CFP: PoP24 Conference

October 18, 2023 by

Power of Prestige: Media, Fame and the Environment

Date: July 10-12, 2024

Location: Oxford University, UK

Keynote Speakers

Professor P David Marshall, Charles Sturt University, Australia

Associate Professor Helle Kannik Haastrup, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Call for Papers

Prestige is the status or reputation associated with renown, acclaim or glamour. It is often linked with celebrities and fame, and in contemporary mediated societies, this status is often afforded through the public visibility of legacy or digital media systems. Through the Power of Prestige conference series, we endeavour to explore the power associated with prestige as well as the power that prestige brings. While conceptually aligned with the areas of media and cultural studies, the conference series seeks explorations of the theorisation and application of prestige in different fields including sociology, criminology and political studies. The conference series also aims to explore the utility of prestige when encountering social issues such as political or environmental activism.

Starting broadly in the area of media studies, the inaugural Power of Prestige conference invites scholars researching areas related to media, fame and the environment to explore the central question of how prestige (or fame) is formulated, utilised, and critiqued. We welcome submissions in the following (non-exhaustive) topic areas:

  *   Theoretical explorations of the concept of Fame and Prestige

  *   Constructions and utilisation of Fame and Prestige in media industries

  *   Fame and Prestige in the Global South

  *   Power and influence of the media

  *   Prestige, Attention and the Environment

  *   Power of environmental activism

  *   Prestige of celebrity activism

  *   Building prestige through social media

  *   Prestige and Fame in the age of digital media

  *   Prestige, Fame and AI

Submission may be for individual 15-minute presentations or panels of 3 papers.

We invite scholars from a diverse range of career levels, including PhD candidates and Early Career Researchers, and institutional affiliations to submit to the conference and associated publication opportunity.

Publication Opportunity

Best papers from the conference will be provided the opportunity to submit chapters to an edited volume, subject to double blind peer review. Abstracts submitted for the edited volume only are also welcome.

Submission

Please send the following to CJcelebrityresearch@gmail.com<mailto:CJcelebrityresearch@gmail.com> by the submission deadline:

  *   250 word abstract

  *   5-6 key words

  *   100 word biography

  *   Statement indicating whether you wish to be considered for the conference, edited volume, or both.

Timeline

Call released: October 6, 2023

Abstract deadline: December 18, 2023

Notification of acceptance: January 31, 2024

Conference dates: July 10-12, 2024

Conference Co-Chairs

Dr Jackie Raphael-Luu, University of Arts London

Dr Celia Lam, University of Nottingham Ningbo China

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CFP: Selfing and Shelving: Zines, Zine Media, and Zintivism

October 18, 2023 by

Selfing and Shelving: Zines, Zine Media, and Zintivism

Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany

May 3, 2024

*Deadline December 31, 2023*

Zines are extremely versatile and shapeshift across various historical and cultural contexts. The term covers a wide range of objects with different aesthetic and material qualities as well as contexts of production and reception: Zines accommodate the collective concerns of fans and activists (zintivism) and the personal voice of the diarist and letter writer. Since the rise of digital media, zines and their aesthetics have become portable: Digitised and digital zines exist alongside blogs, social media, podcasts, and substacks, which seem to exhibit zine-y tendencies, while digital infrastructures have changed the ways that print zines are produced, distributed, and archived.

At the same time, print media, including zines, have seen a revival and postdigital reinvention, not the least as a paper-based escape from screens. In this new constellation, we propose to revisit questions like: Where does the zine begin and end and how have its meanings changed for readers, collectors, and makers? How can contemporary developments of the zine (like the wave of quaranzines) change our understanding of its meaning, genealogy, and archive? And what, and where, are zines now?

This symposium suggests considering these questions through the lens of

  • shelving – the zine at home, on the shelves of libraries, archives, and collectors, its repurposing and disassembling, its neglect as ephemera as well as remediation through reprints and staging in exhibitions, coffee table books, etc.
  • and ‘selfing’ – the zine as a tool in making identities and ‘working on the self,’ as a ‘third space’ for new subjectivities, as ‘sticky’ with affects, as the glue of communal belonging (local/transnational), as resource for ‘subcultural capital’ and distinction, and as conduit for relationships and activism.

We especially welcome papers that propose theoretical approaches which attend to the materiality of zines and zine production and consider the printed zine as only one form of zine media. We are interested in new approaches to zines as well as in investigations of media and objects that borrow from, reference, mimic, disguise as, or are influenced by the zine – that are in some way zine-y and take the format, aesthetics, tone, and /or affect beyond paper.

