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Call for Papers, Video Games: Time and Nostalgia

November 15, 2022

12 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.

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Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, 2nd edition Call for Chapters on Transcultural Fandom

November 1, 2022

Routledge 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.

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CFP: Fandom After #MeToo/#BalanceTonPorc

January 24, 2022

 1 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. 

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CFP: Pikachu’s Transmedia Adventures: The Continuing Adaptability of the Pokemon Franchise

June 8, 2021

In 2021, the Pokemon franchise celebrates the 25th anniversary of its debut in Japan and the fifth anniversary of its popular worldwide AR cellphone game Pokemon Go. In fact, Pokemon is arguably experiencing something of a resurgence and renaissance within the current cultural moment. When a pop-up Pokemon Centre store was opened in London in 2018 to mark the release of Sword and Shield, queues for entering the retail space frequently had to be closed due to demand whilst product lines regularly sold out on a daily basis. In 2019, when the long-running cartoon’s main character Ash Ketchum finally won a Pokemon tournament, major news sites humorously deemed this victory a newsworthy event (Bissett 2019). More recently, a revival in Pokemon card collecting has left retail shelves bare and scalpers running rampant whilst mint-condition ‘graded’ cards have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction (Koebler 2021). Meanwhile, the games themselves continue to be adapted to Nintendo’s console platforms, with the Nintendo Switch releasing both remakes of previously popular titles (Pokemon Let’s Go! Pikachu and Let’s Go! Eevee, Pokemon Snap) as well as new titles exploring hitherto unknown regions (Pokemon Sword and Shield). Much more than a franchise intended to commercially target and exploit children, the Pokemon franchise represents an enduringly popular intellectual property that continues to attract interest across generations. 

Despite this, in-depth and continuous academic study of this hugely popular intellectual property has been infrequent at best. In fact, the last time that a dedicated collection of essays exploring the franchise in a holistic manner was published was in 2004, with many of the contributors positioning the property as a ‘fad’ whose cycle of popularity was apparently at its end (see Tobin 2004; N.B. the augmented reality game Pokemon Go (Niantic 2016- ) has bucked this trend by generating considerable academic attention – see Kulak, Purzycki, Henthorn and Vie 2019; Saker and Evans 2021). Where Pokemon has attracted infrequent academic discussion, this has occurred in the context of assessing how wider cultural flows from Japan to the West have impacted on children’s media (Allison 2006; O’Melia 2020). What is absent, then, is a volume that takes the Pokemon franchise on its own terms and which situates the property within a much-changed media environment. Thus, a study is needed which considers Pokemon in terms of multiple contemporary debates within media and cultural studies. These include – but are no way limited to – cultural, technological, and media convergence (Jenkins 2006), discourses of transmediality and media mix (Steinberg 2012; Williams 2020), paratextuality (Gray 2010), licensing and/or (transgenerational) media industries studies (Santo 2015; Johnson 2019), material culture (Geraghty 2014; Bainbridge 2017) and fan cultures (Scott 2019; Stanfill 2019). Whether approached as a transmedia franchise, corporate intellectual property, system offering ludic possibilities, fan community, or otherwise, academic scholarship should better consider how the Pokemon franchise has engaged with, adapted to, and challenged the contours of the ever-evolving transmedia environment.

This call for papers seeks abstracts of 300-500 words for chapters of approx. 6000 words that explore topics including (but not are limited to):

  • The Industrial development of The Pokemon Company and its corporate relations with Nintendo and other licensed partners.
  • Pokemon and the historical development of media industries studies.
  • The evolution of Pokemon: The Card Game and its relationship to industrial contexts.
  • The evolution of the Pokemon computer games (e.g. games studies perspectives; remediation relating to Let’s Go!, Snap, etc.)
  • Pokemon and/as character licensing.
  • Pokemon and transmedia storytelling and/as transmedia text.
  • Pokemon, transmedia tourismand the Experience Economy (e.g. the Pokemon Cafe; the annual Pikachu Parade).
  • Pokemon Go and developments in augmented reality experiences and/or the gamification of space.
  • Detective Pikachu and Pokemon’s other cinematic adaptations.
  • Pokemon’s historical developments as anime.
  • Pokemon’s historical developmentsas manga
  • Pokemon and/as fan fashion (e.g. high-fashion licensees, jewelry, make-up).
  • Pokemon and/as paratextual theory.
  • Interventions concerning Pokemon and identity politics (e.g. feminism, critical race theory, queer theory).
  • Pokemon and/as the global expansion of kawaii/cute culture.
  • Thematic analyses of the Pokemon franchise (e.g. its ties with environmentalism).
  • Pokemon’s links to Japanese ‘soft power’.
  • Fan practices and transformative works related to the Pokemon franchise across multiple forms and platforms.
  • Pokemon and/as children’s culture.

