UPDATE 3 November

Dear colleagues, 

We are seeking proposals for chapters on:

- Cultural syndromes from Latin America: Locura, Mal de pelea, Nervios, Susto (but not only) in popular culture: cartoons, telenovelas, media, films, literature etc. 

- Cultural syndromes from the Middle East/Africa (e.g. the evil eye) in popular culture.

We already have chapters covering the "jinn" and "voodoo death".

We have secured a contract offer with Routledge. 

Please send your abstract proposal (400 words) + a short bio (200 words) to the editor at prof.irina.pelea@gmail.com

In case of any queries prior to your submission, please contact the editor.

Many thanks for your interest. 

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Dear colleagues,

You are invited to submit an abstract for the upcoming edited collection Culture-bound syndromes in Popular Culture. The volume aims to provide in-depth and analytical insight into the representations of cultural imagery and narratives of various culture-bound syndromes through the lens of global and national popular culture, covering movies, television, literature, visual arts, fashion, festivals, popular music, and graphic novels.

What does a culture-bound syndrome mean? The concept has come to define a pattern of symptoms (mental, physical, and relational) experienced only by members of a specific cultural group and recognized as a disorder by members of those groups.

"Culture-bound Syndromes in Popular Culture" takes its readers on a journey across (popular) cultures and introduces them to an entirely new subfield of studies, at the conjunction of medical anthropology and popular culture, focusing on folk illnesses.

Thus, this book covers a broad range of case studies, subjects, texts, and cultural practices that lie at the intersection of folk illnesses and cultural studies and include national, transnational, and international media representations, with an accent on the reception and interpretation of the phenomenon from the perspective of its original space.

We warmly invite established and emerging scholars specializing in all areas of media and cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, social/cultural geography, and other relevant research fields to propose a book chapter on an individual culture-bound syndrome and its representations in popular culture. Both single and multiple-authored works will be considered. All work should be original and previously unpublished.

We are also very interested in hearing open proposals for possible chapters about other cultural syndromes from any other country if the Table of Contents strikes you as improvable in any way. 

Please make sure to refer to a specific cultural syndrome (or more) in your abstract and title. 

Chapters might explore but are not limited to:

SECTION 1 East Asia and India - Covered

SECTION 2 Southeast Asia - Covered

SECTION 3 Latin America and Native American culture + the indigenous communities - OPEN

\  Locura

\  Mal de pelea

\  Nervios 

\  Susto

\  Saladera (Peruvian Amazon)

\  Windigo Psychosis (Native American) Already taken!

SECTION 4 Africa and the Middle East - OPEN

Routledge has expressed keen interest in the volume for their Research in Cultural and Media Studies Series.

Please feel free to contact the volume’s editor (Irina Pelea) with any questions or queries. I look forward to receiving your abstracts.