Please send an abstract (ca. 300 words) + short bio to safazli@uni-mainz.de and milos.hroch@fsv.cuni.cz by December 31, 2023.

This symposium is designed as a friendly space for established and emerging scholars to share and discuss ideas. We also encourage practitioners to apply and are happy to accommodate non-academic formats of presentation.

Organisers: Sabina Fazli, Obama Institute, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany and Miloš Hroch, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.

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CFP: Girls’ and Young Women’s Textual Cultures Across History: Imitation, Adaptation, Transformation

October 18, 2023 by

The editors would like to invite chapters of 7,000 words for an edited collection, to be submitted to
Routledge’s Children’s Literature and Culture Book Series. We aim to publish the collection in 2025.

Readers have always interacted with texts to create unique interpretations. Imitations, adaptations, and
transformations–from reading texts aloud to dramatising them, from sequels in manuscript and print
to new media, from drawing characters for fun to making animated films–have long been central to
readers’ interactions with texts, particularly for girls and young women. These include, for example,
early modern girls’ adaptations of romances, Victorian girls’ creation of magazine clubs, and
contemporary fan fiction communities. Yet many of these practices have often been dismissed as
‘amateur’ and ‘girly’, with their authors and creators doubly marginalised due their age and gender. 
They have, therefore, not always received the sustained critical attention they merit. This collection
seeks to retrieve girls’ and young women’s ‘amateur’ and ‘girly’ imitative, adaptive, and
transformative writing practices in diverse genres through time and across the globe.

Textual engagement is often at the heart of the educational and recreational cultures of young people,
with even the basic practices of becoming literate affording opportunities for creative response.  Anne
Haas Dyson points out that copying is ‘not a reproductive task, but an intrinsic part of the production
process’ for young people (12). Similarly, Jackie Marsh writes that ‘children do not just adopt […]
narratives in an unreflective manner. They build on and develop […] narratives in interesting, creative
ways’ (32). Henry Jenkins’ phrase ‘textual poachers’ also illuminates children’s propensity to take
textual scaffolds and utilize them for their own creative purposes. We suggest that this practice,
though determined by historical context, has happened across time and space. In this landmark essay
collection, we wish to chart the history of girls’ textual participatory cultures from 1500 to the present
day.

Although work on the histories of girls’ and women’s transformative works exists, these practices and
communities–especially those predating the twentieth century–remain understudied (but see, e.g.,
Glosson, 2020; Hellekson, 2023; Rosenblatt & Pearson, 2017; Willis, 2016). This collection provides
fresh histories of ‘girly’ textual practices, considering how girls and young women have appropriated,
imitated, adapted, and transformed (popular) texts across time. In doing so, it seeks to create a deeper
history of modern-day fannish practices, one that spans centuries and continents.  

Girls and young women, especially those who are further minoritised by race, class, sexuality, or
location, have been particularly drawn to participatory cultures, and especially to appropriative
writing. However, their writing has, historically, been relegated to the sidelines, and its histories and
trajectories are only now being recovered. Practices deemed ‘amateur’, such as creating homemade
magazines and writing fan fiction, are often lambasted, with female fans derided as ‘frenzied,’
‘hysterical,’ ‘dangerous,’ and ‘excessive’ (Busse 73–4). As scholars such as Melissa Click, Kristina
Busse, and Matt Hills have argued, fans who are both female and young are particularly pathologized,
with accusations of ‘girliness’ having been used as a basis for the widespread dismissal of many
cultural practices throughout time.  We understand ‘girls and young women’ broadly and suggest that
how these categories are understood may vary depending on geographical or temporal contexts. As
such, we encourage abstracts that consider racialized, neurodivergent, disabled, LGBTQ+, or
otherwise minoritised groups of young people.  

Contributions may include (but are not limited to) considerations of:

  • Amateur and professional textual adaptations and transformations by girls and young women,
  • from theatre performances and songs to commonplace books, magazines and fan fiction to
  • film and social media 
  • The gendered and aged dimensions of rewriting and revising texts throughout time
  • Authoring “official” and “unofficial” sequels
  • Manuscript magazines and amateur printing
  • Creating “Pickwick clubs” and other literary societies
  • Revisiting and revising childhood reading and writing in adulthood
  • Fanzines and participatory internet cultures
  • Editorials, letters to the editor, and other literary critical correspondence
  • Theoretical reflections on intertextuality and adaptation
  • Theoretical reflections on age
  • Theoretical and historical reflections on ideas of authorship and intellectual property

We invite the submission of abstracts of 350 words and brief author bio by 31 January 2024.

