Due to the safety measures related to the Covid-19 pandemic
THE CONFERENCE IS POSTPONED TO A FUTURE DATE TO BE DEFINED
We’re glad to share the call for papers for our very own 1st PopMeC Conference which will take place in Alcalá de Henares on May 27–28, 2020.
Thanks to the pervasiveness of popular culture in everyday life, its products embody a fundamental driving force in forging the collective imaginary of both national and foreign publics. The timely construction, consolidation, and intrinsic political potential of popular representations—myths, symbols, images, and signs—has undeniably facilitated the shaping of identities, discourses, and communities. The diversity and peculiarities of the American society can therefore be traced through the analysis of popular culture and multimodal cultural expressions, conveyed by means such as film, comics and graphic novels, TV and web series, videogames, music, books, and whatnot.
PopMeC aims at providing a collaborative, engaging, and fair environment for any interested scholar, promoting the sharing of knowledge, experience, and ideas across disciplines and thematic fields. We’re also working to foster a stimulating space for early career researchers and postgraduate students in North American studies, thus we’ll warmly welcome their proposals.
The conference will approach popular media and culture products—as well as their publics and reception—from an intersectional, multidisciplinary standpoint and a diverse range of perspectives. We’re looking for engaging, fresh, interesting papers acknowledging and exploring a variety of images and narratives, their configurations and aims, as well as examining the intersectional connections between identities, politics, and history, traceable in and across cultural products.
We welcome proposals for 20 min individual papers or panels constituted of three papers, on topics including (but not limited to):
> the representation of specific ethnic / religious / gender / etc. groups in the US popular media and culture (including mainstream, alternative, and self-representations)
> the articulation of American national ethos, myths, symbols and heroes
> public history and the representation of US history for the non-specialized public
> the reception of popular culture products and their publics
> comparative studies of contrasting / similar representations
> the US society as represented through humor, caricature, and satire
> deconstruction of national storytelling and stereotyped narratives
Please, send your proposal by April 5, 2020 to popmec.call@gmail.com attaching your abstract (200-250 words), inclusive of a short bio (100-120 words), name, affiliation, and email contact in a single file. All proposals (unless differently specified by the author) will be considered for both presentation in the conference and publication on the academic blog. Feel free to check our author guidelines page and to contact us for further information.
The languages of the conference will be English and Spanish. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend limiting the use of Spanish coherently with your chosen topic.
Key dates:
> April 5 deadline for proposals
> April 14 last round of evaluation and acceptation
> April 20 circulation of provisional program
[We plan on doing a first round of evaluations and acceptation by March 8 so that if your proposal needs a little retouching, we let you know and you can still resubmit it!]
Coffee breaks and light lunch will be provided. Further details on keynote speakers, venue and registration will be provided shortly.
Organizing committee (doctoral students of the PhD Program in American Studies, Instituto Franklin–UAH):
> Daniel Bustillo
> Anna Marta Marini
> Joaquín Saravia
Organized with the collaboration of the Instituto Franklin–UAH