We are especially interested in soliciting chapters featuring non-Western perspectives as well as ones engaging with historically marginalised or underrepresented groups. 

We hope to include work from both established and emerging scholars; junior scholars & graduate students are encouraged to apply.

Please email abstracts of 300-500 words with an accompanying Author Bio of approx. 150 words to Ross Garner (GarnerRP1@Cardiff.ac.uk) and EJ Nielsen (ejnielsen.ephemera@gmail.com) by 27 August, 2021.

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CFP: Participatory Culture Wars: Controversy, Conflict and Complicity in Fandom 

May 7, 2021

***Call for papers and contributions for an edited collection*** 

Participatory Culture Wars: Controversy, Conflict and Complicity in Fandom 

Edited by Dr Simone Driessen, Bethan Jones, Dr Benjamin Litherland. 

It has become increasingly clear that fandoms and participatory culture are sites of controversy, conflict and even complicity, complicating earlier assessments that sought to celebrate creativity, collegiality, and community. As we continue to make sense of the consequences of web 2.0, the study of fans – the affective bonds, identities, and productive cultures of a highly mediated and networked society – is vital in understanding our current moment, whether expressed in debates about “cancel culture” or ongoing “culture wars”. Fans have had to rethink and reassess their relationships to fan objects, consider their role in reproducing global systems of inequality, and reflect on the meaning of participation in an era that is marked by both moral ambivalence and political earnestness.  

Implicitly and explicitly, fannish practices are involved in a variety of key social, political, and cultural issues across the globe. They can be seen in politics, ranging from QAnon’s role in the storming of the US Capitol building, conspiracy theories relating to the covid pandemic, and the continued expansion of the global reactionary and populist right, from Britain to India to Brazil. They can be seen in new cultural terrains produced by networked movements like #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, #OscarsSoWhite, and the accompanying activism and responses as fans come to terms with the crimes, misdemeanors, and disagreements of former faves, like Xiao Zhan, Joss Whedon, or JK Rowling. They are expressed in the strategies and tactics of inter- and intra-fandom conflicts, whether Meghan Markle and the Royal Family or some Chinese fan responses to BTS talking about the Korean war. And, pressingly, fan tourism, collector culture, and the energy use of digital culture all contribute to the ongoing climate crisis.  

Scholars of participatory culture can play a key role in assessing many and more of these issues, but they will also have significant and ongoing impact on the way we conceptualize fans, fandoms, and participatory culture. This work builds on developing themes in the field. Ongoing scholarship about racism, sexism, and homophobia in prominent fan spaces is vital (Massanari, 2017; Pande, 2020; Scott, 2019), and Jonathan Gray’s conception of anti-fandom (2003; 2005; 2007) is an important moment in indicating the darker underbelly of fan cultures. Yet scholarship on QAnon and Trump fandom (Reinhardt, forthcoming; Miller, 2020), cancel and commenting culture (Clark, 2020; Ng, 2020; Barnes, 2018), reactionary fandom (Stanfill, 2020), ethical consumption (Wood, Litherland & Reed, 2020; Tyler, 2021) and serial killer fandom (Nacos, 2015; Rico, 2015) pose important questions which cannot be answered simply by reference to anti- or toxic fandom.  

This collection brings together some of these authors and perspectives while developing and extending these debates. We are keen to broaden the scope of the issue so that studies of fans of film and television are included alongside studies of music, literary, theatre, sports and politics. And we are especially eager to include case studies beyond the anglophone and global north. We are also interested in the practices of organizations in fan-adjacent areas such as marketing, production, branding and influencer culture. We welcome traditional essays and research papers and non-traditional formats, such as roundtables, interviews, and think-pieces, from people inside and outside of the academy. Topics might include but are not limited to: 

·        Conspiracy theories and/as fandom. 

·        ‘Culture wars’, intra- and inter-fan conflicts, and other broader disagreements or discontent about the meaning and values of popular cultural texts.  

