The Fan Studies Network: About Us
April 27, 2013CFP: Being Furry
March 25, 2024Being Furry: Rotterdam, October 2024
In association with the Otterdam Furry Arts Festival (Rotterdam, the Netherlands)
Furries, loosely defined as fans of anthropomorphised animals and zoomorphic humans, have arguably existed since the 1970s. Yet, these remain an under-researched group. This could be due to academia viewing the fandom as “unworthy” of study (Roberts, 2015) the historically negative depiction of the fandom resulting in an aversion to being studied (Leshner, et al., 2018; Plante, et al., 2017), or any of a myriad of other reasons.
The most well-known efforts to study furries come from the International Anthropomorphic Research Project (2016; 2023), however many unique perspectives on the fandom are missing or unheard. Furthermore, those studying the furry fandom are largely disconnected from each other and lack a focal point.
This conference, the first of its kind, aims to bring together academics and furries from different fields and viewpoints. In doing so, this conference is the first step to formalising a field of ‘furry studies’ that explores and examines this creative community. Therefore, this conference marks the beginning of legitimising the field as a valid site for contemporary research, and to promote global and cross-field collaboration among furry scholars and those invested in this community.
The conference is part of the Otterdam Furry Arts Festival, a public event celebrating furry culture and art occurring in Rotterdam in October 2024. We encourage the wider furry community to take part as well as researchers, and we look forward to the insights this diverse audience will bring. Information about tickets for this event will follow shortly after the venue has been confirmed.
Theme: “Being Furry”
For the first furry studies conference, the theme, ”Being Furry”, will allow for a variety of proposals and act as a strong basis for the field’s inception. The conference aims to inspire discussion, especially given that ‘if you ask ten furries to define what furry is, you’ll end up with eleven different answers’ (Plante, 2023).
Rather than deciding on a concrete definition of “what a furry is” with this conference, our point of provocation is “What is Furry”? Here are some topics to start your thinking. This list is by no means exhaustive, and we encourage proposals about “Being Furry” that go beyond these suggestions:
- Furry history: furry media, conventions, or activities.
- Examinations of the fursona: physical ephemera, psychological attachment, aesthetics of costuming and fursuiting, species prevalence or attachment.
- Furry identity: furries and queerness, the relationships between furries and wider LGBTQIA2S+ communities, neurodiversity in the fandom, experiences of BIPOC within the community.
- Sex and the furry fandom: sex positivity, kink culture, NSFW practice and artwork.
- Furry economies: artistic output, “suspiciously wealthy furries”, furries’ charity work, the relationships between furry and ‘big media’ outputs such as Disney films.
We encourage the submission of proposals for academic papers, short workshops, practitioner-based activities, best-practice showcases, and pre-formed panels. We welcome established academics at all stages of their careers, and warmly embrace independent scholars. We also encourage submissions from non-academic furries and welcome other presentation formats such as photographic essays, alternative presentation styles, etc.
Further details can be found on the Otterdam Furry Arts Festival website: https://otterdam.art/
What we’re looking for
Please submit 500-word abstracts and/or proposals for panels, and/or other forms of contribution, by 17:00 UTC on Monday 10 June 2024. All submissions will be double-reviewed by a panel of researchers who are actively involved in furry fandom. You will be notified of the panel’s decision on 1 July 2024. Please ensure that all submissions (if primarily written) are in PDF format.
Submissions must also contain:
- Name of author(s)
- Affiliation of author(s), if applicable
- Email address of author(s)
- Title of proposal
- A short biography of each author (up to 150 words)
- References, if applicable
All proposals must be submitted via email to submissions@furrystudies.org with “Furry Studies – Otterdam 2024” in the subject line.
Ethos
This event is designed to build connections between those researching furries, providing an inclusive trans-disciplinary research and publishing space. Though based physically in Rotterdam, the conference will be a hybrid event with online modes of participation, to allow for proceedings to be as accessible as possible.
The official language of the conference, in which all submissions and eventual contributions are expected to be presented, is English. Selected papers will be developed for publication in a special issue of Popular Communication focused on furry studies.
Organising Committee
Reuben Mount (Vanguard Husky), College of English and Media, Birmingham City University, England UK
Rhys Jones, School of Culture and Communication, Swansea University, Wales UK
Tom Geller (Jack Newhorse), Stichting Otterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Informal Enquiries
hello@furrystudies.org
CFP: Material Cultures and Collecting Practices across Global Fandom
March 15, 2024Editors:
Vlada Botorić, Zayed University, UAE
Lincoln Geraghty, University of Portsmouth, UK
Popular culture, with its diverse manifestations in media, art, and entertainment, has become a powerful lens through which societies express, negotiate, and challenge their identities. Fandom spaces, whether physical or digital, serve as dynamic arenas where communities coalesce around shared interests, creating unique subcultures. Simultaneously, collectors, driven by passion and a desire to preserve cultural artifacts, contribute to the curation and reinterpretation of popular culture through physical objects. The convergence of these elements prompts a rich exploration of cultural dynamics, consumption patterns, and identity formations. Collecting practices have become more sophisticated but they have tended to attract less critical attention over the years (Geraghty, 2014). With that said, more work is now being done on the relationships between fandom spaces and fan objects. For example, in his auto-ethnographic study of a life-long participant observer of the LEGO phenomenon, a collector, and an academic-fan, Botorić (2023) offered an externalizing fandom life-long experience and aesthetic preoccupations while creating a personalized interior, where LEGO becomes a dioramic spectacle integrated into the living space.
