The 3rd International Conference on Furry Studies
Location: Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia / Online Streaming
Date: July 2027, Wed-Thurs before Aurawra 2027
Theme: Feeling the ‘fur’
The furry community, once an Internet subculture with roots in animation and comics (Strike 2017), has seen individuals gain visibility in mainstream consciousness. For example, the consecutive esports champion player, SonicFox, asserts their nonbinary, Black and Asian, furry, and gay identity on social media, using these platforms to delegitimise hate (Wagner 2024). The acumen required to have healthy discussions under hyper-attention in the public eye is tricky to attain, as furries are often readily dismissed by society standards as “cringe”, unworthy of critical discussion on self-expression and acceptance (Wolf 2024).
In scholarship, furry can be understood as a “flexible and self-defined identity term” that signals a person’s participation in the furry community (Zaman and Anderson-Nathe 2025, 2). Furries here is used as an umbrella term that encompasses people who engage in imaginary anthropomorphic acts of creation and self-expression, as well as fans of other furries and their imaginations. Popular media depict furries with photos of fursuiters, or people wearing fursuits, often referred to by laypeople as mascot costumes. Fursuits have been described as “works of craftsmanship, typically made out of a foam base or resin with fur sewn atop it—designed to approximate the visage of an animal” (Esther 2025). Though studies show that most furries do not own a full or partial suit (Plante et al. 2023), their definitions are by no means singular nor fixed (Mount 2024). That is to say, definitions of furry continue to evolve as communities shift alongside complex fandom tendencies, hold space for individual expressions, and offer collective creative possibility.
Much academic research has been carried out by furries themselves interested in doing community-based projects. Specifically, FurScience has in the past focused on furry convention attendees in the United States (Plante et al. 2023). They have since begun to do research in international conventions like Eurofurence and Japan Meeting of Furries. More work is needed to centre furry communities both online and offline in Central and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. One example is the kemono communities that grew from Japanese roots, different from the North American cartoon animation scene, and have a distinct culture from western furry understandings (Inokuchi et al. 2024).
Outside researchers entering furry spaces tend to conflate furry communities as if it were a cohesive, singular community, overlooking the fact that each country, city, and neighbourhood has its own flavour of furry. To be clear, researching furries by non-furs is welcome, and anyone interested in furry culture can undertake rigorous academic inquiry and creative practice alongside furries. However, there is yet insufficient research that can effectively equip scholars to discuss furry. We argue that the internal terminologies, sociologies, technologies, and “significant emotional investment and deep personal feelings” (Freeman and Acena 2022, 9) from the furry community requires more than existing established methodologies, but methodologies that synthesise research analysis with one’s positionality and relationship to the furry community, taking into account “how furry ecologies are never just furry” (yerf 2020).
Call for Proposals
As organisers of the 3rd International Conference on Furry Studies, we call for new research that creatively engages with furry culture and community. Recalling that the theme of the first year asked, “What does it mean to be furry?”, and the second year focused on furry worldbuilding on the global stage, this third iteration of Furry Studies asks, “How do furries use fursuits, fursonas, and the feeling of ‘fur’ to navigate identity, belonging, and collective creativity?”
This call for proposals aims to shine a light on greater understanding of fursuits, fursonas (portmanteau of furry-personas) and other concepts specific or adjacent to furry. This includes research on therians and otherkins, though we recognise that they are distinct identities from furry with overlapping communities. Below are some topics to ground your thinking. This list is by no means exhaustive, and we encourage proposals that go beyond these suggestions:
Furry and identity: furry for self-expression and identity, furry as a cultural category that identifies a person who participates in furry spaces, and the exploration of difference.
Co-creation of fursonas and furry works: social creation and evolution of fursonas, collaboration among furry creators, and the co-development of creative furry works in visual art, music, film, games, writing, and more.
Fursuit feelings: theoretical and affective knowledge generated through making, wearing, acting, and interacting with, fursuits and their accessories.
Gender, sexuality, and fursona species: exploration of the self, and issues in intersectional regulatory boundaries, working towards social and self acceptance, and the affirmative practices within furry communities.
Furry representation: analysis and critique of popular depictions of individual furries and furry groups in media, fandom, and global cultures.
Furry technologies: inventions and reappropriations of materials and tools that can become an extension of the body for exploring furry expressions.
Furry cultures: studies of furry practices within specific regions in relation to international communities, recognising that furry communities vary greatly from country to country, and city to city.
Sex, kink, and furries: adult aspects, erotic pleasure and felt feelings in furry culture situated within wider societal contexts.
Queer, trans, and furry: putting furry in conversation with queer studies and trans studies toward the development of new research methods for furry studies, with an ear turned to the precarity of existing within a cis/heteronormative society.
Furry and fan culture: consumption of wider popular cultural media, production of furry-made fan fiction and media, and their economic interactions.
Furry and the state: researching political movements and narratives that attempt to target furry and its impact on individual furries and the larger furry community.
Race and racism in furry: critiques of racial narratives (or the perceived lack thereof) in furry spaces, media, and critical discussions, and strategies for inclusion, equity, and solidarity.
Furry spaces and events: understanding how furry spaces, such as furry convention hotels, room parties, raves, and furmeets, have shaped culture throughout time.
Furry Studies seeks to hold space for inclusive values and welcomes researchers and students at all stages of careers as well as independent scholars. We also encourage submissions from non-academic furries and welcome creative presentation formats such as photographic, audio, and video accounts.
The conference welcomes both in-person and remote presentations.
What we’re looking for
We categorise submissions into two types: 1) academic papers and 2) community talks. Submissions should use the template provided. As scholars ourselves, we recognise the issue with categorisation and welcome submissions that push these boundaries.