Accepted essays of 7,000 words will be due by 1 June 2024.

Editor feedback on essays: Fall 2024

Revised essays due: Spring 2025
 
Estimated publication: 2025

To be emailed to editors Lois Burke (l.m.burke@tilburguniversity.edu), Jennifer Duggan
(jennifer.duggan@usn.no) and Edel Lamb (e.lamb@qub.ac.uk). 

References
Busse, Kristina. 2013. “Geek Hierarchies, Boundary Policing, and the Gendering of the Good Fan.”
Participations 10(1): 73–91. https://www.participations.org/10-01-06-busse.pdf.

Click, Melissa. “‘Rabid,’ ‘Obsessed,’ and ‘Frenzied’”: Understanding Twilight Fangirls and the
Gendered Politics of Fandom.” Flow: A Critical Forum on Media and Culture.
https://www.flowjournal.org/2009/12/rabid-obsessed-and-frenzied-understanding-twilight-fangirls-and-the-gendered-politics-of-fandom-melissa-click-university-of-missouri/.

Glosson, Sarah. 2020. Performing Jane: A cultural history of Jane Austen fandom. Louisiana State
University Press.

Haas Dyson, Anne. 2010. ‘Writing childhoods under construction: Re-visioning ‘copying’ in early
childhood’, Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 10(1), 7–31. DOI: 10.1177/1468798409356990. 

Hellekson, Karen. 2023. “Fandom, Fanzines, and Archiving Science Fiction Fannish History.”
Proceedings from the Document Academy 10(1). https://doi.org/10.35492/docam/10/1/2.

Hills, Matt. 2012. “Twilight Fans Represented in Commercial Paratexts and Inter-fandoms: Resisting
and Repurposing Negative Fan Stereotypes.” In Genre, Reception, and Adaptation in the Twilight
Series, edited by Anne Morey, 113–29. Ashgate.

Marsh, Jackie. 2010. Childhood, Culture and Creativity: A Literature Review. Newcastle-upon-Tyne:
Creativity, Culture and Education. 

Rosenblatt, Betsy, and Roberta Person (Eds.). 2017. Sherlock Holmes, Fandom, Sherlockiana, and the
Great Game (special issue). Transformative Works and Cultures 23.
https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/issue/view/27.

Willis, Ika (Ed.). 2016. The Classical Cannon and/as Transformative Work (special issue).
Transformative Works and Cultures 21.
https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/issue/view/23.

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CFP: Routledge Companion to Fan Video & Digital Authorship

September 29, 2023 by


Call For Papers: Routledge Companion to Fan Video & Digital Authorship

We are seeking proposals for chapter contributions for a new Routledge Companion to Fan Video & Digital Authorship. Fan video has perhaps never been more watched, with the advent of platforms from YouTube to Bilibili to Instagram to NicoNico to Twitch to TikTok and beyond, but scholarship has not always kept pace with the breadth and diversity of forms of fan video. We seek an internationally and interdisciplinarily diverse group of emerging and established scholars to provide an accessible, transcultural analysis of the multitudinous forms of fan video today and where the form(s) might go in the future. These forms could include but are not limited to:
youtube tutorials, reaction videos, & unboxings
streams, twitch, & let’s play videos
compilation videos, fan guides, & video essays
alternative universe/alternative narrative videos
web series adaptations, fan trailers, & fan films
short form fan edits, gifs, and loops on TikTok, Instagram, LittleRedBook, Twitter/X, etc.
Anime Music Video & animatics
stage mixes & cover dances
long form fan music video, fan video albums, & Multi Editor Projects
& many many more

