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CFP: 5th International Celebrity Studies Conference: Celebrity Crises and Conflicts

October 24, 2023

July 1-3, 2024

University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam

Routledge, Celebrity Studies Journal, and the University of Amsterdam are pleased to announce the fifth Celebrity Studies conference. The conference will take place in Amsterdam, July 1st to 3rd.

The 5th International Celebrity Studies Conference will be themed ‘Celebrity Crises and Conflicts’. This subject will run through our plenaries and form a strand running throughout the conference.

Fame is fickle, as the saying goes, but in current times, celebrity appears to be more in crisis than ever. The #MeToo movement has brought to light disturbing facts about the reality behind the celebrity façade. The conspicuous consumption associated with stardom is attracting increasing criticisms in an era of pandemic lockdown, austerity, and environmental crisis.  Developments in artificial intelligence are feeding an existential crisis of celebrity, too: is stardom now becoming a post-human phenomenon? Additionally, geopolitical conflicts, as well as polarizing debates on class, race and gender differences, have put stars under increased political pressures, and have resulted in vicious attacks on – and by – celebrities. Finally, more and more public figures are opening up about their mental health crises, raising awareness about the negative effects of fame – burn-out, depression, anxiety, the impact of hate speech, fat-shaming, or performance pressure.

Together, these developments raise urgent questions about the current and past status of celebrity, such as: what do celebrity crises and conflicts tell us about the social, political, economic, and cultural dimensions of stardom? What can we learn about current, as well as historical, celebrity crises and conflicts? What impacts do they have on the study of celebrity as an academic endeavor?

The conference welcomes submissions from a broad range of disciplines that generate new ways of thinking and understanding celebrity: from film, television, literary, digital media, (art) history and theatre studies through to psychology, sociology, politics, etc.

Keynote speakers will soon be announced on https://celebritystudiesconference.com/

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

Contemporary celebrity crises and conflicts / historical celebrity crises and conflicts / stardom and technological developments / virtual stardom / celebrity feuds / stardom and mental health / political conflicts and celebrity / economic conflicts and celebrity / celebrity divorces and break-ups / attacks on celebrities / legal conflicts and stardom / celebrity scandals / celebrity and intersecting oppressions / stardom and sexism / disgraced celebrities / conflicted celebrity / downsides of stardom / ‘cancel culture’ and celebrity / celebrity and the ‘cultural wars’ / celebrity and generationality/inter-generational conflict / celebrity deep fakes / celebrity and gamification / celebrity brand management / celebrity and platformisation / fan conflicts and celebrity / fan wars / fandom and celebrity conflict / celebrity and the pandemic / stars on lockdown / celebrity and industrial relations / celebrity and unions / stardom and synthetic media / celebrity and political crises / celebrity and climate crises / celebrity and war / celebrity and anti-fans / toxic fandom / destabilizing definition of celebrity / excessive media interest / social impact of political celebrities / weaponized celebrity / the conference team is open to other topics and themes, please get in touch if you have questions about potential approaches or topics.

The conference committee invites proposals for :

·         Individual 20-minute papers:

o   350 word abstract + 50-word biography in a single Word document

·         Pre-constituted panels comprising 3 x 20 minute papers:

o   150-word overview + 3 x 350-word abstracts + 3 x 50-word bios + name of lead contact and panel chair in a single Word document

·         Masterclasses for Early Career Researchers (ERC) (advanced PhDs or early-stage postdocs): sessions, moderated by members of the conference organization team, will include informal discussion on work provided by the ERC and sharing of ideas in a safe and constructive environment; feedback will be offered from keynote speakers and relevant senior academics:

o   Short outline of work (PhD thesis, chapter, project…) in progress: 150-350 words + 50-word biography in a single Word document. 

Please abide by the maximum word limits.

Stipends will be awarded to most promising abstract and best conference presentation by postgraduate students. Please indicate on your abstract if you wish to be considered for these.

A special issue of the best papers from the conference will be published in Celebrity Studies Journal in 2026

Deadline for all proposals: December 8th, 2023.