Along with traditional fan convention physical spaces, fans create digital and social media content to expose their creations and collections. Besides taking photos of their creations, fans make “room tour” videos of their creations of collection spaces. Rebane (2019) argues about this YouTube genre of room tour demonstrating its similarities with the nineteenth-century practices of ‛making of the parlor’ as a highly specific space in which private and public spheres interacted and the symbolic capital of the family was both created and put on show. These videos appear on personal YouTube channels centered on a specific hobby or activity of their authors ranging from beauty, fashion, to video gaming and popular culture, which also greatly influence the furnishing of their spaces. This digital performative logic of those videos is characterized both by the need to exhibit fans achievements and to maintain and have control over the public and private spatial domains, that is opposed to the physical exhibition spaces of the large fan conventions and events.
Geographical location of fans and fan communities may (over-)determine fan engagement and productivity in a global community setting. Botorić (2022) introduced the concept of periphery fandom, a concept that is new in the debate on consumer culture, to interrogate global fan community productive experiences from various geographical locations. Periphery fandom is defined as a sub-ordinated fan community experience, where members are deprived of access to their objects of fandom. Local fandoms are influenced by the local market conditions, questioning fans’ creativity, their community rise and spread. In this context, Chin and Morimoto (2013) argue that, while national identity and socio-political contexts may inform fan pursuits, this is neither necessarily the case nor the only possible mode of fan engagement. Fan identity is prioritized over national identity (Hills, 2002); therefore, a fan orientation may supersede geographical boundaries, becoming essentially a transnational/transcultural experience (Hills, 2002).
Moreover, collections, not only in their simple existence as owned things, but also in the care that goes into their organization, maintenance and display, serve as an objectification of the fans’ (sub)cultural capital (Geraghty, 2018). The collecting of objects forms a visual and physical biography of the self that in turn reflects how cultural texts cross national borders. Therefore, this edited volume will examine culture(s) of consumption by focusing on the collected objects as a focal point for personal narratives of collectors’ cultural practices and experiences. In addition, this edited collection seeks to explore the multifaceted intersections of diverse experiences, examining the evolving dynamics and cultural significance of popular culture, the spaces where fandoms thrive, and the practices of collectors. As scholars continue to recognize the profound impact of these phenomena on contemporary society, this collection aims to provide a comprehensive exploration of their intricate relationships.
This edited collection addresses the need for a cohesive and interdisciplinary examination of the evolving landscape of popular culture materiality, fandom spaces, and collecting practices. By bringing together diverse perspectives and methodologies, we aim to contribute to a nuanced understanding of these phenomena, fostering dialogue among scholars from fields such as media studies, cultural studies, sociology, consumer culture, marketing and beyond.
Contributors are invited to submit proposals exploring, but not limited to, the following themes:
• Materiality of Collecting
• Geographies of Fandom
• Digital Fandom Spaces as Virtual Collections
• Gender, Identity and Material Fandom
· Global Exchanges of Fan Objects
• Ethnographies of Fandom and Collecting Spaces
Deadline for abstract submission: May 31, 2024.
Submission instructions: Please submit a 300 word abstract and a 100 word bio to vlada.botoric@zu.ac.ae and lincoln.geraghty@port.ac.uk with Fandom Book Chapter in the subject line.
You will be notified by June 15, 2024.
Following review and hopeful acceptance of the proposal submitted to Palgrave Fan Studies series, it is anticipated that authors for specific chapters will be identified, approached and confirmed by June 15, 2024. First draft of full chapters (approx 6.000 words) to be submitted by December 1, 2024, feedback and revisions communicated to authors by May 31, 2025, and final drafts due to be submitted by October 1, 2025. Final submission of full manuscript by December 1, 2025.
References:
Botorić V. (2023). Living with LEGO: A fan’s re-interpretation of the interior domestic space, Popular Communication, 21(2), 98-113.
Botorić, V. (2022). Periphery fandom: Contrasting fans’ productive experiences across the globe. Journal of Consumer Culture, 22(4), 889–907.
Chin, B. and Morimoto L.H. (2013) “Towards a theory of transcultural fandom. Participations 10(1): 92–108.
Geraghty L. (2014). Cult Collectors: Nostalgia, Fandom and Collecting Popular Culture. London: Routledge.
Geraghty, L. (2018). Class, Capitalism, and Collecting in Media Fandom. In Melissa Click and Suzanne Scott, eds. The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom. New York: Routledge, 2018, pp. 212-219.
Hills, M. (2002). Fan Cultures. New York: Routledge.
Rebane, G. (2019). A ‘parlour of one’s own’? The YouTube room tour genre. Continuum, 33(1), 51–64.
