Happiness and Popular Culture
Call for Papers
Special Topic: Happiness and Popular Culture
National Conference
of the Popular Culture Association (PCA)
New Orleans
April 16-19, 2025
We are seeking paper proposals for the 2025 PCA Conference in New Orleans. The papers may focus on any aspect of the relationship between the pursuit of happiness (tentatively understood as subjective well-being) and broadly defined popular culture.
While the desire for happiness is considered to be universally human, beliefs and attitudes about happiness seem to vary with changing religious views, economic conditions, historical periods, geographic locations, and other factors. Should you get rich? Start a family? Live a virtuous life? Become a star? Seek enlightenment? Help others? The answer depends on when, where, and whom you ask.
Our topic explores the role that popular culture and its products and institutions (such as popular arts and rituals, social and other media, advertising, education, and dominant scientific paradigms) play in constructing and/or popularizing different ideas about happiness and how best to pursue it.
Possible topics include (but are not limited to):
- Portrayals of happiness in popular culture
- The use of happiness in advertising
- The relationship between a character’s gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or socio-economic status and what makes them happy.
- Happiness-causing properties of popular genres and products, such as romantic comedies, sitcoms, video games, and meditation apps.
- The science of happiness. Do scientific findings correlate with cultural beliefs about (and popular portrayals of) happiness?
- Compare/contrast portrayals of happiness in different historical periods, different countries, and different genres.
- The relationship between the prevailing ideas about happiness and the economy.
For additional information and paper ideas, please visit www.happinessandculture.com.
We especially welcome papers from members of ethnic minorities, the LGBTQ community, and immigrant communities, as well as from the members of non-mainstream, alternative cultures.
We are considering proposals for individual papers and/or complete panels. Sessions are scheduled in 1.5-hour slots, typically with four papers or speakers per standard session. Individual presentations should not exceed 15 minutes. Please submit a 100–150-word abstract for individual papers and/or a 250–300-word abstract for panels. Please include the title of the paper and/or panel. Working professionals, scholars, educators, and graduate students are all encouraged to submit.
Area Chairs:
Vida Penezic
Independent Scholar
E-mail: vida_p@hotmail.com
Nicole Freim
Vice President for Programming and Area Chairs