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
Posts Tagged ‘call for papers’
CFP: This is Me: Interrogating the Female Pop Star Documentary
May 22, 2023CFP: Fright Nights: Live Halloween Horror Events
May 18, 2023CALL 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.
CFP: The 50th Anniversary of The Princess Bride
May 9, 2023Signum 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.
CFP: Popular Music Autobiographies: Rereading Musicians and their Audiences
April 13, 2023CALL 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.
CFP: Audience Conference
April 2, 2023Call for presentations: Audience Conference, 6 July 2023
Hosted by Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, Birmingham City University
Audience is one of the pillars of media studies, alongside industry and text. Accordingly, the current Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research (BCMCR) research theme returns to audience as a concept, to consider methods for studying and addressing audiences in our own research practice, and how we train our students to think about and to study audiences at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. As part of this project, we are holding a one-day conference to share current theorisations and uses of audience as a concept.
There are many questions we can ask about the state of audience today. For example, how do media literacy and misinformation, populism and democracy, short-form viral content, and different humanities ‘turns’ (archival, transnational, memory, etc.) reshape or confirm scholarly views of what an audience is? Is there still a ‘mass’ audience, in the UK or elsewhere? Are the methods we use for audience research fit for purpose, given the huge swathes of people who have, historically, been left out of audience research?
Areas of interest can include but are not limited to:
Audience as viewer/listener/reader
Audience as commodity
Audience as consumer, user, player, and/or citizen
Audience as participant/producer
Audience in the singular or plural
Fan audience(s)
National/international/transnational audience(s)
Methodology and audience research
Pedagogy and audience research
Please send 300-word abstracts (for individual presentations no more than 20 minutes long) and a short author bio to bcmcr.audience@gmail.com by 5 May 2023. We aim to communicate decisions by 19 May 2023.
Panel proposals are also accepted: please submit a rationale alongside abstracts for each contribution (max. 750 words total, rationale and abstracts together).
Thank you,
Charlotte Stevens and Hazel Collie
Birmingham Institute of Media and English
Birmingham City University
Call for Chapters: Transcultural Media Fandom in the Asia Pacific
March 13, 2023Call for Chapters: Transcultural Media Fandom in the Asia Pacific
Editors
Dr Tingting Hu
Assistant Professor, Department of Media and Communication, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University
Dr Fang Wu
Associate Professor, School of Media and Communication, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Targeted publisher
Hawaii University Press (AsiaPop!)
Routledge (Digital Media and Culture in Asia)
Project Aims
In recent years, the field of fan studies has seen exponential growth in the global academia, with many remarkable books such as the Routledge Companion to Media Fandom (2018), edited by Melissa A. Click and Suzanne Scott, and Aussie Fans: Uniquely Placed in Global Popular Culture (2019), edited by Celia Lam and Jackie Raphael adding to the literature. While the former aims to evaluate the state of the field and comprehensively survey core concerns, the latter focuses on how Australian fandom explores the national popular culture scene through themes of localization and globalization. In the Asian context, Lu Chen’s monograph Chinese Fans of Japanese and Korean Pop Culture (2018) has focused on the reception and interpretation of the Chinese audience involving the content of transnational cultural flows in East Asia.
Previous literature has predominantly focused on media fandom in the U.S. and the U.K., with only sporadic non-Western fandom-related scholarships. Despite popular Asian cultures such as Hallyu and Otaku creating a global impact in recent years, the Asia-pacific continues to receive scant academic attention, largely because the Asia-pacific has long been conceptualized as a geographically vast and culturally heteroglossic ‘other’ to the Euro-American formation (Wilson and Dirlik, 1994). While some scholarships have investigated how stardom and fandom in China, Korea, and Japan influence western countries in terms of culture, economy, and politics, popular cultural exchanges and transcultural practices among Asian Pacific countries still require closer observation.