Call for chapter proposals: Asia-Pacific Fandom, Screen Media and Home
January 9, 2024Asia-Pacific Fandom, Screen Media and Home
Deadline: February 1st 2024
Editors
Dr Meenaatchi Saverimuttu (Macquarie University)
Dr Jane Simon (Macquarie University)
Summary: This edited collection examines the site and idea of home through the specific lens of transnational and diasporic fan practices in the Asia-Pacific. Our approach to the thematic of home is informed by feminist and post-colonial scholarship that understands home as both a material site and an idea or imaginary that intersects with questions of mobility, labor, belonging and economics. We begin from the premise that home is not a contained idea or space, and that the idea and experience of home is not always a shared one, nor is it always easily locatable (Blunt and Dowling 2006; Lloyd and Vasta 2017). The edited collection will expand on recent scholarship that highlights home as a neglected site for fan practices (Baker 2019; Duncan 2022), by focusing specifically on the shifts, mobilities and regions associated with the Asia-Pacific.
We position the Asia-Pacific as an unfixed geographical region that has complex transnational flows (Martin et al 2019), and a rich landscape of screen-based fan practices, performances and identification. The collection will examine how these practices, performances and identifications unfold in everyday domestic spaces: kitchens, bedroom walls, living rooms and sofas. We seek book chapters that explore what it means to think about fandom as a home-making practice; how fan collections and displays are enmeshed with domestic space; how domestic labor intersects with fan practices; and how the movement of media texts across the Asia-Pacific zone create new registers of belonging and re-imaginings of home.
We welcome submissions on topics that focus on screen media texts or fan practices based in or from the Asia-Pacific region, including (but not limited to):
Fan collections and displays in home spaces
Material objects and fandom at home
Memorabilia and everyday use
Representations of fandom at home
Fan labor and/as domestic labor
Online fandom in the home
Home and mobility in diasporic fan practices
Home, belonging and screen media fandom
Case studies of fandom in domestic settings
Nostalgia, homeland and diasporic fandom
Fandom and the bedroom wall
Sofa telephilia
Kitchen fandom
Deadline for submission: February 1st 2024
Submission instructions: Please submit a 300 word abstract and a 100 word bio to jane.simon@mq.edu.au and meenaatchi.saverimuttu@mq.edu.au with Asia-Pacific Fandom in the subject line.
You will be notified if your proposal is accepted by March 1st 2024.
Chapters will be peer reviewed and a full proposal will be submitted to a University Press (such as University of Iowa Press’ Fandom & Culture Series, to be confirmed) in May 2024, and full chapters (approx 6000 words) will be due for submission by September 2024.
References
Baker, Tegan Alexandra. 2019. “‘It Was Precious to Me from the Beginning’: Material Objects, Long-Distance Fandom and Home.” Soccer & Society 20 (4): 626–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/14660970.2017.1376187.
Blunt, Alison. 2005. “Cultural Geography: Cultural Geographies of Home.” Progress in Human Geography 29 (4): 505–15. https://doi.org/10.1191/0309132505ph564pr.
Duncan, Catherine. 2022. “Fandom, Homes and Families: Home as an Overlooked Site of Fannish Practice.” Journal of Fandom Studies, The 10 (1): 3–17. https://doi.org/10.1386/jfs_00047_1.
Lloyd, Justine, and Ellie Vasta. 2017. “Reimagining Home in the 21st Century.” In Reimagining Home in the 21st Century, edited by Justine Lloyd and Ellie Vasta, 1–18. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Martin, Fran, John Nguyet Erni, and Audrey Yue. 2019. “(Im)Mobile Precarity in the Asia-Pacific.” Cultural Studies 33 (6): 895–914. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2019.1660690.
CFP: #TrueCrime: Digital Culture, Ethics and True Crime Audiences
December 11, 2023Chapter proposals for edited collection #TrueCrime: Digital Culture, Ethics and True Crime Audiences
Proposals due by Thursday 1st February 2024.
The hashtag #truecrime currently has 50.7 billion views on TikTok and 1.3 million posts on Instagram. Reddit’s ‘True Crime Forum’ boasts over 2.6 million ‘detectives’, and the most-watched true crime videos on YouTube achieve in the region of 30 million views. Elsewhere, true crime fans flock to X (formerly known as Twitter), Tumblr and Facebook to join growing communities of like-minded enthusiasts. This level of social media activity—which ranges from acts of liking, sharing and commenting to posting original content such as reaction videos, true crime-themed makeup tutorials and scathing critiques of the genre’s more troubling aspects—is of little surprise. As Tanya Horeck (2019, 130) suggests, true crime plays upon viewers’ affective responses in order to heighten their interest in and consumption of stories. Audiences’ increasing sense of participation and their conviction that they can play a vital role in effecting meaningful social change is, Horeck notes, characteristic of true crime outputs shaped by online media networks in the digital era.