We hope to see the following themes weave through the companion (note that any one piece is not expected to encompass all of them):
The history and practices of fan video traditions specific to particular cultural contexts or identity communities
Fan video practices and traditions within Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa, South Asia, and East Asia
Fan video cultures as they have evolved on specific streaming/social media services such as Bilibili, Facebook, Instagram, LittleRedBook, NicoNico, Twitch, TikTok, Tumblr, Weibo, etc.
Fan video making, watching, and responding as therapeutic or identity work
Impact of specific technologies and interfaces on fan video aesthetics and circulation
Aesthetics of specific genres & forms of fan video
Relationship between fan video and other forms of fannish making, such as fan fiction, fan art, fan music, etc.
Relationship between fan video and other popular forms of digital authorship, such as vlogging, remix music and hip hop, web series, video and analog gameplay, etc.
Relationship between fan video and commercial media practices, such as the professionalization (or not) of fan video creators and the interpollination of ideas between fan video and mainstream music videos, TV, film, etc.
Issues of pedagogy: using fan video in the classroom, teaching students to make fan video, fan video as vehicle for learning, etc.
The educational work of fan video within fan communities (as tutorials or cultural conversation leaders)
Politics and ethics of fan video, including issues like copyright and toxicity
The use of video by fan activists and the appropriation of fan techniques by activist media makers
The impact of AI on fan video making communities and fan video as a form. as well as debates within fan video making communities over the ethics of AI and transformative use vs. author’s/artist’s rights.
Case studies of specific videos or creators’ works
Perspectives by active creators of fan video from diverse genres


Chapters will be roughly 5000-words apiece, with the exception of case studies, which may be 2000-3000 words apiece. Please submit a 500-word abstract and a CV by November 15, 2023, to the co-editors at louisas@middlebury.edu and sclose@depaul.edu with the subject line “Fan Video Companion Submission.” Please include both co-editors on your email submission. Feel free also to email with any questions in advance of the submission date.

Authors will be notified of the status of their submission by December 15, 2023 and asked to submit the first draft of their full chapter by March 31, 2024.

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CFP: Queer Women’s Fandom: New Global PerspectivesQueer Women’s Fandom: New Global Perspectives

August 18, 2023 by

Queer Women’s Fandom: New Global Perspectives

Special issue for Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture

Co-editors: Jamie J. Zhao (City University of Hong Kong) and Eve Ng (Ohio University, USA)

There are numerous fan communities and spaces, in different geocultural locations and linguistic contexts, dedicated to intimacies between women. Yet research on queer women’s fandoms – including fandoms of queer female public figures and their media presence, fan communities comprised of non-cis/non-heterosexually identified women, and/or queer reading activities done by women-identified fans – remains rather scant, especially compared to work on the queer fandoms of stars, celebrities, and idols who are cis-men. Furthermore, most scholarship on queer women’s fan cultures is focused on two types: femslash in Euro-American contexts and GL (“girls love” or yuri/baihe) in East Asian contexts. To develop a theoretically richer and more globally diverse account, this special issue seeks critical approaches to the transnational dimensions of queer women’s fandoms, including as they pertain to the formation and transformation of cross-racial, transcultural, and global queer fan identities, relationships to feminist and queer movements, the capitalization and coopting of queer fan labor, and other complexities of transcultural fandom.

In the only published edited collection entirely focused on queer women’s fan studies, Eve Ng and Julie Levin Russo called for a recentering of “queer women as the object of fannish cathexis” (2017). This current project builds upon that volume and further emphasizes that the global and transcultural elements of queer women’s fandoms deserve deeper investigation. Following Bertha Chin and Lori Hitchcock Morimoto’s (2013) transcultural fandom theory, we do not take “global” simply as something from the non-Western world. Instead, we propose that queer women’s fandom makes visible the encounters of local, transcultural, and global understandings concerning gender, sexuality, and media. It thus proffers fannish imaginaries and productions that contest, negotiate, and sometimes even collude with globalist and digital capitalism and heteronormative social structure.

In addition, we envision the special issue as working to redress the disproportionate focus of current literature on fan cultures around explicitly lesbian-identified characters and celebrities that are available in LGBTQ-friendly, relatively democratic media and social environments. To date, there has been little academic attention on fandoms dominated by and about queer women in contexts where overt LGBTQ politics, movements, and representations remain taboo topics. We are therefore particularly interested in research on queer women’s fan spaces in largely conservative, misogynistic, homophobic settings, both online and offline, and the transcultural, cross-racial encounters and negotiations that may occur.

In sum, this special issue of Popular Communication will examine fan practices and discourses centered on women’s homoerotic imaginaries through fresh transnational perspectives. Challenging the Euro-American-centrism and (more recently emergent) East Asian-centrism in global queer media and fan studies, we seek to advance cross-geocultural-linguistic conversations about how images, personas, desires, identities, and subjectivities of queer women are (re)produced, negotiated, and deconstructed, and the relations of these queer fannish imaginaries to the media texts and platforms, sociocultural contexts, and economic-political and regulatory forces through which they are enabled, complicated, and sometimes curtailed.