Successful abstracts will be notified by: December 22nd, 2023.

Enquiries/abstracts to: celebritystudies@gmail.com

More information (on conference fees etc.): https://celebritystudiesconference.com/

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CFP: ICA 2024 Preconference Reviving Qualitative Audience Research for the Streaming Era

October 19, 2023


ICA 2024 • 20-24 June 2024 • Gold Coast, Australia
International Communication Association (ICA)

Preconference
Reviving Qualitative Audience Research for the Streaming Era
Wednesday, 19 June 2024

OFF-SITE: Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane (Kelvin Grove campus)

Division Affiliation: Popular Media & Culture, Media Industry Studies



Call for Papers
This full-day preconference will provide a space for those studying audiences through interviews, focus groups, ethnography, and other human-based qualitative approaches to share both findings and methodological tips and interrogations. Excited advertising rhetoric tells us that everything has changed, and certainly at industrial and textual levels, much has already been done and said to chart the shifting landscape. But we know little of how viewers, readers, and listeners that are spread across more content and more forms of media than ever before are experiencing these changes. Media content now travels more freely across national borders, remains relevant as long as it is accessible (which is far longer than in the past), and legacy media providers persist and adapt to an increasingly multifaceted field of creators and content. How do audiences use media now that they have greater choice and control? Are the streaming audiences of 2024 comparable to their earlier equivalents? Or, rather, how are they comparable, and how are they not?

Qualitative, audience research blossomed in the eighties, with numerous projects exploring the gendered, racialized, national, and class politics of viewing, the sociocultural uses of television and other media, and hence the place of media consumption in everyday life. Though audience studies has survived, and even thrived, since then in the service of examining fans, diasporas, and several other specific communities, we hope that this preconference will contribute to another wave of broad exploration of varying modes of consumption, of the politics of viewing, listening, and using, and the uses of media of all kinds.

We invite scholars working on any medium (television, music, film, streaming, games, podcasts, print; entertainment or news; social or legacy media) and/or with any audience, who are interested in discussing the state of audience research and in designing its future. Papers (20 minutes max.) may focus more on findings, on methods (especially methodological innovations), or consider both. Work in progress can also be presented (please indicate in your abstract).

Please submit a title and 400-word abstract about the work you will present and its level of completion. Submit to Jonathan Gray at jagray3@wisc.edu no later than 1 December 2023; please title your email “ICA preconference submission.” Potential submitters are welcome to contact the conference convenors (via the same email) to discuss ideas in advance. Notifications of acceptance will be circulated prior to release of the ICA schedule (ie, no later than 10 January 2024).

(Note that attendance at the ICA main conference in the Gold Coast from June 20-24 is not required to attend this preconference. For those who are attending the main conference, though, Brisbane is just under 2h away from the Gold Coast by train, with plenty of trains running daily. International visitors will likely find it more convenient to fly directly into Brisbane rather than the Gold Coast, since the latter requires transfer from elsewhere in Australia.)

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CFP: Media Values

October 19, 2023

The Velvet Light Trap, Issue 95 (to be published Spring 2025)

Media industries utilize a number of different strategies to assign value to their commodities. Box office receipts have long been a benchmark of success for theatrical film releases, despite proliferating ancillary revenue streams. Audience ratings determined advertising dollars as the dominant form of evaluation in linear commercial television. High engagement metrics on social media often translates to increased bargaining power of influencers, actors, and writers alike. Yet, these processes of valuation are in a constant state of flux dependent upon variables such as technological innovation, economic conditions, and cultural climates.

The economic and cultural value of media is, therefore, far more complex than formulas of dollar signs and industry metrics. Where and how institutions, organizations, and intermediaries assign value reflects ideological biases often along the faultlines of race, gender, and class. Practices like rewatching, fansubbing, fan fiction writing, and collecting all express personal value as well as create economic value for media firms. The politics of certain media objects and forms demonstrate the contested terrain of social and ethical values amidst anxieties of industrial transition and technological innovation.