Much scholarship has focused on long-form modes of storytelling in the professionalised sectors of the true crime industry. Fewer, however, have considered the user-generated productions that circulate on platforms such as TikTok, YouTube and X. In the mainstream media, the ethical pitfalls of the low-threshold styles of content creation that typify social media true crime have made headlines due to the activities of digital sleuths, many of whom are also aspiring true crime influencers (Kircher and Hampton, 2021). One of the best-known examples of such problematic armchair detecting occurred with the social media frenzy surrounding the disappearance of #vanlife micro-influencer Gabby Petito in 2021, with TikTokers poring over Petito’s social media accounts, focusing on minuscule details and perpetuating endless speculation as to her whereabouts and her fate. Bethan Jones notes that the actions of these social media users blurred ‘the lines between websleuthing and fandom, and the increasing treatment of the [Petito] case as a fictional narrative puts true crime fandom on the cusp of appropriate and inappropriate behavior’ (2023, 176). Yet, as we have argued elsewhere (Hobbs and Hoffman, 2022, forthcoming), social media also has the potential to offer true crime consumers and producers alternative avenues of expression that are both individually empowering and potentially genre-changing. The same low thresholds that allow for conjecture and conspiracy also afford audiences space for critique and analysis. The accessibility of social media apps has provided new voices with room for expression and recognition, and, to that end, there has been a substantial increase in visibility for true crime content creators who are themselves survivors of crime and/or who are from historically marginalised groups underrepresented in the wider true crime genre. The range of user-generated materials available also affords consumers access to content that aligns with their personal, political and cultural preferences in ways unimaginable before the advent of digital media.
Editors Simon Hobbs (University of Portsmouth, UK) and Megan Hoffman (Independent Scholar) invite submissions for a peer-reviewed edited collection to be proposed for Palgrave’s ‘Fan Studies’ series. We are looking for chapters of 6000-8000 words on true crime’s presence on any major social networking website, and we particularly welcome pieces that focus on the ethical implications of such outputs.
Possible subjects may include, but are not limited to:
The ethics of true crime content on social media
Regulation and censorship of true crime content on social media
Social media true crime narratives in a post-#MeToo culture
Social media sleuthing
The true crime influencer as internet personality
True crime fan communities and consumption practices on social media
The role of true crime fan production on social media
The use of social media by crime victims and survivors
Social media as a space to share true crime stories from marginalised voices
True crime-related activism on social media
Social media as a platform for criticising true crime genre conventions
True crime genre hybrids on social media (‘true crime and…’)
Gender and social media true crime
Race and social media true crime
Doom scrolling and true crime
The role of subcultural capital, likes and shares in social media true crime
The representation of social media use in other true crime narratives
Deadlines
Please send proposals of up to 500 words, plus a short biography of no more than 100 words including your name, affiliation and professional email address, to [log in to unmask] by Thursday 1st February 2024. Authors will be notified of the outcome by Thursday 29th February 2024. Full chapters will be 6000-8000 words in length.
References
Hobbs, Simon, and Megan Hoffman. Forthcoming. “It’s Not All R@p!s+$, M!rd3r3r$ and Ki!!3r$: True Crime Activism on TikTok.” In True Crime and Women: Writers, Readers, and Representations, edited by Lili Pâquet and Rosemary Williamson. Abingdon, England; New York, NY: Routledge.
Hobbs, Simon, and Megan Hoffman. 2022. “‘True Crime and . . .’: The Hybridisation of True Crime Narratives on YouTube.” Crime Fiction Studies 3, no.1: 26-41. https://doi.org/10.3366/cfs.2022.0058.
Horeck, Tanya. 2019. Justice on Demand: True Crime in the Digital Streaming Era. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Jones, Bethan. 2023. “Forensic Fandom: True Crime, Citizen Investigation and Social Media.” In True Crime in American Media, edited by George S. Larke-Walsh, 163-79. Abingdon, England; New York, NY: Routledge.
Kircher, Madison Malone, and Rachelle Hampton. 2021. “Did True Crime Influencers Really Help Solve The Death Of Gabby Petito?.” Slate, September 22, 2021. https://slate.com/culture/2021/09/gabby-petito-tiktok-interview-icymi.html.
CFP: Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic, University of Glasgow
November 9, 2023Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic, University of Glasgow
Deadline for submissions: 5th January 2024 (11:59pm)
Conference date: 15th–17th May 2024 (hosted online)
The Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic is pleased to announce a call for papers for Glasgow International Fantasy Conversations (GIFCon) 2024, to be held online on 15–17 May, with the theme of ‘Conjuring Creatures and Worlds’.
Fantasy is inherently an act of conjuration. When we create, dismantle, or engage with fantasy, we are conjuring magic: the impossible, the mysterious, the unknown, and the indefinable. Conjuring fantasy is an act of creation not necessarily defined by our existing modes of being or reality, yet it is always in conversation with our own world. Thus, when we enter fantastika, we necessarily enter a conjured world that invites us to reimagine fundamental aspects of our existence. One way it effects this is by encountering seemingly nonhuman creatures, through which we meet the magical, the uncanny, the monstrous, the Other, and perhaps most uncomfortably, ourselves. Brian Froud writes in Good Fairies Bad Faeries (1998) that “like any supernatural encounter, meeting a fairy—even one who is gentle and benign—is never a comfortable experience”. Samantha Langsdale and Elizabeth Coody argue in Monstrous Women in Comics that “the monster is difference made flesh”. The same is often true of the worlds these creatures exist in. Conjurations, then, are not wholly foreign; their components are knowable. Through fantasy we can conjure, and therefore communicate, with the necessarily mysterious, the otherwise ineffable.