The special issue will address the following overarching questions:

  • How has globalization facilitated or complicated the emergence, development, and interconnection of queer women’s fan cultures in different parts of the world?
  • In what ways are identities, subjectivities, and desiring voices of queer women enabled and reconfigured through negotiation with local, cross-cultural, transnational, and global media and public discourses on girlhood, womanhood, feminism, and queerness?
  • How do race, ethnicity, class, age, and geopolitics complicate global queer women’s fandoms?
  • Through what means have transnational feminist and LGBTQ movements converged with or diverged from queer women’s fan cultures in recent years?
  • How have emerging forms of digital technologies and social platforms contributed to the circulation of queer women-centered media and the formation of its fandom worldwide?

Potential topics may include but are not limited to:

  • Emerging forms of queer women’s fan cultures, such as webtoons, TikTok videos, GL-adapted fanfics, audio dramas, games, etc.
  • Queer global fandoms around Japanese, Korean, Thai, and Sinophone actresses, K-pop, J-Pop, and Chinese pop women idols and girl groups, and/or androgynous celebrities in Asia
  • Other transnational and/or cross-racial fandoms of queer women celebrities and representations
  • The intersection of age, gender, and sexuality in queer women’s fan cultures, such as anti-ageism, fans’ preferences or romantic imaginaries of middle-age or senior queer women
  • The role of social media in manufacturing women as queer-identified celebrities, and/or the engagement of such celebrities with their queer fans
  • Queer women-centered media and platformization (cultural practices and the venues for cultural production proliferated through digital platforms’ infrastructural characteristics) 
  • Conflicts and/or connections between feminist groups/communities and queer women’s fan cultures
  • The role of heteropatriarchal cultures and media regulations in the formation and development of queer women’s fandoms

To most strongly fit the theme of the special issue, submissions should examine their topics through a critical global/transnational/transcultural lens. Studies on queer women’s fan practices in the Global South from de-Western-centric, de-East Asian-centric perspectives are especially welcomed.

References

Chin, B., & Morimoto, L. (2013). Towards a theory of transcultural fandom. Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies, 10(1), 92–108.

Ng, E., & Russo, J. L. (2017). Envisioning queer female fandom. Transformative Works and Cultures, 24. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2017.01168

Timeline

  • Please submit a 1,000-word abstract as well as a short (2-page) CV by October 15, 2023 to the co-editors of the special issue at jingjamiezhao@gmail.com and nge@ohio.edu.
  • Authors whose abstracts are selected will be notified by December 15, 2023.
  • Selected authors will be asked to submit complete manuscripts (6,000-7,000 words, including notes and references, in Word format, following the 7th APA style) directly to the journal’s submission site by February 28, 2024.
  • Acceptance of an abstract does not guarantee paper publication. All full paper submissions will be single anonymous peer-reviewed by at least two independent, anonymous scholars. The expected publication date for the special issue is 2024 (issue 3).

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact the co-editors.

Special Issue Editors:

Jamie J. ZHAO is Assistant Professor in the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong. She holds a PhD in Gender Studies from Chinese University of Hong Kong and received another PhD in Film and TV Studies from the University of Warwick. Her research explores East Asian media and public discourses on female gender and sexuality in a globalist age. She is the editor of Queer TV China (HKUP, 2023), and coedited Boys’ Love, Cosplay, and Androgynous Idols (HKUP, 2017), Contemporary Queer Chinese Art (Bloomsbury, 2023), and the Routledge Handbook of Chinese Gender and Sexuality (Routledge, forthcoming). She has also (co)edited seven special journal issues on the topics of global media, celebrity, and fan studies. She is the founding coeditor of Bloomsbury’s “Queering China” book series and Routledge’s “Transdisciplinary Souths” book series. In addition, she serves on the editorial boards of Communication, Culture & Critique, Feminist Media Studies, Television & New Media, and Bloomsbury’s “Asian Celebrity and Fandom Studies” book series.