If you have any supplementary audio/visual files, you may host them elsewhere and share links directly in the document. Authors are responsible for hosting supplementary files for peer review.
Download Proposal Template
Submit a Proposal
Submission closes on 8 January 2027.
Upload your submission using the template in Word (.docx) or Open Document Format (.odt).
Academic papers
Academic papers are research presentations. Submissions should describe:
the research background context
motivation
aim
method
overview of findings
initial analyses
expected contributions
list of references
and a brief author biography
Academic papers are expected to be in conversation with prior literature and provide a list of references. Submissions must be new and have not been previously published elsewhere.
Creative practitioners with a research-oriented practice are encouraged to submit to this category.
Furry Studies is an interdisciplinary conference and welcomes authors’ home discipline citation style of choice, as long as they are consistent. Submissions must be at least 500 words and be no longer than 1000 words excluding references and author biographies. Panel submissions are welcome in the form of academic papers and should include a list of presenters and their presentation topics in brief.
Community talks
Community talk submissions should describe:
the topic
a brief background
main points of discussion
what the audience will take away
and a brief author biography
Community talks are in-depth presentations about furry culture, history, and communities, and not theoretical or practiced-based research in nature. Past presenters include Moms of Furries and Furries at Berkeley.
Furs who have experience in organising and producing furry community events, and have “furry knowledge” to share in an academic format are encouraged to submit to this category.
A good community talk is one that generates further questions and conversations throughout the Furry Studies conference and the communities beyond. Submissions must be at least 300 words and be no longer than 1000 words. References are optional.
Submission deadline
8 January 2027
All submissions will be put through a single-blind peer review process, meaning the submissions are not anonymised, with at least one reviewer from the furry studies community. You will be notified of the panel’s decision on 5 February 2027.
Furry Studies welcome submissions from artists, musicians, filmmakers, writers, and technologists and more forms of creative practice. If you’d like to speak to your practice in an academic setting, use either category that suits you the most.
For questions related to the call for proposals, please contact the Conference Chair, Dr Xavier Ho / Spaxe Austral, at xavier.ho@monash.edu.
General enquiries to Furry Studies and its activities can be made to the Furry Studies Board at hello@furrystudies.org.
Frequently asked questions
When are the exact dates for Furry Studies 2027?
Furry Studies will coincide with one of Australia’s major furcons, Aurawra, aiming on the Wednesday and Thursday before the convention around July 2027. When the official dates are announced, we will update the call for proposals, our website, and social media.
I’m new to furry research, and I’m not sure which category my submission fits in?
We plan on hosting a proposal workshop at a later date which will include resources and writing best practices, and an opportunity to ask questions to Furry Studies. Stay tuned for updates on https://furrystudies.org.
I have event ideas that I’d like to pitch, but it doesn’t fit either of the two submission categories?
Please email your idea to hello@furrystudies.org. As an academic conference run by furries for furries, we are always looking for ways to include folks. Please note that as a not-for-profit research organisation, we are unable to accept event ideas that are primarily commercial in nature.
My research is by creative practice and includes more than oral presentations. How do I submit?
Furry Studies welcomes non-traditional forms of research, which includes time-based media, live performance, interactive exhibition, and experimental works that may be interesting to attendees of furry studies. Please submit your work via the same template and include any technical requirements for your presentation.
I’m not a researcher. How can I help out Furry Studies?
Furry Studies presentations are open to the public. Follow us on Bluesky, YouTube, and Telegram for when registration opens.
I’ve read this far and I still don’t understand what Furry Studies is?
Take a look at our 2025 full conference recording on YouTube.
References
Esther, Alec. 2025. “Brushing Up Against Species: Transgender Feminist Worldbuilding through Fursuit Practices.” Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Furry Studies, 19.
Freeman, Guo, and Dane Acena. 2022. “‘Acting Out’ Queer Identity: The Embodied Visibility in Social Virtual Reality.” Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 6 (CSCW2): 1–32. https://doi.org/10.1145/3555153.
Inokuchi, Tomohiro, Yunfan Mao, and Midoriko Hayashi. 2024. “The Past and the Present of the Fandom in East Asia: Cases of Japan and China.” Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Furry Studies, 14–15.
Mount, Reuben. 2024. “I Bark, Therefore I Am: The Creation of the Fursona and Its Representation of Identity in the Furry Fandom.” Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Furry Studies, 10–11.
Plante, Courtney, Stephen Reysen, and Sharon Roberts. 2023. Furscience: A Decade of Psychological Research on the Furry Fandom.
Strike, Joe. 2017. Furry Nation. Cleis Press.
Wagner, Travis L. 2024. “‘FUCK THIS CHARACTER I’M JUST GOING TO GET STRONGER’: SonicFox’s Hypermediation of Blackness and Queerness as Radical Archival Embodiment.” In Queer and Femme Gazes in AfroAsian American Visual Culture, edited by Rebecca Kumar and Seulghee Lee. Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-67698-7_5.
Wolf, Chipper. 2024. “Furry History As Media Literacy.” Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Furry Studies, 25.
yerf. 2020. “On Furry: Technology, Subjectivity, and Narratives.” https://yerfology.wordpress.com/.
Zaman, Hazel A., and Ben Anderson-Nathe. 2025. “A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Exploration of Fursona Embodiment by TGE Youth of Color.” International Journal of LGBTQ+ Youth Studies, September 25, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/29968992.2025.2564982.