The act of conjuration is an ambivalent one, being both beyond and outside our own world yet inherently connected to it and therefore susceptible to the same limitations and preconceptions. In Race and Popular Fantasy Literature, Helen Young argues that “the logics of race and racial difference are so deeply ingrained in Western society that it is extremely difficult, often even for members of marginalised racial groups, to imagine worlds that do not have those structures.” Indeed, Fantastika has often been concerned with narratives where creatures “function as recognizable stand-ins for majorities and minorities and the inevitable conflicts that emerge between identity groups”. We are interested in explorations of marginalised identities, including creatures, systems of magic, and worlds concerned with (but not limited to) race, ethnicity, gender, queerness, class, and (dis)abilities. These conjured creatures and worlds offer an alternative viewpoint into other modes of identity and being. Additionally, the ways in which these fantasies are conjured is important. The medium through which the reader (in the broadest sense of the word) encounters and interacts with the fantasy affects its meaning.
How do academics, creative practitioners, and fans conjure (and understand the conjuration of) fantasy, creatures and worlds? Fantasy and the fantastic have the capability to conjure the ephemeral and the horrific, the indefinable and the real, the Other and ourselves, but how do we understand these creations? And how do these encounters with creatures, magic, and worlds conform or challenge our understanding of the fantastic?
GIFCon 2024 is a three-day virtual conference welcoming proposals for papers relating to this theme from researchers and practitioners working in the field of fantasy and the fantastic across all media, whether from within the academy or beyond it. We are particularly interested in submissions from postgraduate and early career researchers, and researchers whose work focuses on fantasy from the margins. We ask for abstracts for 20-minute papers. See our Suggested Topics list below for further inspiration. Please submit a 300-word abstract and a 100-word bionote via this form by January 5th, 2024, at midnight GMT.
We also ask for workshop descriptions for 75-minute creative workshops, for those interested in exploring the creative processes of conjuring these creatures and worlds into being from a practice-based perspective. Please submit a 100-word description and a 100-word bionote via this form by January 5th, 2024 at midnight GMT.
If you have any questions regarding our event or our CfP, please contact us at GIFCon@glasgow.ac.uk. Please also read through our Code of Conduct. We look forward to your submissions!
Suggested Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
Fantasy texts and media by creative practitioners from marginalised backgrounds, and from beyond the anglophone and Anglocentric fantastic
Creatures as corporeal and/or spiritual beings
Worlds and magic as material or conceptual spaces, realms, or structures
Multi-media representations of creatures, worlds, and creators
Creating and recreating race, class, queerness, (dis)ability and other marginalised identities in fantasy
Explorations and representations of the Other in fantastika
Attraction to, repulsion or rejection of creatures and the nonhuman
Depicting alienation, body dysphoria, body swapping and transformation in fantasy
The anthropomorphising of objects and creatures
Human and nonhuman binaries, hierarchies, and dynamics
Conforming to and challenging conventional depictions of creatures e.g., mythic and supernatural traditions, folklore, fantastic tropes and iconic and archetypal characters
Representations of fantastical creatures for example cryptids, fae, magical creatures, supernatural beings, the undead, humanoids, animals, hybrids, AI, extraterrestrials, demons, monsters, horrors, boogeymen
Environments, alternate worlds, ecocriticism, posthumanism, the Anthropocene
Conjuring futures and pasts
Organic vs. artificial worlds, spaces and creatures
Conjuring as a destructive or creative act
Conjuring magic and magic systems
How fandoms and scholars recreate, reinterpret, or conjure creatures, worlds and magic systems
CFP: 5th International Celebrity Studies Conference: Celebrity Crises and Conflicts
October 24, 2023July 1-3, 2024
University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam
Routledge, Celebrity Studies Journal, and the University of Amsterdam are pleased to announce the fifth Celebrity Studies conference. The conference will take place in Amsterdam, July 1st to 3rd.
The 5th International Celebrity Studies Conference will be themed ‘Celebrity Crises and Conflicts’. This subject will run through our plenaries and form a strand running throughout the conference.
Fame is fickle, as the saying goes, but in current times, celebrity appears to be more in crisis than ever. The #MeToo movement has brought to light disturbing facts about the reality behind the celebrity façade. The conspicuous consumption associated with stardom is attracting increasing criticisms in an era of pandemic lockdown, austerity, and environmental crisis. Developments in artificial intelligence are feeding an existential crisis of celebrity, too: is stardom now becoming a post-human phenomenon? Additionally, geopolitical conflicts, as well as polarizing debates on class, race and gender differences, have put stars under increased political pressures, and have resulted in vicious attacks on – and by – celebrities. Finally, more and more public figures are opening up about their mental health crises, raising awareness about the negative effects of fame – burn-out, depression, anxiety, the impact of hate speech, fat-shaming, or performance pressure.
Together, these developments raise urgent questions about the current and past status of celebrity, such as: what do celebrity crises and conflicts tell us about the social, political, economic, and cultural dimensions of stardom? What can we learn about current, as well as historical, celebrity crises and conflicts? What impacts do they have on the study of celebrity as an academic endeavor?
The conference welcomes submissions from a broad range of disciplines that generate new ways of thinking and understanding celebrity: from film, television, literary, digital media, (art) history and theatre studies through to psychology, sociology, politics, etc.
