popular culture

Star Studies shook up auteur-based film criticism by suggesting that actors – through the manipulation of their images by studios, directors, and the stars themselves – were collaborators and instruments in film and media projects.

Star Studies shook up auteur-based film criticism by suggesting that actors – through the manipulation of their images by studios, directors, and the stars themselves – were both collaborators and instruments in film and media projects. Equally groundbreaking was the claim that a star's importance could stretch beyond a single film. Critical to Star Studies is, of course, the "star": a cultural icon whose image is built through the combination of his filmic catalogue with his biography and extra-filmic output, including product sponsorship, charity work, and interviews. Canonical works of Star Studies focused on figures like Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe, Paul Robeson, Humphrey Bogart, Clint Eastwood. But what about James Gandolfini or Diane Keaton?

How and why do fiction writers from the explosively experimental period of 1960 to the present use (subvert, disturb) the seemingly conventional form of the fairy tale? Both American and international writers are drawn to fairy tales. One approach to fairy tales is taken by American metafictionists, who find in them rich mythic patterns to disrupt in order to promote new and different constructions of meaning. Robert Coover, for instance, makes fairy tales the basis of a number of his fictions. In Pricksongs and Descants, Coover plays with characters and motifs from tales about Jack the Giant Killer, Little Red Riding Hood, Beauty and the Beast, and Hansel and Gretel in an exploration of human impulses toward sex, violence, and creativity itself.

Submissions are invited for a collection of critical essays that examine James Baldwin's life, fiction, and nonfiction with the most recent scholarship from Black Masculinity Studies. Essays may employ cultural studies and/or a post-colonial critical lens for explicating specific texts as well as interdisciplinary approaches that demonstrate the relevance or usefulness of using Baldwin's texts to examine, explore, or discuss Black masculinity within other disciplines
(besides Literary Studies). Submissions by emerging, as well as, established scholars are welcomed.

Possible topics may include (but are not limited to):


It is a truth universally acknowledged that Ireland is a land of pastoral greenery, but its landscape is an arguably 'unnatural' construct, a topography shaped by a history of conflict and suffering. Gerry Smyth asserted in 2000 that 'Irish Studies and ecocriticism ... have a lot to say to each other', yet despite the centrality of the land to Irish identity at home and abroad, ecocriticism remains largely absent from Irish Studies in Ireland.

Articles solicited to add to a collection of essays on Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.

Perspectives on the author, herself, are especially requested, as are perspectives from specific theoretical perspectives.

Due date for proposals. July 20th 2009
Due date for completed essays: October 1st 2009

Please send proposals in the first instance to Dr Jon Mitchell, jon.mitchell@nuim.ie

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 refereed special topic issue: FILM PUBLICS RECONSIDERED.

Call for Papers

'Palestine: Culture, Conflict and Representation'

An Interdisciplinary Symposium, Friday 2nd October 2009
Nottingham Trent University, UK

Keynote address by Professor Nur Masalha,
Director of the Centre for Religion, History and Holy Land Studies, St Mary's, Surrey

As a site of complex and enduring conflict, Palestine – conceived as a cultural entity – poses many challenges to those who wish to engage in the task of its meaningful representation. Nevertheless, a desire to confront these challenges continues to flourish – among political thinkers, activists, scholars, creative practitioners, writers and critics both within and beyond the Palestinian territories.

The journal "Jura Gentium Cinema" is seeking reviews (between 5000 and 10000 words) for the American-Kuwaiti movie "Amreeka" by Cherien Dabis (AKA "Amerrika" (Fr)), winner of the Fipresci Prize at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.

Official site of the movie (Fr): http://www.amerrika-lefilm.com/

The review should particularly address the gender and postcolonial dimension of the movie. The review should be informative and evaluative, without being dismissive: that is, the reviewer should find some value in the work being reviewed.

Reviews in French, Spanish, Italian are also welcomed.

Women's Studies Call for Papers
Abstract/Proposals by 15 November 2009

Southwest Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Association 31st Annual Conference • February 10-13, 2010

Hyatt Regency Albuquerque
330 Tijeras • Albuquerque, NM 87102
Phone: 1.505.842.1234 • Fax: 1.505.766.6710

Proposals requested for individual presentations, panels, or roundtable discussions on any aspect of the Depiction of Women in Popular Culture which includes (but is not limited to):

CALL FOR PAPERS

ROUND TABLE on
WHY ARTHUR?
REFLECTIONS ON THE INTERNATIONAL APPEAL OF THE
MATTER OF BRITAIN IN THE POST-MEDIEVAL WORLD

45TH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON MEDIEVAL STUDIES
WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY
KALAMAZOO, MI
13-16 MAY 2010

PROPOSALS BY 1 SEPTEMBER 2009

Co-Sponsored by
THE ALLIANCE FOR THE PROMOTION OF RESEARCH ON THE VILLAINS OF THE MATTER OF BRITAIN and THE SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF POPULAR CULTURE AND THE MIDDLE AGES

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/