This project’s goal is to bring together Asian-pacific-focused media fandom research across diverse disciplines and contexts to assess the state of the field, empirically investigate fandom activities, and point to new research directions. Engaging with a wide array of media texts and formats, this project will be organized into three main sections:
Part I
Identities, Activities, and Practices
- the transformative textual practices of fans.
- the transcultural practices and media activities of fans.
- the range of identities that are represented in fandom media practices/activities.
Part II
Technology, Industry, and Economy
- the networked relationship between media technology, industry, and fans.
- the dynamics between media fandom, industry, and economy.
- the evolution of media fans in relation to technology, industry, and economy in different cultural contexts.
Part III
Gender and Sexuality
- the gendered identities of fans as represented by their media activities.
- the gendered and/or sexual-related practices/issues involved in fandom media activities.
- the fandom engagement with sexual minorities and/or the LGBTQ communities.
This anthology will adopt a transcultural perspective to broaden our knowledge of the complex ways that media fandom develops across cultures and national borders. In the Routledge Companion to Media Fandom’s first edition, Click and Scott (2018) have argued that “The absence of a robust dialogue in fan studies scholarship about race and transcultural fandom is one of the field’s most obvious deficiencies” (p. 241). They have also mentioned Chin and Morimoto’s (2013) call for more attention to transcultural fans and assertion: “… non-English (often non-Western) fandoms are not peripheral to ‘mainstream’ fan culture. Rather they are part of the transcultural interplay of fandom as much as any other, separated only by barriers of language, distribution, and availability that have become eminently surmountable as fandoms have migrated online” (p. 105).
In conclusion, we hope to examine diverse forms of media fandom research in the Asian-pacific contexts (within but not limited to the thematic scope listed above), paying attention to Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, and broader Oceania.
Submission
Please send a 500-word abstract and your CV to the editor at tingting.hu_academic@hotmail.com, wufangwf@sjtu.edu.cn.
Abstract submission deadline: May 1, 2023
Submission of full proposal to the publisher: September 1, 2023
If the proposal is accepted, full chapters would be expected by December 2023.
References
Chen, L. (2018). Chinese Fans of Japanese and Korean Pop Culture. Routledge.
Chin, B. and Morimoto, L. H. (2013). “Towards a theory of transcultural fandom,” Participations, 10, pp. 92-108.
Click, M. A. and Scott, S. (2018). “Race and transcultural fandom: introduction,” The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, pp. 241-243.
Lam, C. and Raphael, J. Eds (2019). Aussie Fans: Uniquely Placed in Global Popular Culture. University of Iowa Press.
Wilson, R., and Dirlik, A. (1994). “Introduction: Asia/Pacific as space of cultural production,” boundary 2, 21(1), 1-14.
CFP: Inked Up Marked Out – An Exploration into Tattooing, Identity and Culture
December 6, 2022Inked Up, Marked Out – An Exploration into Tattooing, Identity and Culture
A collaborative event run by The Centre for the Study of the Body and Material Culture at Royal Holloway, University of London, The University of York and Royal Museums Greenwich
Date: Friday 12th May 2023 (timings tbc)
Location: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (in person) / Hybrid (via Zoom)
This one-day symposium is focused on bringing together academic researchers and other interested parties working on, or researching in, the area of tattoos, tattooing practice, tattooed communities and tattoos/wellbeing. It will offer insights on using tattooing as a means of exploring the themes of identity and self-expression through the use of mark making on the body. We invite papers, panels, provocations, creative interventions or stories that explore the theme of ‘tattoo’. Papers may include (but are definitely not limited to!) topics such as:
● The historical development of tattooing
● The use of tattoos as devices within literature
● Tattooing and branding within marginalised groups and within power relationships
● Representation of tattoos in media and popular culture
● The relationship between art/photography and tattooing
● Celebrity and tattooing
● Perspectives of gender, class and race and the relationship
● The visual language of tattoos
● Tattooing as work
● The material culture of tattooing
● Tattooing and fandom
● What it means to be tattooed
Papers providing an interdisciplinary perspective are highly encouraged, as are papers which explore different historical periods and geographical regions. We welcome both traditional and non-traditional conference paper formats, alongside submissions from academics (including postgraduate and early career researchers) and non-academics alike. We are also hoping to hold a public engagement event in the afternoon/evening, which offers the opportunity for more creative interventions into the topic theme.