Keynote speakers will soon be announced on https://celebritystudiesconference.com/
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
Contemporary celebrity crises and conflicts / historical celebrity crises and conflicts / stardom and technological developments / virtual stardom / celebrity feuds / stardom and mental health / political conflicts and celebrity / economic conflicts and celebrity / celebrity divorces and break-ups / attacks on celebrities / legal conflicts and stardom / celebrity scandals / celebrity and intersecting oppressions / stardom and sexism / disgraced celebrities / conflicted celebrity / downsides of stardom / ‘cancel culture’ and celebrity / celebrity and the ‘cultural wars’ / celebrity and generationality/inter-generational conflict / celebrity deep fakes / celebrity and gamification / celebrity brand management / celebrity and platformisation / fan conflicts and celebrity / fan wars / fandom and celebrity conflict / celebrity and the pandemic / stars on lockdown / celebrity and industrial relations / celebrity and unions / stardom and synthetic media / celebrity and political crises / celebrity and climate crises / celebrity and war / celebrity and anti-fans / toxic fandom / destabilizing definition of celebrity / excessive media interest / social impact of political celebrities / weaponized celebrity / the conference team is open to other topics and themes, please get in touch if you have questions about potential approaches or topics.
The conference committee invites proposals for :
· Individual 20-minute papers:
o 350 word abstract + 50-word biography in a single Word document
· Pre-constituted panels comprising 3 x 20 minute papers:
o 150-word overview + 3 x 350-word abstracts + 3 x 50-word bios + name of lead contact and panel chair in a single Word document
· Masterclasses for Early Career Researchers (ERC) (advanced PhDs or early-stage postdocs): sessions, moderated by members of the conference organization team, will include informal discussion on work provided by the ERC and sharing of ideas in a safe and constructive environment; feedback will be offered from keynote speakers and relevant senior academics:
o Short outline of work (PhD thesis, chapter, project…) in progress: 150-350 words + 50-word biography in a single Word document.
Please abide by the maximum word limits.
Stipends will be awarded to most promising abstract and best conference presentation by postgraduate students. Please indicate on your abstract if you wish to be considered for these.
A special issue of the best papers from the conference will be published in Celebrity Studies Journal in 2026
Deadline for all proposals: December 8th, 2023.
Successful abstracts will be notified by: December 22nd, 2023.
Enquiries/abstracts to: celebritystudies@gmail.com
More information (on conference fees etc.): https://celebritystudiesconference.com/
CFP: ICA 2024 Preconference Reviving Qualitative Audience Research for the Streaming Era
October 19, 2023
ICA 2024 • 20-24 June 2024 • Gold Coast, Australia
International Communication Association (ICA)
Preconference
Reviving Qualitative Audience Research for the Streaming Era
Wednesday, 19 June 2024
OFF-SITE: Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane (Kelvin Grove campus)
Division Affiliation: Popular Media & Culture, Media Industry Studies
Call for Papers
This full-day preconference will provide a space for those studying audiences through interviews, focus groups, ethnography, and other human-based qualitative approaches to share both findings and methodological tips and interrogations. Excited advertising rhetoric tells us that everything has changed, and certainly at industrial and textual levels, much has already been done and said to chart the shifting landscape. But we know little of how viewers, readers, and listeners that are spread across more content and more forms of media than ever before are experiencing these changes. Media content now travels more freely across national borders, remains relevant as long as it is accessible (which is far longer than in the past), and legacy media providers persist and adapt to an increasingly multifaceted field of creators and content. How do audiences use media now that they have greater choice and control? Are the streaming audiences of 2024 comparable to their earlier equivalents? Or, rather, how are they comparable, and how are they not?
Qualitative, audience research blossomed in the eighties, with numerous projects exploring the gendered, racialized, national, and class politics of viewing, the sociocultural uses of television and other media, and hence the place of media consumption in everyday life. Though audience studies has survived, and even thrived, since then in the service of examining fans, diasporas, and several other specific communities, we hope that this preconference will contribute to another wave of broad exploration of varying modes of consumption, of the politics of viewing, listening, and using, and the uses of media of all kinds.
We invite scholars working on any medium (television, music, film, streaming, games, podcasts, print; entertainment or news; social or legacy media) and/or with any audience, who are interested in discussing the state of audience research and in designing its future. Papers (20 minutes max.) may focus more on findings, on methods (especially methodological innovations), or consider both. Work in progress can also be presented (please indicate in your abstract).
Please submit a title and 400-word abstract about the work you will present and its level of completion. Submit to Jonathan Gray at jagray3@wisc.edu no later than 1 December 2023; please title your email “ICA preconference submission.” Potential submitters are welcome to contact the conference convenors (via the same email) to discuss ideas in advance. Notifications of acceptance will be circulated prior to release of the ICA schedule (ie, no later than 10 January 2024).
(Note that attendance at the ICA main conference in the Gold Coast from June 20-24 is not required to attend this preconference. For those who are attending the main conference, though, Brisbane is just under 2h away from the Gold Coast by train, with plenty of trains running daily. International visitors will likely find it more convenient to fly directly into Brisbane rather than the Gold Coast, since the latter requires transfer from elsewhere in Australia.)
