popular culture

Welcome to Hawkins: A Special Issue on Stranger Things

Slayage plans a special issue on Stranger Things for publication in late June 2026. Slayage is an international and interdisciplinary refereed scholarly journal concerned with the “fuzzy set” with Buffy the Vampire Slayer at its center, and Stranger Things, a multi-season television series with kick-ass heroines, the irruption of the supernatural into the mundane, high-stakes action, strong characterizations, snarky humor, and an emphasis on relationships and the complexities of queerness and race, fits our definition nicely. It’s even got a Hellmouth in a library!

Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds 

Special Issue 3/2026

“Save State: Ethics, Politics, and Poetics of Game Preservation”

Guest Editors: Paweł Frelik (University of Warsaw), Magdalena Kozyra (SWPS University), Tomasz Z. Majkowski (Jagiellonian University)  

A one-day symposium hosted by the Contemporary Intimacies, Sexualities and Genders (CISG) Research Group at Manchester Metropolitan University. 

22 April 2026 10-4, Manchester Metropolitan University, Oxford Road, Manchester, M15 6EB. 

Hello,

The University of British Columbia is currently seeking educational materials to populate our Pop Pedagogies Archive page. This will be an open-access resource library for educators teaching students at a variety of levels. We are looking for contributions of teaching materials relevant to the intersection of popular culture and education. Submissions can range from course syllabi to individual lesson plans and unit outlines. All contributors will retain the rights to their submitted materials. 

We're now accepting proposals for our 2026 conference and Volume IV of the Board Game Academics journal through March 15, 2026. If you or someone you know has an idea for a presentation or article about using tabletop gaming to contextualize, historicize, and challenge the ideologies rooted not just within gaming materials but also in their communities at large, please contact us. 

Share with the world how you are using tabletop games to support more experiential pedagogies, enhance clinical practice, and engage with students and colleagues. 

CALL FOR PAPERS

American Religion and Literature Society

American Literature Association

37th Annual Conference

May 20-23, 2026

The Palmer House Hilton

17 East Monroe Street

Chicago, IL 60603

Steeped in the primal discomfort of the uncanny, dolls and the houses they inhabit are an especially fluid and perennially creepy motif within popular culture. Revealing historical and on-going tensions between what it means to be human and what it means to only perform those attributes, these remnants of childhood carry with them specific cultural messaging that has been particularly fertile ground for the horror genre.

For special issue #10 (spring 2026) of Horror Homeroom, we’re diving into the world of creepy dollhouses and their inhabitants. We’re interested in abstracts about the dolls and dollhouses of horror - or of horror adjacent narratives (thrillers, mysteries, science fiction etc.). 

As technological, ecological, and sociopolitical transformations challenge traditional notions of human identity, the posthuman paradigm offers a framework for exploring how literature and culture imagine, negotiate, and problematise the boundaries between humans, nonhumans, and their surroundings. This conference seeks to critically examine established notions of a posthuman future/present and its representations in contemporary narratives across literature, cinema, advertising, video games, and other media forms. The seminar examines the concepts of authority, marginality, and ambiguity within dystopian and utopian literary visions of posthumanism.

Edited Volume with e-ISBN (Digital)

Co-editors: Dr Debarshi Prasad Nath and Dr Swikrita Dowerah

The Comics Arts Conference is now accepting 100 to 200 word abstracts for papers, presentations, and panels taking a critical or historical perspective on comics (juxtaposed images in sequence) for a meeting of scholars and professionals at Comic-Con International, in San Diego, CA, July 23–26, 2026.  We seek proposals from a broad range of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives and welcome the participation of academic and independent scholars.  We also encourage the involvement of professionals from all areas of the comics industry, including creators, editors, publishers, retailers, distributors, and journalists.  The CAC is presently scheduled to take place in person and does not accept virtual presentations.  The CAC is designed to bring together

Baldur’s Gate 3 (Larian Studios, 2023) represents a milestone in the evolution of narrative gaming. As both an heir to Dungeons & Dragons and a contemporary work of interactive storytelling, the game synthesizes centuries of myth, moral inquiry, and imaginative world-building into a playable form. This edited collection seeks essays that investigate how Baldur’s Gate 3 draws upon, reinterprets, and transforms literary and philosophical traditions—from the medieval and Renaissance periods through modern fantasy and posthuman theory—to create new modes of narrative, ethics, and embodiment.

Conference: Collective Memory in Contemporary Fiction Films

University of Ottawa, June 11-12, 2026  

Abstract: Collective memory and remembrance occupy an important place in film: whether through various themes that explore individual and national histories of; through the act of spectating (the act of watching a film), where the audience contributes their interpretation of the film; or where the audience uses their own memories to make sense of the narrative.

The Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic is excited to announce the call for papers for Glasgow International Fantasy Conversations (GIFCon) 2026, to be held online on 13-15 May, with the theme of ‘The Technologies of the Fantastic’.