jingjamiezhao@gmail.com

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5106-4563

Eve Ng is an associate professor in the School of Media Arts and Studies and the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at Ohio University. She is the author of Cancel Culture: A Critical Analysis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Mainstreaming Gays: Critical Convergences of Queer Media, Fan Cultures, and Commercial Television (Rutgers University Press, 2023), and has published in Communication, Culture & Critique, Development and Change, Feminist Media Studies, Feminist Studies,International Journal of Communication, Journal of Film and Video, Journal of Lesbian Studies, New Review of Film and Television Studies, Popular Communication, Television & New Media, and Transformative Works and Culture. She is an associate editor of Communication, Culture & Critique, and serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Lesbian Studies, Television & New Media, and Transformative Works and Culture.

nge@ohio.edu

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5570-6284

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CFP: This is Me: Interrogating the Female Pop Star Documentary

May 22, 2023 by

This is Me: Interrogating the Female Pop Star Documentary.

From Lady Gaga’s Five Foot Two (2017) to BlackPink’s Light Up the Sky (2020), Billie Eilish’s The World’s A Little Blurry (2021), Love, Lizzo (2022) and many more, documentaries on female pop stars have been released with increased frequency in the past decade. Many of the world’s most famous female artists both in (and beyond) the pop genre have allowed fragments of their onstage and offstage lives to be filmed and released for public consumption as part of the bolstering of their brand.

This broad, interdisciplinary collection (which will be the first full length study of its kind) to be published by Bloomsbury Academic in early 2025, will address the ways in which women in pop music documentaries have played a significant role in shaping the narrative of popular music history. Such documentaries shed light on the experiences, challenges, and achievements of female artists in the pop music genre and provide a platform to explore the artistry, cultural impact, and personal stories of women who have made an indelible mark on the pop music landscape. The portrayal of women in pop music documentaries occupies a crucial space in the exploration of popular music history. Such documentaries celebrate the achievements of iconic female pop artists, challenge and reaffirm gender stereotypes, highlight artistic prowess, and influence, and share personal journeys of resilience.

The collection will address the complexities of the construction of female celebrity as portrayed through the pop star documentary. The essays in this volume will employ broad cultural theory frameworks to investigate what this often-overlooked genre of documentary has to offer in understanding both popular music and celebrity culture today.

Suggested topics/themes for chapters (without being limited to):

• Constructions of celebrity
• Abuse narratives
• Ageing
• Gender identities
• Materiality
• Narratives of motherhood
• Racial identities
• Social histories
• The music industry
• Mental health narratives

Proposals/abstracts should be 500 words maximum outlining your proposed chapter. Please include up to 5 keywords and a brief biography (150 words) of the author(s) which includes an institutional affiliation and your contact email.

Editor: Kirsty Fairclough (SODA at Manchester Metropolitan University)
Please send your proposal(s) to: womeninpopdocs@gmail.com

Important Dates:

•Abstract Submission Deadline: Friday 30th June 2023
•Notification of Acceptance: Sunday 30th July 2023
•Full Chapter Submission: Tuesday 30th January 2024
•Expected Publication: January 2025

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CFP: Fright Nights: Live Halloween Horror Events

May 18, 2023 by

CALL FOR CHAPTERS: EDITED COLLECTION

Fright Nights: Live Halloween Horror Events

Editors: Kieran Foster, University of Nottingham (UK), and Cassie Brummitt, University of Nottingham (UK)

Horror’s origins – with its roots in folklore, mythology and the oral tradition – stretch much further back in time than screen media, and beyond even ‘canonical’ literature such as Frankenstein and Dracula. However, in the 20th century and beyond, horror as a media genre has become big business, especially in the screen industries where horror film and television franchises have become globally-exploited intellectual properties ripe for spin-offs, sequels, remakes, transmedia world-building and merchandising (Fleury and Mamber 2019, Harris 2010, Mee 2022).

What remains less explored in extant scholarly literature, which this edited collection intends to address, is the phenomenon of space and place within horror’s commercial logics. Importantly, the past few decades have seen a rise in immersive, interactive environments that draw on horror imagery as an indelible part of the attraction. Events such as escape rooms, immersive experiences and fan-led celebratory events enable horror intellectual property to escape the confines of the big and small screen to pervade cultural spaces globally (Kennedy 2018, Ndalianis 2010). These physical, participatory, often visceral environments have implications for the ways in which horror properties are materialised, remediated, and engaged with.