·        The consequences of anti-fandom and toxic fandom. 

·        Expressions and practices of ethical consumption, whether via “cancel culture”, commodity activism or similar. 

·        The moral economies of fandom, and their consequences for the media and cultural industries. 

·        The ethical implications of participation, whether through fan activism, dark fandom or other. 

·        The environmental impact of fandom, from NFTs to fan tourism. 

 
Please send an abstract of 300 words, along with a short author biography of 150 words to participatoryculturewars@gmail.com by 31 July 2021. Please also address any queries to this email address. 

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CFP: Global TV Horror 

October 31, 2017

Global TV Horror – edited collection call for abstracts ed. Stacey Abbott and Lorna Jowett
When Stacey Abbott and Lorna Jowett hatched the idea for a book on TV Horror in the early 2000s, they had only a sense that by the time the book was published in 2012 there would be many more horror TV series to watch, write about, and discuss. In this follow up to TV Horror, the first full-length examination of horror on television, they take aim at global TV horror.

Television audiences and horror fans across the world may be most familiar with the latest big brands in TV horror such as The Walking Dead (US, 2010-), yet horror has always had a truly international reach. From anthology series to children’s drama, Belphegor [Phantom of the Louvre] (France, 1965), Historias para no dormir [Stories to Keep You Awake] (Spain, 1966–82), Children of the Stones (UK, 1977), Riget [The Kingdom] (Denmark, 1994-1997) and Goosebumps (Canada, 1995-98) terrified viewers, imprinted themselves on memories, and influenced the contemporary boom in horror on TV. With the expansion of TV channels, view on demand and streaming services, more and more content is needed, and niche productions with distinctive characteristics are more welcome than ever. The last five years have given us the moody and atmospheric Les Revenants [The Returned] (France, 2012-), adaptations of novel series like Bitten (Canada, 2014-16), contemporary reimaginings of queer horror classics in web series Carmilla (Canada, 2014), cross-genre Scandi series Fortitude (UK, 2015-) and Jordskott (Sweden, 2015-), films remade as TV, such as Wolf Creek (Australia, 2016-), original Amazon series like Tokyo Vampire Hotel (Japan, 2017-), one-off miniseries such as Au-delà des Murs [Beyond The Walls] (France/ Belgium, 2016), and American Netflix animated series Castlevania (US, 2017-) based on a series of Japanese video games. Horror on television shows no signs of abating, and more and more global productions are reaching audiences as national boundaries are eroded by digital technologies.

We seek proposals that address the full range and scope of ‘horror’ and ‘television’ in a global context, historical and contemporary. Chapters may engage with, though are not restricted to, the areas below.

• Global production and co-production, commissioning

• Distribution and global circulation via import/ export or illegal downloading

• Platforms and delivery: VoD, streaming, inter/national branding

• Translation, subbing, and dubbing

• Adaptations and remakes

• Forms and formats: serial drama, webisodes, webseries, miniseries, TV movies, long and short forms, non-fiction horror TV

• Aesthetics: visual and aural style, FX and make up; music and soundscapes

• Crossing over: international stars and creators

• Consumption and reception: global audiences and fandoms

• Cultural and national horrors: reimagining horror tropes in inter/national markets

• Inter/national representations and identities

• Horror v. terror

• Genre splicing and global TV trends

• Children’s international horror television

• Global transmedia horror: paratexts, overflow, narrative extensions

Proposals of 300 words, along with a short biography, should be submitted to both editors (s.abbott@roehampton.ac.uk and lorna.jowett@northampton.ac.uk) by 28 February 2018.

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CFP: The Future of Fandom 

August 3, 2017

Transformative Works and Cultures CFP: The Future of Fandom (1/15/18; 9/15/18)


This special 10th anniversary issue of Transformative Works and Cultures seeks to explore the future of fandom while looking back to its past. How might scholarship on fandom’s past and present invite speculation about its future? And what might the
possible futures invoked by technological, ecological, and political discourses mean for fandom’s communities and practices? Science fiction in particular–the field whose strategies spawned fandom, and the genre in which much fan activity occurs–has used
imagined futures to shed new light on the present and the past. In turn, studying where we are and where we have been allows us to imagine where we may be heading.