For individual contributions, please send an abstract (approx. 200 words) and a short biographical note (approx. 100 words) to the organisers: inkedupmarkedout@gmail.com
Deadline for submissions is Tuesday 28th February 2023.
Please indicate whether you would prefer to present online or in person and if you would like to be considered for a travel bursary. We are hoping to be able to offer a limited number of travel bursaries to support attendance. If you would like to be considered for a travel bursary, please include a short 150-200 word statement including your career stage, how far you are travelling, if you have access to any other funding and why you would like to attend ‘Inked Up, Marked Out’. Priority will be given to those without access to any other funds.
For information or assistance please contact Sarah Weston at inkedupmarkedout@gmail.com
Call for Papers, Video Games: Time and Nostalgia
November 15, 202212 May 2023, one-day symposium run by @ExeterComms, Department of Communications, Drama and Film, University of Exeter
Organisers: Aditya Deshbandhu, Neil Ewen, Shannon Lawlor, and A.R.E. Taylor
About the conference:
This one-day in-person conference at University of Exeter’s Streatham Campus will be structured by two thematic strands. One will focus on ‘time’ and the other on ‘nostalgia’.
Time – Morning Session
Keynote: Professor Christopher Hanson, Syracuse University
Video games are an inherently interactive medium that offer players and researchers multiple avenues to explore time and temporality. These temporalities can unfold across multiple scales, from the narrative time of the game itself to the time that exists beyond game worlds. Video games demand time if they are to be completed or mastered and, similarly, players require time to reconfigure and make games their own. Video games have incorporated time-based mechanics and dynamics in myriad ways – some games, like MMORPGs, are effectively never ending, while others have their engagement durations extended through updates, DLCs or reward systems that incentivise player engagement or time spent in-game.
Time in games has been a key area for study in the field of video game studies and is a dimension that often unifies this very diverse domain. This panel hopes to initiate new conversations on time and temporality in video games by reflecting on how new developments in gaming culture (as well as new game and console releases) alter experiences of game time and temporality. Increasingly, games are emphasising temporality in their play mechanics, enabling players to manipulate narrative time, while the rising popularity of mobile gaming means that ‘game time’ increasingly moves beyond the temporal confines of the game itself. For example, game-accompanying platforms like companion apps have allowed game time to seep into the mundanity of everyday life and vice-versa. We welcome contributions that approach the theme of temporality and video games from a range of angles, such as (but not limited to):
- Grinding and ‘no lifing’ as temporal experiences
- Journeys of the collector, the quest for gathering in-game items, gear, and trophies
- Playing with permadeath
- Altering dimensions of time in the play experience to showcase mastery of the game or a willingness to win with increased complexities – speed runs and Nuzzlocke-like challenges
- Understandings of time and temporality through acts of leisure, labor and playbor
- Representations of time and temporality in video game narratives/play mechanics
- Lived experiences of game time
- Conceptions of time and temporalities in mobile and free-to-play games
- Game time beyond the screen
- The ‘always on’ and ‘live’ worlds of online games
- Game and console development and launch time (including ‘crunch time’ and launch/release anticipations)
Nostalgia – Afternoon Session
Keynote: Professor Debra Ramsay, University of Exeter
Nostalgia permeates gaming in various forms, from remakes of classic games to new games made to mimic the look and feel of early games (such as the use of 8bit aesthetics and music). Companies like Nintendo repeatedly revisit their core franchises (Mario, Legend of Zelda, Pokémon, etc.) which continue to attract new and returning players, while companies like Rockstar and Bethesda re-release their biggest titles on new consoles, such as Skyrim and Grand Theft Auto V, with great commercial success. The appeal of rediscovering the same games in new and ‘improved’ forms has resulted in a slew of remakes and reboots in gaming, while at the same time the rise of retro gaming reflects a desire to discover new stories in old formats, due to nostalgia for previous gaming experiences. The afternoon session of the conference will be dedicated to critically exploring and critiquing nostalgia and games in various ways, including but not limited to:
- Nostalgia’s role in intra-generational gaming
- Nostalgia and fandom
- Games and memory
- Nostalgia in games as comfort / pleasure / affect
- Nostalgia as regression
- The value of nostalgia in games
- Nostalgia and aesthetics
- Nostalgia and interactive storytelling
- Nostalgia and sound
We look forward to receiving proposals from established scholars, emerging career researchers, and postgraduate candidates who are engaging with video game studies within or across multiple disciplines.