Media industries themselves are objects of evaluation—which has become clear with recent shifts in the criteria upon which financial organizations value media firms and platforms. Industry-wide speculation regarding the return on investment for streaming has proven to beunsuccessful for studio and network executives and harmful for creatives. Tech and internet companies constantly modulate the terms and interfaces of social media platforms that provide users with valuable promotion and networking. Concepts like brand recognition and brand identity have symbolic weight in decisions of corporate restructuring, yet do not always translate to profit if undercut by poor distribution or content management strategies. Of course, these trends are merely the latest manifestations of the ongoing and unstable processes by which value changes over time. Institutions and intermediaries like art house cinemas, film and television festivals, archives, professional organizations, and the academy all—to varying degrees—influence how valuable a media commodity or company is at different moments in its (potentially endless) lifetime.

This issue of The Velvet Light Trap will explore the varied relations between media and value. We welcome pieces about all media forms and industries, as well as submissions that look beyond these toward audiences, stars, technologies, etc. We seek a range of methodological and theoretical approaches encompassing—but not limited to—historiographic, textual, political economic, and critical-cultural treatments of evolving valuation practices in contemporary and historical contexts across production, distribution, exhibition, reception, and regulatory processes. We look forward to submissions which address any of the following topics including but not limited to:

● Studies of formal and informal circulation patterns and their impacts on value creation and/or destruction

● Ownership in the mediaindustries and ownership of media commodities

● The evolving marketplace for content libraries

● The continuing value of rights licensing in live broadcasting and streaming media

● Archiving and preservation practices and priorities

● The collection of physical media formats and material value in the digital era

● The relationship between financialization and the media industries

● Emerging cultural intermediaries like content aggregators

● The use of (or troubling the use of) identity politics in the valuation of texts

● The role of social media and viral marketing in the creation of anticipation or controversy

● Explorations of geocultural capital and the mechanisms by which different nations, regions, and cities accumulate and exchange it

● The role of creative labor in the production of value

● Therepresentation of national, religious, and/or political values in media texts and industries

● The role of ancillary industries and markets in the construction of value

● Academic patterns of value in relationship to certain media forms and industries

Open Call

In addition to accepting submissions that relate to the above theme, The Velvet Light Trap will accept general submissions broadly related to the journal’s focus on critical, theoretical, and historical approaches to film and media studies. We hope that scholars inspired by the work published in our themed issues, past and present, will especially consider submitting their work.

Submission Guidelines

Submissions should be between 6,000 and 7,500 words, formatted in Chicago Style (notes-bibliography). Please submit an electronic copy of the paper, along with a separate one-page abstract, both saved as Microsoft Word files. Remove any identifying information so that the submission is suitable for anonymous review. Quotations not in English should be accompanied by translations. Send electronic manuscripts and/or any questions to vltcfp@gmail.com by January 28th, 2024.

About the Journal

The Velvet Light Trap is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal of film, television, and new media. The journal draws on a variety of theoretical and historiographical approaches from the humanities and social sciences and welcomes any effort that will help foster the ongoing processes of evaluation and negotiation in media history and criticism. Graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Texas at Austin coordinate issues in alternation, and each issue is devoted to a particular theme. VLT’s Editorial Advisory Board includes such notable scholars as Manuel Avilés-Santiago, Andre Brock, Dolores Inés Casillas, Norma Coates, Brian Fauteux, Aniko Imre, Lori Morimoto, Ruben Ramírez-Sànchez, Debra Ramsey, and Alyx Vesey. TVLT’s graduate student editors are assisted by their local faculty advisors: Mary Beltrán, Ben Brewster, Jonathan Gray, Michele Hilmes (emeritus), Lea Jacobs, Derek Johnson, Shanti Kumar, Charles Ramírez Berg, ThomasSchatz (emeritus), and Janet Staiger (emeritus).

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CFP: Routledge Companion to Fan Video & Digital Authorship

September 29, 2023


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

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

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

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 50th Anniversary of The Princess Bride

May 9, 2023

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

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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CFP: Audience Conference

April 2, 2023

Call 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

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