We invite essays that seek to historicize and contextualize fans, fan works, and fandoms across past, present, and future. Scholarship on fandom’s futures can open connections between technology and interfaces, fannish discussions and trends, fictions of imagined
futures, and cultural and political changes in order to illustrate how fandoms may be understood in their historical contexts and cultural interactions.

This issue will feature a special section, “Predictions,” that will allow fans and academics to imagine fannish futures. We particularly invite personal and creative responses, including essays from the future, documenting trends that haven’t yet come to be.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:
 * How have interfaces affected fannish communities and production, and how may these change in the future?
 * How do demographic shifts in fandom and new voices change fan works and communities? How have new generations of fans changed fandom?
 * How have the intersection and interactions between industry and audiences changed, and how may they change in the future?
 * How do fannish futures look from different global locations, and what will transnational landscapes of fandom look like in the future?
 * How is the fannish future gendered and racialized? How have fans created or imagined different futures for queerness, transness, disability?
 * How have fandoms engaged with Afrofuturism, Chicanafuturism, Indigenous futurism, and other literary, cultural, and social movements challenging the whiteness of the imagined future?
 * How has the commercialization of fan works changed over time, and how will it play out in the future legally, economically, or socially? Is there still a clear distinction between fan and pro writers?
 * How have social and cultural changes affect the intersections between politics and fandom? How do these changes connect to fannish social activism?
 * What changes in the source material and media, in fannish social organization, platforms, and technology, in fannish access, culture, and demographics do we see emerging as we look ahead?
 * How does the increasing mainstreaming of fannish behavior affect fannish identities and behaviors? How does it alter mainstream audiences’ engagement with fannish subcultures and media industries.
 * What will fandom be 10 years from now, or 20? Are there some things that never change, that make us what we are––and if so, what?

Submission guidelines: Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC,
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/) is an international peer-reviewed online Gold Open Access publication of the nonprofit Organization for Transformative Works copyrighted under a Creative Commons License. TWC aims to provide a publishing outlet that
welcomes fan-related topics and to promote dialogue between the academic community and the fan community. TWC accommodates academic articles of varying scope as well as other forms that embrace the technical possibilities of the Web and test the limits of
the genre of academic writing.

    Theory: Conceptual essays. Peer review, 6,000–8,000 words.
    Praxis: Case study essays. Peer review, 5,000–7,000 words.
    Symposium: Short commentary. Editorial review, 1,500–2,500 words.

Contact: Please visit TWC’s Web site (http://journal.transformativeworks.org/) for complete submission guidelines, or e-mail the TWC Editor (editor@transformativeworks.org).

Due date: January 15, 2018, for estimated September 15, 2018 publication.

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CFP: Transmedia Earth Conference 

January 31, 2017

​

TRANSMEDIA EARTH CONFERENCE: 

GLOBAL CONVERGENCE CULTURES

Hosted by EAFIT University, Medellín, Colombia

In Association with Bath Spa University, UK,

Bournemouth University, UK &
University of Vic – Central University of Catalonia, Spain

3-Day International Conference: 11th – 13th October 2017

http://the-transmedia-earth-conference.webflow.io

Confirmed Speakers:
Carlos A. Scolari, Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Dan Hassler-Forest, Utrecht University
Matthew Freeman, Bath Spa University

William Proctor, Bournemouth University

In an age where the distribution and sharing of content across multiple platforms is increasingly accessible – and the attention span of audiences even more divided as a result – transmediality has become a key strategy for engaging audiences across media.
Much has been written about the role of transmediality in a Hollywood context, with scholars defining forms of transmedia intertextuality (Kinder 1991), transmedia storytelling (Jenkins 2006; Evans 2011) and transmedia storyworlds (Scolari 2009; Wolf 2012),
with others exploring the related roles of transmedia fans (Hills 2015; Booth 2016) and models of transmedia brand advertising (Tenderich 2015; Freeman 2016). And yet different countries, cultures and peoples around the globe are now beginning to define increasing
uses for transmediality, adapting this phenomenon in unique ways to different cultures, communities, businesses and industries – be it in sectors of film, television, publishing, journalism, leisure, radio and beyond, emerging in cultural arenas as diverse
as creative writing, museums, apps, virtual reality, activism and education.