This in-person event will take place on the University of Exeter’s Streatham Campus. Attendance is free.
Proposals for 20-minute presentations should include:
- Your name, email, and affiliation
- Proposed paper title
- Abstract (400 words max)
- Bio (100 words max)
Please send proposals to Aditya Deshbandhu and Shannon Lawlor by 20 January 2023: a.deshbandhu@exeter.ac.uk and shannonlawlor92@gmail.com
Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 5 February 2023.
Conference presentations will be considered for two edited volumes (Temporality in Video Game Studies and Nostalgia in Video Games) in the Routledge series Games and Contemporary Culture, edited by the symposium organisers.
Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, 2nd edition Call for Chapters on Transcultural Fandom
November 1, 2022Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, 2nd edition Call for Chapters on Transcultural Fandom
Work has begun on a second edition of The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, a 40+ chapter collection that provides reflection on and direction for the evolving field of Fan Studies edited by Suzanne Scott and Melissa Click. The project’s goal is to bring together an internationally and interdisciplinarily diverse group of established and emerging media fandom scholars to survey core concerns, evaluate the state of the field, and point to new directions of inquiry. The project will be organized into five main sections: Methods & Ethics, Fan Practices & Platforms, Identities, Transcultural Fandom, and Industry & Labor.
We are looking for new chapters for the collection’s section on Transcultural Fandom. In the Routledge Companion to Media Fandom’s first edition, the co-editors argued that “The absence of a robust dialogue in fan studies scholarship about race and transcultural fandom is one of the field’s most obvious deficiencies” (p. 241). Thus, we agree with Chin and Morimoto’s (2013) call for more work on transcultural fans and assertion that “… non-English (often non-Western) fandoms are not peripheral to ‘mainstream’ fan culture. Rather they are part of the transcultural interplay of fandom as much as any other, separated only by barriers of language, distribution and availability that have become eminently surmountable as fandoms have migrated online” (p. 105).
To continue to broaden our knowledge of the complex ways media fandom develops across cultures and national borders, we are seeking abstracts for the collection’s second edition section on Transcultural Fandom. We are particularly interested in media and fandoms that develop in or evolve from the Global South.
Submission Instructions:
Please submit a 500-word abstract and a CV by December 15, 2022 to the co-editors at click@gonzaga.edu and suzanne.scott@texas.edu. Please include both co-editors on your email submission.
Authors whose abstracts are selected will be notified by January 15, 2023 and asked to submit the first draft of their full (5000-word) chapter by August 1, 2023. Final chapter drafts will be due May 1, 2024.
References:
Chin, B. and Morimoto, L. H. (2013). “Towards a theory of transcultural fandom,” Participations, 10, pp. 92-108.
Click, M. A. and Scott, S. (2018). “Race and transcultural fandom: introduction,” The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, pp. 241-243.
CFP: Fandom After #MeToo/#BalanceTonPorc
January 24, 20221 July 2022, The University of Chicago, Paris
Keynote speakers:
Kristina Busse (University of South Alabama)
Alexis Lothian (University of Maryland)
In late 2017, in the wake of the widespread scandals surrounding American film producer Harvey Weinstein, the hashtag #MeToo started trending on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Using this hashtag, primarily (though not exclusively) female victims of sexual harassment and sexual assault shared their experiences and decried the ubiquity of these experiences even in a supposedly modern and egalitarian world.