CFP: Media Values
October 19, 2023The Velvet Light Trap, Issue 95 (to be published Spring 2025)
Media industries utilize a number of different strategies to assign value to their commodities. Box office receipts have long been a benchmark of success for theatrical film releases, despite proliferating ancillary revenue streams. Audience ratings determined advertising dollars as the dominant form of evaluation in linear commercial television. High engagement metrics on social media often translates to increased bargaining power of influencers, actors, and writers alike. Yet, these processes of valuation are in a constant state of flux dependent upon variables such as technological innovation, economic conditions, and cultural climates.
The economic and cultural value of media is, therefore, far more complex than formulas of dollar signs and industry metrics. Where and how institutions, organizations, and intermediaries assign value reflects ideological biases often along the faultlines of race, gender, and class. Practices like rewatching, fansubbing, fan fiction writing, and collecting all express personal value as well as create economic value for media firms. The politics of certain media objects and forms demonstrate the contested terrain of social and ethical values amidst anxieties of industrial transition and technological innovation.
Media industries themselves are objects of evaluation—which has become clear with recent shifts in the criteria upon which financial organizations value media firms and platforms. Industry-wide speculation regarding the return on investment for streaming has proven to beunsuccessful for studio and network executives and harmful for creatives. Tech and internet companies constantly modulate the terms and interfaces of social media platforms that provide users with valuable promotion and networking. Concepts like brand recognition and brand identity have symbolic weight in decisions of corporate restructuring, yet do not always translate to profit if undercut by poor distribution or content management strategies. Of course, these trends are merely the latest manifestations of the ongoing and unstable processes by which value changes over time. Institutions and intermediaries like art house cinemas, film and television festivals, archives, professional organizations, and the academy all—to varying degrees—influence how valuable a media commodity or company is at different moments in its (potentially endless) lifetime.
This issue of The Velvet Light Trap will explore the varied relations between media and value. We welcome pieces about all media forms and industries, as well as submissions that look beyond these toward audiences, stars, technologies, etc. We seek a range of methodological and theoretical approaches encompassing—but not limited to—historiographic, textual, political economic, and critical-cultural treatments of evolving valuation practices in contemporary and historical contexts across production, distribution, exhibition, reception, and regulatory processes. We look forward to submissions which address any of the following topics including but not limited to:
● Studies of formal and informal circulation patterns and their impacts on value creation and/or destruction
● Ownership in the mediaindustries and ownership of media commodities
● The evolving marketplace for content libraries
● The continuing value of rights licensing in live broadcasting and streaming media
● Archiving and preservation practices and priorities
● The collection of physical media formats and material value in the digital era
● The relationship between financialization and the media industries
● Emerging cultural intermediaries like content aggregators
● The use of (or troubling the use of) identity politics in the valuation of texts
● The role of social media and viral marketing in the creation of anticipation or controversy
● Explorations of geocultural capital and the mechanisms by which different nations, regions, and cities accumulate and exchange it
● The role of creative labor in the production of value
● Therepresentation of national, religious, and/or political values in media texts and industries
● The role of ancillary industries and markets in the construction of value
● Academic patterns of value in relationship to certain media forms and industries
Open Call
In addition to accepting submissions that relate to the above theme, The Velvet Light Trap will accept general submissions broadly related to the journal’s focus on critical, theoretical, and historical approaches to film and media studies. We hope that scholars inspired by the work published in our themed issues, past and present, will especially consider submitting their work.
Submission Guidelines
Submissions should be between 6,000 and 7,500 words, formatted in Chicago Style (notes-bibliography). Please submit an electronic copy of the paper, along with a separate one-page abstract, both saved as Microsoft Word files. Remove any identifying information so that the submission is suitable for anonymous review. Quotations not in English should be accompanied by translations. Send electronic manuscripts and/or any questions to vltcfp@gmail.com by January 28th, 2024.
About the Journal
The Velvet Light Trap is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal of film, television, and new media. The journal draws on a variety of theoretical and historiographical approaches from the humanities and social sciences and welcomes any effort that will help foster the ongoing processes of evaluation and negotiation in media history and criticism. Graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Texas at Austin coordinate issues in alternation, and each issue is devoted to a particular theme. VLT’s Editorial Advisory Board includes such notable scholars as Manuel Avilés-Santiago, Andre Brock, Dolores Inés Casillas, Norma Coates, Brian Fauteux, Aniko Imre, Lori Morimoto, Ruben Ramírez-Sànchez, Debra Ramsey, and Alyx Vesey. TVLT’s graduate student editors are assisted by their local faculty advisors: Mary Beltrán, Ben Brewster, Jonathan Gray, Michele Hilmes (emeritus), Lea Jacobs, Derek Johnson, Shanti Kumar, Charles Ramírez Berg, ThomasSchatz (emeritus), and Janet Staiger (emeritus).