These kinds of immersive attractions are no more popular than at Halloween, where it has become increasingly common to see both branded and non-branded horror events take place across the globe. For example, in the UK, pop-up ‘scream parks’ such as York Maze’s ‘HallowScream’, or theme park events such as ‘Fright Nights’ at Thorpe Park, draw on non-branded horror, folklore and supernatural imagery. Meanwhile, internationally, events such as ‘Halloween Horror Nights’ (at Universal Studio sites in Orlando, Hollywood, Singapore and Japan) and ‘Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party’ (at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in Orlando and Disneyland Paris) exploit branded iconography, IP, and franchises.

Horror’s preoccupation with the abject and the visceral offers arguably unique opportunities to translate cultural fears into a physically inhabitable and interactable experience. Seeking to address this important phenomenon, this edited collection will examine Halloween-focused horror events as an under-explored but sizable part of horror media’s global creative and commercial logics, both historically and contemporarily.

We are seeking abstracts of up to 250 words in response to this theme (plus author biography up to 100 words). The form of contributions can be flexible, whether a standard chapter, an interview (for example, with a practitioner, an industry professional, or fans), an autoethnographic piece, or another creative means of exploring the topic.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

  • Issues of labour in Halloween horror events
  • Marketing and promotional discourses of Halloween horror events
  • Franchising and intellectual property in Halloween horror events
  • Immersion and interactivity
  • Halloween horror events as film, media or literary tourism
  • Notions of play and lusory attitudes to Halloween horror events
  • Performance and emotion in Halloween horror events
  • Audience engagement and experience
  • Fan studies of horror events
  • Narratives and storytelling
  • Industrial relationships, logics and practices

Please send your abstract and bio to Dr. Kieran Foster (kieran.foster@nottingham.ac.uk) and Dr. Cassie Brummitt (cassie.brummitt@nottingham.ac.uk). The deadline for abstracts is July 24th 2023.

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CFP: The SA Fan Hub: Fan Studies in the Global South

May 16, 2023 by

19 – 20 October 2023 at Nelson Mandela University, South Campus, Gqeberha, Eastern Cape

There is an idea that everyone is a fan of something and has a corresponding attachment to a text/object. The aim of understanding how or what this attachment inspires, and the perception thereof is the intention of fan studies.

Social and new media has introduced new practices that has formed an integral part of contemporary culture. These practices, with its roots entrenched in fandom, continues to expand in terms of not only its cultural influence but also the diversity of the participants. As it stands, the field of fan studies demonstrates a distinct lack of discussion in and around transcultural fandom, especially that of the global south and, particularly, Southern Africa. Chin and Morimoto (2013), two prominent fan studies scholars affirm that non-Western fandoms remain part of the periphery of mainstream fan culture and remain disconnected despite the migration of fandom to online spaces (2013:105). As such, this symposium intends to bring together academics, acafans, and fans who want to discuss and understand how fandom is developing across the cultures and borders of the global south and Southern Africa. We are seeking participants whose approach to fan studies shares the intention of contemplating new avenues of inquiry that consider fan studies from an interdisciplinary and distinctly African perspective.

The prospective presentations, panels, and/or discussions will ideally have a clear global south perspective and may include but are not limited to:

  • Fan practices and social media platforms
  • Fan identities
  • Transcultural fandom
  • Industry
  • Race
  • The ethics of fan studies
  • Fans as curators
  • African fan fiction
  • African/Global South sports fans
  • Fan tourism
  • Music fandom
  • Queer fandom
  • Masculinity
  • Femininity
  • Fan cultures
  • Whiteness in fandom
  • Intersectional fandom
  • Political fandom
  • The future of fan studies

Topic/abstract Submissions: 31 June 2023

Please Note: Although the symposium is scheduled to be held in person on the NMU campus in Gqeberha, arrangements will be made, upon request, for hybrid presentations to accommodate participants who are unable to travel.

Submissions must include the following elements:

  • Complete contact information and institutional affiliation (if applicable) for the participant;
  • Biography
  • An indication of which aspect you want to form part of. i.e. presentation, panel, discussion;
  • A 250-word overview of your topic

References
Chin, B. and Morimoto, L. H. (2013). “Towards a theory of transcultural fandom,” Participations, 10, pp. 105.