Archive for the ‘CFP’ Category
CFP: The 3rd International Conference on Furry Studies
September 16, 2026CFP: Console-ing Passions
September 11, 2026CONSOLE-ING PASSIONS
International Conference on Television, Video, Audio, New Media, and Feminism
28-30 June 2027
University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
“Provokaties zijn aanleidingen | Provocations are catalysts”
Roel van Duyn, “Van palingoproer tot provohappening,” Provo, no. 3 (22 September 1965)
Console-ing Passions was founded in 1989 by a group of feminist media scholars and artists looking to create a space to present work and foster feminist scholarship on issues of television, culture, and identity. Since its first conference at the University of Iowa in 1992, Console-ing Passions has expanded to become not only the most important conference for scholars studying gender in television but also among the top conferences for feminist scholars of media more broadly.
In 2027, Console-ing Passions comes to Amsterdam under the theme Provocations. Our motto takes inspiration from Amsterdam’s Provo movement and Roel van Duyn’s proposition that provocations are aanleidingen: they serve as catalysts to create occasions (or the Provos’ favorite word, “happenings”) in which pre-existing as well as emergent conflicts and contradictions become visible. Amsterdam offers a resonant history for thinking about provocation in these terms, from the Provos’ playful interventions in public life to feminist and queer actions that used disruption and media visibility to challenge established norms and inequalities. In line with this genealogy, we envision CP 2027 becoming such an occasion: a provocative space for feminist media scholarship to encounter, question, and rework its objects, histories, methods, and futures.
The 2027 Conference Organizing Committee in the Department of Media Studies / Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) at the University of Amsterdam invites proposals for individual papers, pre-constituted panels, and pre-constituted roundtables addressing media, broadly conceived, through intersectional feminist perspectives, including questions of gender, sexuality, race, class, disability, coloniality, and other systems of power and inequality. Proposals need not address the conference theme, but we particularly welcome reflections on what provocation might mean for feminist media studies. How have media and media practices been provocative, and how do understandings of what is “provocative” change and collide? Who gets to provoke, and who is presumed to be provocative by speaking, appearing, desiring, refusing, embracing or making media? What happens when boundaries between media, disciplines, generations, publics, or forms of knowledge are disturbed? How might provocation operate epistemologically or methodologically, making different objects, archives, relations, pleasures, or ways of knowing perceptible? And what might such questions provoke us to reconsider about the histories, boundaries, and futures of feminist media scholarship itself?
CP 2027 will be an in-person conference because this is a better experience for everyone involved. Virtual participation can be accommodated, but only in exceptional circumstances and on a case-by-case basis.
We are working to make childcare and mobility support available during CP 2027 and will provide further information as options are confirmed.
Submission Guidelines
We invite proposals in the following formats:
Individual papers
A title and abstract of up to 300 words.
Pre-constituted panels
Three papers plus one provocateur, who will offer a critical response and moderate the discussion. Proposals should include a panel title, a 150-word rationale, and a title and abstract of up to 300 words for each paper.
Pre-constituted roundtables
Four or five participants and one provocateur, who will moderate and enliven the discussion. Roundtables should be designed around exchange rather than a sequence of short papers. Proposals should include a title and up to 400 words identifying the central question or tension, explaining the envisioned format and participants’ contributions, and indicating how the session will create space for wider discussion. Experimental and original formats are particularly welcome.
All proposals should include a brief biographical note of up to 100 words for each participant. Panels and roundtables bringing together different career stages, institutional locations, and perspectives are encouraged.
A delegate may participate in a maximum of two capacities across the conference programme.
Proposals should be submitted via this form by Tuesday, 1 December 2026, 23:59 Central European Time (CET). Submission link: https://forms.gle/1i62NU3NGJ3SYbwJ7
Notifications of acceptance will be sent in late January 2027.
For questions about the conference or the submission process, please contact the organizing committee at cp27-fgw@uva.nl.
Please watch for updates and news at http://www.console-ingpassions.org/ and on the conference website, which is expected to go live at the end of September.
Conference Organizers: Misha Kavka and Balázs Boross
Department of Media Studies / ASCA, University of Amsterdam
CFP: Star Wars at 50: Forces, Forms Legacies
May 4, 20262027 marks the 50th anniversary of the film now generally known as Episode IV: A New Hope, the first instalment in the hugely successful Star Wars franchise created by George Lucas. As beloved as it is divisive, Star Wars now straddles multiple decades and generations while proliferating across narrative media (novels, comics, games, animation, TV). It provides a series of compelling case studies in the relationship between creativity and commerce, from the foundation of Lucasfilm during the New Hollywood period to the 21st century Disney-era, and it has developed via a complex interplay between cutting-edge technological innovation, nostalgia, and mythmaking. It is both shaped by and responsive to historical and political contexts ranging from the Vietnam War to 9/11. With Lucas famously drawing on an eclectic range of cinematic and intellectual influences (Kurosawa, the Western, Saturday serials, Joseph Campbell, Buddhism, and more), the influence that Star Wars itself now exerts on contemporary culture is as wide as it is deep. Star Wars, as Obi-Wan says of the Force, “binds us and penetrates us.” At the same time, however, and with some important exceptions, academic discussion of Star Wars has often relied on a rather narrow set of critical frameworks and has tended to neglect the actual texts of the franchise and their place in cultural history. As the blockbuster of blockbusters reaches its half century, it is therefore the ideal moment to reflect anew on Star Wars and its manifold legacies.
When and where?
The conference will take place on Friday May 7th 2027 at Durham University. This will be followed by an exciting series of public events and activities at the Glasshouse concert venue in Gateshead across May 8th and 9th. Details tbc. Speakers and attendees at the conference are welcome (and indeed encouraged) to stay for the weekend!