CFP: Urban Myths and Cultural Geography of Horror
October 18, 2023Edited by Irena Jurković, Marko Lukić and Tijana Parezanović
Urban myths and legends continuously serve as a source of fascination and creative inspiration in anglophone cultures, especially in the context of horror genre, within which they have a specific way of articulating collective fears and fascination with the unknown. Additionally, urban myths also contain a significant spatial dimension, based on their rootedness in real life places and landscapes. Starting from the academically well researched and confirmed premise that horror genre is not a mere form of entertainment and escapism, and that in its complexity it assumes the function of reflecting various problems and anxieties of any given society, contributions to this collection should focus on urban myths as specific segments (themes, structural elements, leitmotifs, etc.) of horror narratives, which are conditioned and perpetuated by the spatial aspect of the narrative. With this collection we aim to explore the interconnections of urban myths, horror genre, and human geography, through analyses of various examples of anglophone horror narratives in different media – literature, TV and cinema, video games, or comic books.
Analyses of the variety of horror subgenres (e.g., supernatural horror, slasher horror, body horror, psychological horror, etc.) and narratives from different periods are welcome as the diversity will give insight into different styles and discourses, enable comparisons, and hence also provide a broader perspective on the main topic, all with a view to establishing a common approach to the specific nexus of urban myths, horror genre, and human geography, and thus creating what might be defined as new cultural geography of a distinctive kind. Within the selected narrative, exploring human interaction with the physical and social surroundings allows for a further development of a specific analytical framework, which brings an understanding of the complex ways in which horror narratives, through their frequent reliance on urban myths and legends, shape our comprehension of real places and spaces of social reality. Therefore, this collection calls for contributions which through a detailed multi-methodological analysis (discourse analysis, content analysis, etc.) of selected narratives explore the ways in which horror genre (de)constructs or transcends temporal and spatial limitations, thus not only reflecting but also influencing and/or shaping the broader social, cultural, and political context.
Essays may explore but are not limited to the following topics:
- representation and perception of urban myths in anglophone horror films and other media forms, such as comics and video games
- urban myths and spatiality/human geography
- geographical roots of urban myths
- haunted spaces/places
- questions of identity and representation in relation to urban myths/mythologies
- urban myths and new narrative forms
- urban myths and the creation of new cultural and historical paradigms
- the political discourses of urban myths
- urban myths and place identity
- gender and urban myths in horror
- reshaping of a national contemporaneity through urban myth narratives
- comparative analysis of different mediatic representations
- urban legends about media told through media
- intersections of real and fictional spaces within urban myths
- social dynamic established between urban myths and legends on the one hand, and their reinterpretations in horror narratives on the other
- new theoretical practices and understandings of the cultural geography of horror
- the intersection of folklore and horror
- digital narratives and the digitalization of urban myths
- spatial horror in video games
- cinematic techniques and spatial horror
- visual constructions and perceptions of spatiality within urban myths
We invite all interested scholars to send their proposal (400-500 words) and short bio (max. 200 words, including author’s academic affiliation) to urbanmythsculture@gmail.com by November 15th 2023. Full essays should be 7000-8000 words (incl. references, notes and citations) and use the MLA style guide. University of Wales Press has expressed interest in the volume as part of their Horror Studies series.
Notification of acceptance: November 20th 2023.
Deadline for essay submission: January 20th 2024.
CFP: Emerging Directions in News Use Research – Leverhulme Project Launch Event & Open Conference
October 18, 2023We are delighted to announce this Call for Papers, for the fully virtual and free 1 day conference on Emerging Directions in News Use Research on 20th March 2024.The event marks the launch of the Leverhulme Trust funded parents’ news use project – which runs from the fall of 2023 to the fall of 2025. The Leverhulme News Use project aims to examine how parents engage with and respond to news at critical moments of crisis. The project team includes Professor Ranjana Das, Dr Thomas Roberts, Dr Emily Setty and Dr Maria-Nerina Boursinou from the Department of Sociology (University of Surrey)
Emerging Directions in News Use Research – a day-long, international, virtual conference – aims to bring together a global group of scholars involved with researching news use, news audiences and consumption, and news engagement and disengagement. We are keen to hear from a range of empirical contexts, from projects using tried and tested as well as more creative and innovative methodologies, and to showcase the work of scholars across career stages in the fields of Sociology, Journalism, Media and Communication, and more.
Keynote speakers at the event include Professor Brita Ytre-Arne, University of Bergen, Norway; Dr Jonathan Corpus Ong, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Professor Kim Schroeder, Roskilde University, Denmark; Professor Sahana Udupa, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany and Professor Lynn Schofield Clark, University of Denver, Colorado.
Submission Portal: We welcome submissions for a 10-12 minute paper presentation on this submission portal in the following areas, which are included below, but not limited to-
Submission Topics:
- News use, environmental change and the climate crisis
- News use in relation to young people and sex and relationships
- Datafication, algorithms and the news
- Theoretical perspectives on news use
- Methodological aspects of news consumption research
- News use, risk and anxiety
- Families, parenting, children and the news
- News audiences and users
- News literacy
- News use research and global disparities and inequalities
- Disinformation
- News use and disconnection research
Abstract Submission Details:
Final submission deadline: 5pm BST on Monday 2nd December 2023
Notification of outcome: Friday 15th December 2023
Deadline for Registrations (registration is free): Monday 18th March 2024
Event date (fully online): Wednesday 20 March 2024 , 0900 to 1700* GMT
Submission portal: [please submit your abstract here]
Please email any question you may have about submissions to Dr Nerina Boursinou (m.boursinou@surrey.ac.uk).