Although the #MeToo hashtag has since been used to decry experiences of sexual violence in any context, the origins of the movement in the Weinstein scandal, and the subsequent sharing of the hashtag by various well-known actors, has ensured a continued focus of the movement on the entertainment industry. In the wake of the Weinstein scandal, actors/comedians such as Louis CK and Jeffrey Tambor also found themselves under public scrutiny in this context, with Tambor, for example, being fired from the Amazon Prime Video series Transparent in February 2018.
Similar movements also developed in other national contexts, such as France, where the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal in 2011 prompted increased public discourse on sexual harassment and assault, and where the hashtag #BalanceTonPorc started trending at the time of the Weinstein scandal, explicitly inviting women to name and shame their harassers and abusers. The movement quickly gathered steam in France, but also received criticism, for example in a public letter in January 2018, which was signed by over 100 French women in entertainment and which denounced the movement as going too far and punishing core French values such as chivalry. The letter itself was heavily criticised, as well, with particular signatories issuing apologies a week later.
Given this particular focus on the entertainment industry, it is not surprising that the global #MeToo movement has affected audiences and fans of media forms, including film, TV, music, video games, and more. Since fans often develop affective, parasocial relationships with the objects of their fandom–including the producers of particular content, actors, characters, etc–the accusations and scandals emerging in the wake of #MeToo have necessarily provoked discussion and even conflict within fan communities, have affected the ways in which fans relate to their fandoms, and have impacted even the “forms of cultural production” (Jenkins 2013, 1) these fans have proceeded to produce.
In recent years, these effects have not been limited to accusations of sexual violence within the context of #MeToo movement; indeed, this movement has become part of a wider trend toward holding popular entertainment figures accountable for particular views considered morally unacceptable or damaging. An example of this is, for example, Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling, who has come under scrutiny since late 2019 for her purported views on civil rights for transgender people; these views have impacted the Harry Potter fandom in various ways, with particularly LGBTQ fans vowing to cease purchasing licensed Harry Potter products, alongside other reactions of a similar nature (Yehl 2021).
While fan studies as an academic discipline has existed since the early 1990s and has since both proliferated and become increasingly mainstream in the anglophone world (Scott and Click 2018, 1) and in France (Bourdaa 2015), no academic work or event has yet confronted the important question of the impact of #MeToo, #BalanceTonPorc and their offshoots on fan communities and practices. This conference, then, aims to bring together international scholars interested in this issue. Potential topics for discussion may include, but are not limited to:
- Social media discussions and arguments between fans concerning revelations or accusations of celebrity sexual/sexist violence.
- Empirical research on fans’ reactions to such revelations/accusations.
- Accusations of sexual/sexist violence within fan communities.
- Representations of, or reactions to, #MeToo/#BalanceTonPorc in fan works (fan art, fanfiction, fan vids…).
- Representations of the #MeToo movement in media works (e.g. The Morning Show, Promising Young Woman, Bombshell, The Loudest Voice) and fan reactions to them.
- Attempts by celebrities accused of sexual or gender-based violence to appease their fans.
- Posthumous reconsiderations of specific celebrities in the #MeToo/#BalanceTonPorc era.
- Reconsiderations of past works (including characters, themes, stories…) in the #MeToo/#BalanceTonPorc era.
- The position of the “acafan” (Jenkins 2011) when the object of their research is accused of sexual or gender-based violence.
- Writing and rewriting film and media history in the #MeToo/#BalanceTonPorc era.
- Teaching film and media studies in the #MeToo/#BalanceTonPorc era.
We invite abstracts of no more than 300 words for 20-minute papers, to be sent to eve.bennett@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr and l.lanckman@herts.ac.uk by 18 March 2022.
Please also indicate if you would like to present your paper face-to-face (in Paris) or remotely. We hope that the Covid-19 situation will enable us to offer both options.
Symposium attendance will be free of charge.
The Fan Studies Network 