Texts and topics
Presentations are sought on any Star Wars media – from the films of the original trilogy to Knights of the Old Republic to Andor.
Suggestions for panels, roundtables, and more unconventional conference formats are most welcome.
Topics covered may include (but are by no means limited to) the following:
Star Wars in history and Star Wars as history.
Star Wars and industrial change / allegory / crisis.
The directors, producers, writers, showrunners, game designers etc who have shaped the franchise.
Star Wars and genre.
Star Wars and the nature of transmedial storytelling.
Star Wars, stardom, and performance.
Puppets, costumes, masks.
The distinction between the ‘practical’ and the ‘digital’.
The significance of race, gender, sexuality, class, disability, and indigeneity in making and interpreting the franchise.
Star Wars and critical theory (especially Jameson).
Star Wars geographies (landscapes, locations, frontiers, cities, and so on).
Star Wars and extractivism.
Star Wars and neurodiversity.
The relationship between scholarship and fandom.
Deadline and contact
Please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words to Dr Sam Thomas by 1st December 2026.
samuel.thomas@durham.ac.uk
CFP: Scandalisation across media: New scandal trajectories, temporalities, and actors
October 3, 2025Scandalisation across media: New scandal trajectories, temporalities, and actors
Nordic Journal of Media Studies
Deadline: January 15, 2026
Nordic Journal of Media Studies invites contributions to the 2027 issue exploring how scandals unfold and are communicated across media.
Editors:
- Nete Nørgaard Kristensen (University of Copenhagen): netenk@hum.ku.dk
- Anne Jerslev (University of Copenhagen): jerslev@hum.ku.dk
Important dates:
- Deadline for abstracts: 15 January
- Deadline for full submissions: 15 August
Nordic Journal of Media Studies invites contributions to the 2027 issue exploring how scandals unfold and are communicated across media. The issue welcomes international as well as Nordic perspectives and asks the following questions: How have the emergence and development of scandals evolved with the advent of social media, algorithmic amplification, and platform-driven visibility? In what ways do audiences, users, and digital publics engage in the exposure, circulation, and escalation of scandal online? What counts as “scandalous” – and to whom? What are the (social, political, cultural, and personal) consequences of the disclosure of morally dubious and transgressive actions in a networked media landscape? How can scandals be understood as cross-platform and cross-mediated public events today? Can value be attributed to scandal communication and scandals as networked public events? What role do automation and emerging technologies of generative AI play in accelerating or fabricating scandal? How do new technologies complicate questions of responsibility and accountability in scandals and their aftermath? By addressing these questions, this issue offers new insights about the multiple trajectories and shifting temporalities of contemporary scandals, particularly in view of audiences taking on active roles in exposing, co-constructing, and driving scandal.
Media studies have long conceptualised scandals as the mediated disclosure of what a society considers morally dubious and objectionable (e.g., Lull & Hinerman, 1997). John B. Thompson’s (2000) classical definition stated that “‘scandal’ refers to actions or events involving certain kinds of transgressions which become known to others and are sufficiently serious to elicit a public response”. Occupied with the processes through which moral transgressions were scandalised and with the public reaction to scandal, Ari Adut (2008) similarly regarded scandals as “symbolic centers” that confirm, contest, or reinforce societal values. Scandals used to be extraordinary media events; however, mediatisation, personalisation, and celebritisation have, over the past decades, made, for instance, political, financial, and celebrity scandals the “new normal” (Pollack et al., 2018; Entman, 2012). Tabloid and investigative journalism continue to give prominence to the coverage of transgressive behaviour among celebrities, politicians, CEOs, and so on, but the rise of social media has also challenged the key role played by news media in uncovering, defining, and framing scandal and the scandalous.
Demarcating and tracing the unfolding of scandals has thus become more complex. Scandals today emerge and progress across media, involve multiple actors, are fuelled and amplified by emotionalised, personalised, and polarised communication online, and unfold intensely for short periods of time with more or less severe consequences for those involved. One might say that mediated scandals – or scandals as (news) media events (Thompson, 2000) – have transitioned into socio-mediated scandals – or scandals as communicative events (Zulli, 2021). Understanding scandals today necessitates analysing their rise and development as more unpredictable processes, as well as recognising the role of (social) media users in co-constructing and circulating the scandalous. At times, these users take on the role of investigating and exposing possible transgressions which may then travel to traditional news media. This challenges clear distinctions between participants and non-participants in scandals and the temporal unfolding of a scandal in relatively linear phases across media, as originally conceptualised by Thomspon (2000). Finally, the altered circuits of communication suggest that scandals may serve as sites for public value negotiation and creation with unifying, empowering, yet also polarising potential, as audiences articulate their worries, interests, and emotions online. As such, scandal communication may be seen as expressions or gestures of concern (Ingraham, 2021).
With this issue of Nordic Journal of Media Studies, we thus invite scholars to explore how to understand processes of scandalisation and scandal communication in an era when social media users play a significant role in co-constructing the scandalous.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Scandals as cross-media events Visual dimensions of scandal communication
- Memetic scandal communication
- Gossip, rumours, and audiences’ scandal communication
- Humor, irony, and scandal communication
- Hate speech and scandal communication
- Scandal and audience engagement in digital niche communities
- Audience polarisation and scandal communication
- Audience motivations for engaging in scandal communication
- Audience engagement and public value
- Self-scandalisation as a strategy for audience engagement
- Methods for studying audiences’ participation in scandal
- Theoretical perspectives on changing scandal dynamics
- Historical perspectives on changing scandal dynamics
- Comparative perspectives on audiences and scandal
- Nordic perspectives on audiences and scandal
- Emotion/affect in audiences’ scandal communication
- Scandal as a site for changing morals and values
- Scandal and the culture war
- GenAI and scandalisation
References
Adut, A. (2008). On scandal: Moral disturbances in society, politics and art. Cambridge University Press.
