blake's legacy today? E-mail abstracts or complete papers (limited to 10-12 minutes presentation time) to Josephine McQuail or mail to Dr. J. McQuail, Box 5053, 5 William L.

CFP: Society for Cinema Media Studies Conference, Los Angeles, March 2010

Motion comics are (in most cases) digitized, panel-by-panel, animated translations of comic books or graphic novels. This new medium has gained high visibility most recently as a result of Warner Bros.' adaption of D.C.'s WATCHMEN into the motion comics format as part of the studio's overall efforts to promote the live-action film version of the famed graphic novel. Several additional comics have, however, been adapted into this format, including BATMAN: BLACK AND WHITE, STEPHEN KING'S "N.", I AM LEGEND, SPIDER WOMAN, and ASTONISHING X-MEN, among many others.

William Blake and His Influence

Postscript General Call for Papers

The theme of the Conference is "Afterlives: Survival and Revival". In an effort to facilitate a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary conversation, we encourage scholars working in any discipline to submit abstracts addressing this theme. The conference theme is designed to promote reflection on appropriations, adaptations and continuities in cultural production. A selection of the papers presented at the conference will be published in a special issue of The Southern African Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies (accredited for South African research subsidy purposes).
Suggested topics include, but are by no means limited to:
• new ways of looking at old texts
• textual appropriation and imitation
• textual transmission

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY MEDIEVALISMS:
CONTEMPORARY RE-CREATIONS OF THE MEDIEVAL

CALL FOR PAPERS
PROPOSALS DUE BY 12/31/09

Sponsored by THE SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF POPULAR CULTURE AND THE MIDDLE AGES
For "Time, Temporality, History": 31st Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum, Plymouth State University (Plymouth, NH), 16-17 April 2010

NEMLA, Montreal, Quebec April 7-11 2010

Lost Pasts/Broken Futures: Forgetting as Narrative Crisis in Film
Numerous films--from Memento and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to Manchurian Candidate and Spellbound--are preoccupied with acts of forgetting. More than just a plot element, forgetting serves as a narrative device that keeps afloat multiple narrative possibilities, forcing the viewer to engage manifold variables by denying the possibility of a singular narrative. This panel invites papers that investigate how the act of forgetting--rather than the attempt to remember--is used as a narrative device in film. Send abstracts to Thomas Knauer at thomas.knauer@sunyit.edu.