popular culture

Fairy Tale Economies

An interdisciplinary, international conference
October 1—3, 2009
University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg MS

Mindful of our own global economies, this colloquium addresses economies in fantastic literature and culture. We shall identify economy both as a theme within literatures and as a way of thinking about the value of fantastic literature itself.

Call for Proposals

MediaModes Graduate Student Conference
at the School of Visual Arts, New York City
http://www.mediaModes.com
abstracts@mediamodes.com

"Women in Popular Music: 'Permanent Vacation': Moves and Departures in Women's Popular Music." A change in location, focus, allegiance or perspective can lead to a major shift in an artist's work, which can then lead to a different sound, a different public persona, a different audience. Women artists who start out as one thing end up something else—gospel singers go secular and vice versa, country goes disco, folk rock goes jazz. We invite papers that explore this sort of transition and explore its aesthetic (and other) consequences in the career of a woman artist or group. Patricia S. Rudden, New York City Coll. of Technology, patriciarudden@gmail.com.

Conference: St. Louis, Nov. 12-15

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.

Translation, Performance, and Reception of Greek Drama, 1900–1950: International Dialogues

A Special Issue of Comparative Drama

This conference solicits contributions to our understanding of the perennial outlaw hero, and the traditions surrounding his stories, from as wide a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives as possible. The conference requests proposals that expand our knowledge of medieval and early modern historical studies, literary criticism, folklore, musicology and music practice, children's literature, cultural studies, anthropology, film and media studies, performance art and oral recitations, art history, literary history and theory, and philosophy. While our historical understanding of Robin Hood inevitably depends on literary and archival records, even these cultural memories have been shaped by the media that contain them.

The conference, "Rethinking Humanities" attempts to interrogate how the future of humanities can be traced and interpreted from various academic and philosophical quarters, and the ways in which interdisciplinary endeavours in all realms of knowledge respond to this effort. It is widely accepted that Humanities in the academia has encountered unusually critical challenges in the last few decades. The question of how these challenges are transmitted through the corpus and the methodological and canonical framework of traditional Humanities will be pivotal in the making of the conference. The conference attempts in a broad manner to address the following issues:

This SAMLA special session panel welcomes papers on any aspect of the Steampunk genre. Papers could address literature, film, art, or other cultural manifestations of Steampunk. Of particular interest are discussions of the ways that Steampunk engages with notions of time and historical discourse, the materiality of Steampunk, and the intersections of technology and literature. By May 20, please send a one-page abstract that includes audio/visual needs and a short vita (with complete contact information) to Kathryn Crowther, Georgia Institute of Technology at kathryn.crowther@lcc.gatech.edu

(In)Scribing Gender: International Female Writers and the Creative Process
Edited by Jen Bouchard
Diversion Press (www.diversionpress.com)

Nineteenth-century American print culture was notoriously fluid, as texts migrated from one genre to another. For example, popular city-mysteries of the 1840s and 1850s drew upon sensational crime-reporting and were often first serialized in weekly story papers and then printed in a series of pamphlets before being compiled and sold as complete novels. This session invites papers that explore any aspect of genre migration during or after the rich emergence of the penny press, the black press, and the labor press in the mid 19th century. How does the migration of texts from one genre to the next affect their meaning and their reception? What common interests did these print sources share on questions of racial, ethnic, or class identity?

It has often been said that science fiction is a literature of ideas. Through the use of familiar tropes, such as spaceships, aliens, and ray guns, the genre uses the future (and sometimes the past) to comment on the present--on current social, cultural, and political ideologies. Likewise, media directed at children often focus on advocating or criticizing similar ideologies, often for a didactic purpose. It is interesting, then, that so little has been said about the joining of these two genres--children's science fiction--particularly when dealing with the visual media of film and television.

LITERARY JOURNALISM STUDIES, a peer-reviewed journal sponsored by the International Association for Literary Journalism Studies (IALJS), invites submissions of scholarly articles on literary journalism, which is also known as narrative journalism, literary reportage, reportage literature, "new journalism" and the nonfiction novel, as well as literary nonfiction and creative nonfiction that emphasizes cultural revelation. The journal is international in scope and seeks submissions on the theory, history and pedagogy of literary journalism throughout the world. All disciplinary approaches are welcome.

We are pleased the announce the launch of an open-access online video archive and research project on Asian performances of Shakespeare.

http://web.mit.edu/shakespeare/asia/

This site offers an extensive collection of videos of Shakespeare performances for scholars, students, and any one interested in Shakespeare or Asian cultures. Here you will also find interactive maps and timelines, interviews, biographies of directors and actors, for understanding intercultural theatre from Asia.

3rd Call for Papers and Panels - Regulated Liberties. Negotiating Freedom in Art, Culture and Media

1st Rethinking Art Studies (REARS) conference in Turku, August 20-22 2009, University of Turku, Finland.