Entman, R. M. (2012). Scandal and silence: Media responses to presidential misconduct. Polity.
Ingraham, C. (2021). Gestures of concern. Duke University Press.
Lull, J., & Hinerman, S. (Eds.). (1997). Media scandals: Morality and desire in the popular culture marketplace. Columbia University Press.
Pollack, E., Allern, S., Kantola, A., & Ørsten, M. (2018). The new normal: Scandals as a standard feature of political life in Nordic countries. International Journal of Communication, 12, 3087–3108. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/7099
Thompson, J. B. (2000). Political scandal: Power and visibility in the media age. Polity.
Zulli, D. (2021). Socio-mediated scandals: Theorizing political scandals in a digital media environment. Communication Theory, 31(4), 862–883. https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtaa014
Procedure
Those with an interest in contributing should write an abstract (max. 750 words) where the main theme (or argument) of the intended article is described. The abstract should contain the preliminary title and five keywords. How the article fits with the overall description of the issue should be mentioned.
Send your abstract to both editors by 15 January 2026 at the latest
Scholars invited to submit a full manuscript (6,000–8,000 words) will be notified by e-mail after the abstracts have been assessed by the editors. All submissions should be original works and must not be under consideration by other publishers. All submissions are submitted to Similarity Check – a Crossref service utilising iThenticate text comparison software to detect text-recycling or self-plagiarism.
Visit Crossref to learn more about Similarity Check
After the initial submission and review process, manuscripts that are accepted for publication must adhere to our guidelines upon final manuscript delivery. You may choose to use our templates to assist you in correctly formatting your manuscript.
Read the instructions for authors and download a manuscript template here
About Nordic Journal of Media Studies
Nordic Journal of Media Studies is a peer-reviewed international publication dedicated to media research. The journal is a meeting place for Nordic, European, and global perspectives on media studies. It is a thematic digital-only journal published once a year. The editors stress the importance of innovative and interdisciplinary research, and welcome contributions on both contemporary developments and historical topics.
About the publisher
Nordicom is a centre for Nordic media research at the University of Gothenburg, supported by the Nordic Council of Ministers. Nordicom publishes all works under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence, which allows for non-commercial, non-derivative types of reuse and sharing with proper attribution. All works are published Open Access and are available to read free of charge and without requirement for registration. There are no article processing charges for authors, and authors retain copyright.
Women and True Crime: Call for Chapter Proposals
March 24, 2025A new edited collection on true crime in 21st century media (in all its forms) invites proposals for chapters. The working title is Women and True Crime.
This new book seeks to present original scholarship and its aims are intentionally broad, but hopes to include explorations of women as investigators, activists, perpetrators or victims. For example, when women are producers of true crime media how does the female voice affect the content, structure, themes and consumption of true crime in today’s visual/audio media landscape?
The collection is not limited to traditional visual and audio media, but wishes include research in digital gaming, social media, all audiences and/or activism that intersects with media. I am also interested in contributions from criminology and law who may wish to discuss the role true crime has in their professional spheres.
It is intended that this collection will not be limited to US/European content. It will be a much stronger discussion if it can include discussions on the global production, reach and/or influences of such media. Therefore, proposals on such topics are welcomed.
A list of possible media:
- Documentary styles and aesthetics (including re-enactment, docudrama, podcast investigations)
- True Crime Literature (incl. fictionalized, graphic, educational, legal)
- Social media activism, or fan participation
- Digital gaming or the like
A list of possible structural approaches
- The social purpose of true crime
- Positive negative outcomes of true crime media
- Character creation and/or sensationalist narrative practices including:
- the presentation of law enforcement, prosecutors, defense teams and/or the legal system in general
- the presentation of crime victims and their families
- the presentations of race, gender and sexualities
- Transmedial and /or transglobal responses to true crime narratives
- Production practices and ethics
- Finance, marketing and/or distribution practices and experiences
The following is a guide to the variety of true crime content the book will consider:
- Legal Procedures (including police procedural, courtroom practices, appeals, probation services)
- Injustice Narratives (including false confessions, wrongful imprisonment as well as general criticisms of the American justice system)
- Organized Crime (history of the mafia, political corruption, gangster celebrities)
- Interviews with Convicts (including high profile cases, serial killers)
- Victims (including support and reconciliation programs)
- Unsolved crime (including missing persons, ongoing investigations)
- Crimes made sensational (including property violations, neighbor disputes, traffic stops)
This project is being developed for Routledge (approx. 12 chapters of 6-8,000 words each).
Please send a 300-400 word abstract of your proposed chapter and a 100-word author bio statement by April 30th 2025 to George S. Larke-Walsh at george.larke-walsh@sunderland.ac.uk
CFP: Participatory Culture, Politics and Reactionary Fandom
February 5, 2025CFP: Participatory Culture, Politics and Reactionary Fandom
De Paul University, 2 April 2025
Fan practices and behaviours have increasingly moved beyond fan communities into the political, economic, and cultural structures of everyday life. The proliferation of social media platforms has allowed both progressive and reactionary aspects of fandom to significantly shape the public sphere, drawing on similar techniques, pleasures, and practices to interpret the world in a culture where the boundaries between popular and political communication are blurrier than they have ever been. As recent events have highlighted, there is need for more in-depth investigations into the intersection of participatory culture, fan practices, and reactionary politics (Petersen et al., 2023; Stanfill, 2020).