The SA Fan Hub

Dr. Catherine Duncan
Dr. Janelle Vermaak-Griessel
Dr. Natalie Le Clue

https://sites.google.com/view/safanhub/home?authuser=4

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CFP: The 50th Anniversary of The Princess Bride

May 9, 2023 by

Signum University Press is pleased to announce a call for papers in honor of the 50th anniversary of William Goldman’s The Princess Bride, to be released in 2024 and edited by Faith Acker and Maggie Parke. We welcome papers by experienced and renowned or young and emerging scholars, of all nationalities, genders, identities, and colors. Interested contributors may submit a 500-word abstract in English by 26 May 2023 to faith.acker@signumu.org and maggie.parke@signumu.org. Full drafts of 4,000-6,000 words maximumwill be due by 1 October 2023.

While existing academic scholarship on The Princess Bride is sparse, contributions should draw upon secondary criticism in relevant areas to situate their essays within existing critical conversations. The editors are happy to discuss options with prospective and accepted authors. While we are open to all approaches to the text and film, some starting points might include:

● Connections to traditions of folklore and fairy tales

● Connections to Goldman’s larger literary or cinematic canon

● Goldman’s frame narrative

● Critical (feminist, racial, socioeconomic, etc.) readings of the text

● Language and wordplay

● Misogyny and/in satire

● Cinematic adaptation

● Fandom and the role of fandom

● Afterlives of The Princess Bride

● The Princess Bride as a cultural icon

We expect completed chapters to be released in serial form beginning in 2024. When serial release has concluded, the chapters will be published in eBook, audiobook, and printed codex formats. The Signum University Press pays generous royalties: usually around 50% on net, which will be shared among all book authors and editors. Our authors are never asked to pay anything up front to offset publication costs. SUP also welcomes full book manuscripts on this and related topics. Learn more at https://press.signumuniversity.org/submissions/. For any further inquiries, contact us at press@signumu.org.

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CFP: Popular Music Autobiographies: Rereading Musicians and their Audiences

April 13, 2023 by

CALL FOR CHAPTERS

“POPULAR MUSIC AUTOBIOGRAPHIES: REREADING MUSICIANS AND THEIR AUDIENCES”

This broad, interdisciplinary collection to be published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2024 will consider why popular music autobiography has recently become such a widely-read genre and a significant factor in mediating popular music for its audience.

Texts such as Viv Albertine’s Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys, Miki Berenyi’s Fingers Crossed, Alex James’ Bit of a Blur, Nile Rodgers’ Le Freak, Gucci Mane’s Autobiography of Gucci Mane, and Bob Dylan’s Chronicles have been critically acclaimed and recorded on various best-seller lists whilst delivering for many fans an apparent insider’s understanding of musicians whose work they are invested in.

Yet such narratives have many other functions beyond thrilling fans with a sense of intimacy. Pop music autobiographies have variously attempted to rewrite social history; to redress gender or racial stereotypes; to question received models of fame; to validate new genres and scenes; to explore the renditions of subjectivity in pop music and lyrics; to justify transgressive behaviour; to critique the music industry.

The essays in this volume will address such diverse questions as the above, employing cultural theory frameworks to investigate what this often patronised or stereotyped genre has to offer in understanding popular music and its audiences today. The collection will also consider the forms deployed in pop music autobiographies, which range from familiar narrative arcs to experimental texts and virtual platforms.

We will work from a broad definition of autobiography, including conventional written narratives, via renditions of subjectivity in concerts, interviews, and life-writing, to manifestations of musicians’ lives including social media, museums, and avatars.

Suggested topics/themes for chapters (feel free to propose others that are important to you):

Earlier narratives by musicians before the rock era
Interviews as dialogised autobiography
Experimental forms of autobiography vs conventional narratives
Transgressive autobiographies and rock mythologising
Female and feminist musicians’ life writing
Musicians’ houses and museums as material Autobiographies
Musical subjectivities and musical genres
Lyrics as coded autobiography
Concerts as performed subjectivity
Ghosted autobiographies and promotional narratives
Oral histories and group autobiography
Musicians’ social media personae as real time virtual autobiographies
Avatars: performing virtual subjectivities

Proposals/abstracts should be 500 words maximum. Please include up to 5 keywords and a brief biography of the author(s) which includes an institutional affiliation and your contact email.

Editorial team: Tom Attah (Leeds Arts University), Kirsty Fairclough (SODA at Manchester Metropolitan University), Christian Lloyd (Queens University of Canada)

Send your proposal(s) to: poplifewriting@gmail.com

Deadline for Proposals: 30th April, 2023. Accepted authors will be notified w/c 15th May 2023. Accepted chapters to be delivered no later than 15th January 2024.

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