popular culture

Department of Childhood Studies
Rutgers University, Camden

Call for Papers – Exploring Childhood Studies

The graduate students of the Department of Childhood Studies at Rutgers University, Camden invite submissions for papers and poster presentations for their first formal graduate student conference on April 9, 2010. Graduate students from all disciplines who are engaged in research relating to children and childhood are encouraged to submit proposals.

The figure of the silent person endures as one of fascination. The silent character is a site for the projected voices, concerns, investments and anxieties of others. The silent character is thus powerful, in the Foucauldian sense. This session invites papers which offer close readings of texts which privilege or contain a silent figure in literature, film or in popular narratives. The aim of the panel is to present papers which are not wholly theoretical but rather offer a discussion of the powerful effects of those figures through an elaboration of the narrative trajectory through and around them. Send a 200-250 word abstract to Prof Berkeley Kaite at berkeley.kaite@mcgill.ca

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.

Passions: Promises and Perils

Conference hosted by the Graduate Program in Communication
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Date: October 16-17, 2009
E-mail: passions_conference@googlegroups.com to contact organizers

Deadline to submit abstracts has been extended to Monday, June 29, 2009.

Abstracts need not explicitly engage "passions." The conference theme is used to organize panel discussions of the scholarly investments that inform our work. While this is the organizing theme, we use it to signify broadly the social, cultural, and economic investments that organize the things we study, and how we study them,

Concept

Saving the Planet: Saving our Souls
Essays on Faith & Ecology

Submissions due September 1st

Submissions are now open for an anthology of essays exploring the sometimes strained, often misunderstood relationship between ecology and spirituality. Essays should address some aspect of ecological awareness within a faith community and can consider themes of: sacramentalism, sustainability, dietary habits, prayer, meditation, activism, ecumentalism, new monasticism, literature and ecocriticism, human interaction with the natural world and others.

Popular Culture and Activism at MAPACA (Boston, Nov 5-7 2009)

Popular Culture and Activism welcomes papers or presentations that explore the sphere of activism in the production of popular culture. Whether historical or contemporary, investigations into the role of activism in shaping popular culture or the role of popular culture in shaping activism are encouraged.

Seeking previously unpublished scholarly manuscript contributions for an anthology relating to the "Gen-X experience" from a librarian perspective, or, the "librarian experience" from a Gen-X perspective. Also welcome are critical perspectives of Gen-X librarians and interesting perspectives on Gen-X librarians from non-Gen-Xers.

Bryan Fuller's television series 'Pushing Daisies' is visually stunning, with quirky dialogue and captivating characters. It has also - unfortunately - been cancelled. This collection seeks to explore the critical and popular elements of 'Pushing Daisies' and we welcome articles catering to both fans of the show and scholars in the fields of film and television; gender, sexuality and representation; pouplar culture; and cultural studies.

http://www.aber.ac.uk/myth2010/

The organisers of Recycling Myths, Inventing Nations would like to invite proposals for panels and papers that explore myth and myth-making in all its guises. The conference will bring together scholars working across creative and critical disciplines, historical periods and theoretical approaches in order to explore the links be-tween story-telling, mythology, histories, identities and ideologies.

Key note speakers include Professor Murray Pittock (University of Glasgow) who will be speaking on the theme "What is a National Culture".

Call for SPECIFIC Papers-James Bond and Popular Culture: the Films are Not Enough!
The editors of a forthcoming volume are seeking a few specific articles to supplement a book in progress about James Bond and Popular Culture. The following topics will be given first consideration for inclusion in the forthcoming book. Other topics will be considered.
James Bond and Linguistics: How have the James Bond movies and novels affected our speech and semeiotic communication?
Gender in the James Bond Comics
The music of Bond: the success or lack of success of Bond theme-songs. Did the scoring impact the popularity of the film; or did the popularity of the musical score impact the movie?
John Barry as a composer of Bond Music!

Panel "South Asia's Orients," 41st Anniversary Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA). April 7-11, 2010, Montreal.

Deadline for submitting abstracts or proposals: September 30, 2009

Call for Essays for "Press (R)eject" special issue of Rhizomes.net
issue 20 (Winter 2009/2010) http://www.rhizomes.net/

Co-edited Richard Burt and Craig Saper, co-operators of the
Rejectionist Movement

House Work: Masters and Servants in Post-Modern Culture

41st Anniversary Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
April 7-11, 2010
Montreal, Quebec - Hilton Bonaventure

Transcultural Memory
A conference jointly organized by the Department of English and Comparative Literature, Goldsmiths, University of London, and The Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory, Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, University of London
This conference marks the inauguration of The Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory.
Date: 5-6th February, 2010.
Conference organizers: Lucy Bond, Rick Crownshaw and Jessica Rapson (Goldsmiths); Katia Pizzi and Ricarda Vidal (Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies).
Venue: Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London
Keynote speakers:
Astrid Erll (University of Wuppertal)
Andrew Hoskins (University of Warwick)