Ahead of the 2025 SCMS conference, this one-day symposium seeks to explore the synergies, tensions, and conflicts at play in this new cultural terrain. It explores how fan studies can be used to make sense of the seeming growth of conspiracy theory communities and right-wing movements, examine political participation as a form of fandom and play, and how social media can be used to organize against discriminatory cultures or polarization.
We have limited spaces for 20-minute research papers. Please submit titles, 200 word abstracts, and short bios to Bethan Jones (jonesbv5@cardiff.ac.uk) and Simone Driessen (driessen@eshcc.eur.nl) by Monday 2 March.
The symposium is kindly supported by De Paul University’s College of Communication.
CFP: Pop Junctions
November 30, 2024“Toyland. Toyland. Mystic merry Toyland, Once you pass it’s borders, You can never return again” – or so the holiday classic song states. However, this concept has been challenged and defied by consumers of all ages and media conglomerates and franchises are all the happier for it.
The politics of “play,” as it relates to collecting, nostalgia, and practice is a key undercurrent of media (both traditional and new). From a currently thriving culture of collecting “cute” plush and vinyl in East Asia, to Wizards of the Coasts’ Magic the Gathering (which is owned by Hasbro) constant licensing/ collaborations with other media franchises (Lord of the Rings, The Walking Dead, Jurassic Park etc.), fandoms’ interest in toys allows for an environment of continual expansion, repackaging, and franchising via transmedia.
This theme asks contributors to think about a toy/toys/ toy company and explore how various cultures, groups, audiences, or companies find and make meaning (or money) through such play. The theme is purposefully open-ended, meant to be fun, and pieces will be published on the blog throughout December to coincide with the holiday season.
Length of pieces can vary (750 – 2,500 words).
Send submissions to lauren.sowa@pepperdine.edu.
CFP: Youth and Horror: An International Conference
November 30, 2024Youth and Horror: An International Conference
1-2 July, 2025
University of Birmingham, UK
The Youth and Horror Research Network is delighted to invite submissions for its international conference, taking place in person on 1-2 July, 2025, at the University of Birmingham, UK.
A collaboration between the University of Birmingham and Northumbria University, the Youth and Horror Research Network is an AHRC-funded, interdisciplinary, international network of scholars, educators and cultural partners, which aims to investigate and impact scholarly and public understandings of the relationship between children, youth and the horror genre. The relationship between children and horror has persisted throughout the history of youth culture, from fairy tales and nursery rhymes to the ongoing popularity of Halloween and transmedia franchises like Doctor Who, Goosebumps and Stranger Things. For today’s youth, who are growing up in an age characterised by anxiety and instability, horror has the potential to help them understand the world around them, other people, and themselves. However, the meeting of young people and horror consistently attracts controversy due to unsupported perceptions that the genre is a harmful influence upon children and young people, echoed by an emphasis in scholarly research on ‘negative’ media effects.
The Youth and Horror Research Network therefore aims to encourage renewed scholarly consideration of the benefits, pleasures and risks of youthful interactions with horror, building on foundational work in this area (e.g. by Martin Barker, David Buckingham, Kate Egan) and recent contributions to the field (e.g. by Filipa Antunes, Sarah Cleary, Catherine Lester). We invite submissions for 20-minute papers on topics examining the intersections of horror, youth and childhood, with an inclusive and flexible approach to how any of these terms may be defined, and in relation to a broad range of media (including film, television, video games, online cultures, literature, comics, toys etc.). Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:
– Interpretations and/or histories of horror texts addressed to children, or other horror texts which are encountered in youth;
– Intersectional approaches to the relationship between youth, horror, identity and/or monstrosity, e.g. race, gender, sexuality, disability, class;
– International perspectives on youth and horror, especially outside of the UK and the US;
– New reflections on media debates and moral panics about youth and horror, e.g. the 1950s Horror Comics Campaign, the 1980s ‘Video Nasty’ scandal, the 1980s Satanic Panic;
– Attitudes of censors and regulators to the issue of youth and horror (including parents as regulators, children as self-regulators, as well as official bodies e.g. BBFC, MPA, Ofcom, local councils);
– Children’s/young people’s fandom of horror, or adult fandom/nostalgia of childhood horror texts;
– Definitions and boundaries of genres, tastes and audiences, and how these are affected by the meeting of youth and horror;
– Cross-media adaptations of texts relating to young people and horror;
– Aesthetics and modes of horror for young people (including, for instance, animation);
– Theoretical approaches to youth and horror, e.g. cognitive, phenomenological/affective, psychoanalytic, behavioural/developmental;
– Archival and memory research on young people’s encounters with horror;
– The roles and uses of horror in education and wellbeing e.g. mental health;
– The role of horror in childhood play;
– Climate crisis as horror and its relationship to youth;
– Horror-related distribution, broadcasting and marketing for children and young people;
– Practice-as-research approaches to youth and horror.
Send 300-word abstracts and 50-word bio to youthandhorror@contacts.bham.ac.uk by the end of Monday 13th January, 2025.
We also welcome submissions for papers or panels presented in non-traditional formats (e.g. video essays and reflections). Please reach out with a speculative enquiry if you have ideas.
We especially encourage submissions from scholars from backgrounds that are typically underrepresented in the academy, and scholars outside of the UK. We have a small number of bursaries to offer to international participants in order to facilitate attendance of postgraduate, independent, and precarious scholars, or scholars who are otherwise without recourse to institutional funds. If you would like to be considered for a bursary, please state this in your submission. Due to funding restrictions, we are sadly only able to offer bursaries to scholars working and residing outside of the UK.
Call for Chapters for Toyetic Television: A Companion
June 4, 2024From G. I. Joe workout routines and Sailor Moon wedding gowns to Bratz doll make- unders and Ferby modding, toyetic, merchandise-driven television from past decades has proved remarkably resilient. Toyetic television clearly holds a far greater and more enduring cultural significance than definitions such as “glorified half-hour commercials” (Hilton-Morrow & McMahan 2003, p. 78) might suggest. It is meaningful to individual viewers, it becomes “social lubricants facilitating communication between one child and another” (Steinberg 2012, p. 90), and it can connect generations through shared viewing and playing pleasures. The idea of the program created to sell merchandise has been reversed in cases where the production of a program is funded through the sale of its merchandise, such as The Amazing Digital Circus. The boundary between quality and merchandise-driven television is no longer clear, with even educational programs such as Sesame Street now associated with significant merchandising. One of the aims of this volume, then, is to ask how we might define toyetic television as we move into the second quarter of the millennium. Intended for Peter Lang’s Genre Fiction and Film Companions series, this volume turns a critical eye to the genre of toyetic television and its many transmedia intertexts, exploring the significance and resonance these texts hold for children, adults, and communities. It examines the movement of toyetic texts cross-culturally, intergenerationally, and between media. It analyses texts and audiences, industry and regulators, to uncover the significance of toyetic television to the contemporary moment.
Children’s programming is the most widely internationally traded category of television, while simultaneously being subject to intensely localized regulatory systems. Sesame Street has had numerous localized versions, for example, including Nigeria’s Sesame Square, Mexico’s Plaza Sésamo, and pan-Arabic collaboration Iftah Ya Simsim. When toyetic television moves transculturally, it encounters new reception contexts. Japanese animation Dragon Ball found a devoted fanbase across Latin American, leading to new merchandise such as Argentinian soccer jerseys featuring Dragon Ball characters. A particular focus of research, advocacy, and debate around toyetic television has been concern about potential negative impacts on children from the blurring of boundaries between entertainment and advertising. While it may seem quaint in the current era of toy unboxing YouTube channels, the fear that toyetic television would cause rampant consumerism, rigid perceptions of gender roles, increased American cultural imperialism, and actual acts of violence amongst children was widespread in the 1990s. Those fears are mirrored in recent years by hope that the same toyetic franchises could reflect socially progressive ideas such as body positivity in the remake of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018-2020), queer representation in recent seasons of Power Rangers, and greater racial diversity in last year’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023). Toyetic Television: A Companion moves beyond these good/bad media effects binaries to consider how and what meaning is made with, through, from, and by the various networks surrounding toyetic television and its consumers.
Topics may include, but are not limited to:
— Transnational and intercultural approaches to toyetic television
— Gender, race, disability, and sexualities in toyetic television
— Material cultures: Collections, cosplay, and toy modification
— Toyetic television production and consumption in the Global South
— The future of toyetic television in the streaming age
— Remakes and reimaginings
— Nostalgic engagement with toyetic television
— Afterlives of toyetic television in fan fiction and paratextual play
— Video games and digital paratexts
— Theoretical approaches to transmediation, media-mix, and franchising
— Regulation, national or cultural identity, and children’s television
— Educational and psychology approaches to toyetic television
— Music and sound effects in toyetic franchises
— Toyetic media for adults and intergenerational consumption
— Ludic approaches to television
— Fan studies approaches to toyetic television
— Toyesis and toyetics in unexpected places
Finished essays will be approximately 4000 words long (excluding bibliography), should be accessible but touch on the big ideas, and will ideally take a main example as a ‘lens’ to look at the wider topic.
Please send 300 word abstracts and a short biographical note (50-100 words) by August 30th 2024, with a view to having a completed essay by early 2025, to Dr Sophia Staite at: staitepublications@gmail.com
CFP: Girl Audiences in the ‘Girlscape’
May 10, 2024Michele Paule (Oxford Brookes) and Sarah Godfrey (UEA) are excited to announce this call for papers for a themed edition of the Participations Journal of Audience and Reception Studies
CFP: Girl Audiences in the ‘Girlscape’
The term ‘girlscape’ was coined by Tomiko Yoda to describe a ‘mediatic milieu, disseminated via a variety of media channels, linking feminine bodies, affects, objects, and environment’ in which the identificatory figure of the girl is placed ‘at the centre of a consumer culture conceived of as both utopian and egalitarian’ (2017, 173). Yoda develops the theory in terms of Japanese tourism campaigns drawing on wider cultural discourses that position girls as enjoying new freedoms and influence in post-70s Japan. We borrow the term and extend it to consider ways in which girls are increasingly positioned as consuming, agentic, highly visible subjects within contemporary media, and also as ideal prod-users whose online practices sustain platform activity and enjoin the consumption of others. The ‘girlscape’, while encompassing global media elements, will manifest differently in and across different local and national contexts.
If, as Michelle Santiago Cortes (2020) claims, ‘teenage girls rule the internet right now’ they must also navigate the complex conditions and restrictions of this new visibility (Banet-Weiser 2018). Girls’ participatory audience practices draw attention to ways in which algorithmic measures are serving up ever-more tailored and intimate menus for their consumption, while their own activities are consciously shaped through the ‘datafication of affect’ as they work to accrue followers (Bishop 2019; Zhao 2021). The prod-usage of girl audiences and fans enriches the transmedia landscape as they appropriate and remix content that may resist, negotiate with or entirely reproduce hegemonic girlhoods (Hall 1973). At the same time as girl fans’ labour is increasingly important to media platform activity and profitability in economies of attention, girls’ activities as fans and online participants continue to attract derision and hostility (Wilson 2018). The ‘girlscape’, of course, is not limited to digital realms; legacy media including film, young adult (YA) fiction, television, music, and merchandising ‘paratexts’ exist and combine as a part of the proliferation of popular girl-focused media.
The consumer address to girls of ‘can-do’ Western media feminisms, and the datafication of girl audience economies have been extensively critiqued for their reproduction of middle-class, white, figures and their relegation, exoticisation or elision of non-normative girlhoods. While some corporations have mobilised feminist and inclusive politics in featuring, for example, Black girls, Islamic girls, queer girls and disabled girls in their media output, such ‘naive integration’ (Heiss 2020) has been critiqued for its commodification of feminist politics, its ultimate reinscription of normate bodies, and its reproduction of cultural focus on girls’ appearance. Minoritised girls nonetheless shape their own visibility via alternative media practices such as traditional ‘zines (Reynolds 2020), Twitter signifyin’ (Florini 2014) and counter-narrative podcasts (Greene 2021). This complex and rapidly mutating milieu begs for more empirical research into how girl audiences/readers/users are engaging with the contemporary ‘girlscape’. We therefore invite papers based on original research into any aspect of girl audiences. The following themes are suggestions, but are not restrictive:
- Girl audiences of specific texts in defined ‘girlscapes’
- Integrated approaches analysing texts and their production alongside their reception by girls
- Methodologies for researching girls’ engagements with/in the ‘girlscape’
- Girls’ participatory media practices/prod-usage
- The political economies of audiences in the ‘girlscape’
- The emotional and digital labour of girls/ girl fans online
- Girls subverting/queering/evading the ‘girlscape’
- Global/national/local ‘girlscapes’ and their audiences
- Transmedia engagements in the ‘girlscape’
- Girls’ engagements with popular feminisms in the ‘girlscape’
- Girls’ navigation of streaming platforms
- Girl prod-users on algorithms/ privacy
- Girls as content creators imagining audiences
Submission Guidelines:
Authors interested in contributing to this special edition are invited to submit original research articles on the Section’s theme. We are happy to receive a range of contributions including creative responses to the theme, although we give priority to essays on actual audience and reception research. We welcome:
- Empirical audience/reception studies
- Essays investigating industry practices/political economies
- State-of-the field reviews
- Reviews of key books/essays
- Interviews
- Translations
Manuscripts should adhere to Participations submission guidelines. All submissions will undergo peer-review to ensure academic rigour and relevance. Please note we will adopt Participations’ model of cross-reviewing by others contributing to the Themed Section, and their principle of Open Refereeing, under which the names of authors and referees are known to each other.
Timeline
- Submission of proposals/abstracts: 1st June 2024
- Submission of drafts: 1st October 2024 (3 months)
- Peer Review feedback: 1st December 2024 (2 months)
- Revised Submissions: 1st February (2 months)
- From Revised Submissions to confirmation and submission to journal: 1st April (2 months)
- Publication: May 2025
References
Banet-Weiser, S. 2018. Empowered: Popular feminism and popular misogyny. Duke University Press.
Bishop, S. 2019. Managing visibility on YouTube through algorithmic gossip. New Media and Society, 21 (1112), 2589-2606.
Cortés, Michelle Santiago. 2020. Charli D’Amelio now has more followers than anyone on TikTok. Refinery 29, 27 March. Available at: https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/2020/03/9615235/charli-damelio-most-followers-on-tiktok
Florini, Sarah. 2014. ‘ Tweets, tweeps, and signifyin’: Communication and cultural performance on “Black Twitter”. ’, Television & New Media, 15:3, pp. 223–37.
Greene, D. T. 2021. 
rites of passage: Black girls’ journaling and podcast script writing as counternarratives. Voices from the Middle, 28(4), 38-42.
Hall, Stuart. 1973. Encoding/decoding. In (eds) S. Hall, S., D. Hobson, D., A. Lowe and P. Willis, 2003. Culture, media, language: Working papers in cultural studies, 1972-79. Routledge Hall,,pp. 128-138.
Heiss, S., 2011. Locating the bodies of women and disability in definitions of beauty: An analysis of Dove’s campaign for real beauty. Disability Studies Quarterly, 31(1).
Jackson, S., 2021. “A very basic view of feminism”: feminist girls and meanings of (celebrity) feminism. Feminist Media Studies, 21(7), pp.1072-1090.
Reynolds, C., 2020. “My zines, so far, aren’t as political as other works I’ve produced”: Communicative Capitalism Among Queer Feminist Zinesters. Communication, Culture & Critique, 13(1), pp.92-110.
Subramanian, S., 2021. Bahujan girls’ anti-caste activism on TikTok. Feminist Media Studies, 21(1), pp.154-156.
Taylor, Anthea. 2016. Celebrity and the Feminist Blockbuster. UK: Palgrave MacMillan
Yoda, Tomiko .2017. GIRLSCAPE: The Marketing of Mediatic Ambience in Japan. In M. Steinberg & A. Zahlten (Ed.), Media Theory in Japan (pp. 173-199). New York, USA: Duke University Press.
Wilson, K., 2018. Red pillers, sad puppies, and gamergaters: The state of male privilege in internet fan communities. A companion to media fandom and fan studies, pp.431-445.
Woods, Rachel, and Benjamin Litherland. 2018. “Critical Feminist Hope: The Encounter Of Neoliberalism and Popular Feminism In Wwe 24: Womens Evolution.” Feminist Media Studies 18 (5): 905–922.
Zhao, E. J. 2021. Reconfiguring audience measurement in platform ecologies of video streaming: iQIYI’s pivot toward data-driven fandom and algorithmic metrics. International Journal of Communication, 15, 21.