With this in mind, the Transmedia Earth Conference aims to internationalise both the study and the practice of transmediality by providing a global platform for showcasing and
exploring the many manifestations of contemporary and historical transmediality around the world. The conference benefits from a network of international partner institutions, and is a collaboration between the Media
Convergence Research Centre at Bath Spa University, the Department of Social Communication at EAFIT University, the Centre
for the Study of Journalism, Culture and Community at Bournemouth University, and the Konekto
Research Group at the University of Vic – Central University of Catalonia.
The inaugural conference – hosted by EAFIT University in Colombia – seeks to map emerging understandings of transmediality and global convergence cultures. We are interested in hearing from both scholars and practitioners about research that examines emerging
contexts and meanings of transmediality as well as from interested parties about cutting-edge social and technological shifts related to media convergences. We invite proposals for formal presentations and performative, digital or video based works. Proposal
topics may address, but are not limited to:

  • Transmedia storytelling and writing
  • Transmedia branding and marketing
  • Transmedia distribution and activism
  • Transmedia apps and online games
  • Transmedia web series and mobile devices
  • Transmedia audiences and fandom
  • Transmedia politics and education
  • Transmedia heritage and leisure spaces
  • Transmedia documentary and non-fiction
  • Transmediality as a transnational phenomenon

Please send proposals (300 words) along with a short biography to the conference coordinators: Matthew Freeman (m.freeman@bathspa.ac.uk), William Proctor (bproctor@bournemouth.ac.uk),
Mauricio Vásquez (mvasqu23@eafit.edu.co) and Camilo Andrés Tamayo Gómez (ctamay12@eafit.edu.co) by no later than 31 March 2017.

We are also hosting an ‘Adaptive Storyworld Challenge‘ in partnership with Conducttr, the world’s favourite transmedia storytelling engine for the creation of adaptive, interactive, multi-channel
experiences. We are looking for people that understand how to build storyworlds, and we invite submissions for an altered reality storyworld experience that is delivered to audiences across multiple media platforms. In return, Conducttr will award three winners
with a 1-year Conducttr Indie subscription, 2 hours mentorship on your project via Skype, and the projects showcased in Conducttr’s transmedia Newsletter. Full competition details and submission instructions for Conducttr’s Adaptive Storyworld Challenge can
be found here. You have until 30 September 2017 to complete your work and submit your presentation for consideration. Winners will be announced
at the Transmedia Earth Conference.
The spoken languages for the conference will be English and Spanish, with translation facilities provided.

Full conference website: http://the-transmedia-earth-conference.webflow.io/ 

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The Fan Studies Network Conference 2016

December 9, 2015

THE FAN STUDIES NETWORK CONFERENCE 2016

25-26th June 2016
University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

FSN2016

Keynote Speaker:
Professor Henry Jenkins (University of Southern California, USA).

The fourth annual Fan Studies Network Conference is returning to the University of East Anglia for a two-day programme in June 2016. The conference will continue FSN’s proud tradition of offering an enthusiastic space for interdisciplinary researchers at all levels to connect, share resources, and further develop their research ideas. In addition to panel presentations, the two days will feature social events, speed geeking, and workshop discussions.

We are delighted to welcome Professor Henry Jenkins as the keynote speaker for FSN2016. Jenkins’ work has proved extremely influential in the field: He is the author/editor of thirteen books on various aspects of media and popular culture, including Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide; Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture, and one of the key texts of the first wave of fan studies, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture.

Registration is open here:
http://store.uea.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=2&deptid=9&catid=4&prodid=41

And the conference programme can be found here:

FSN 2016 draft Programme v2

Please send any enquires about the conference to: fsnconference@gmail.com

You can join the discussion about the event on Twitter using #FSN2016, or visit http://www.fanstudies.org.

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CFP: Transmediality in Modern Popular Culture, Poland, 18-20 June 2015

January 29, 2015

Transmediality in Modern Popular Culture – Call for Submissions

The 9th Annual Conference of NECS – European Network of Cinema and Media Studies (www.necs.org) will take place in Łódź (Poland) on 18-20 June 2015. In reference to one of the conference’s sub-themes “The archive of popular culture” a workshop on the history of transmediality in modern popular culture will be held. It will focus on the exploration of cross-media business synergies in the entertainment industry and on the history of media convergence in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century popular culture.

The workshop will consist of two parts:

· 17 June: a preconference with a keynote lecture (Dr. Matthew Freeman, Birmingham City University) and a seminar

· 18-20 June: a set of dedicated panels during the NECS conference

SCOPE
Media convergence is one of the widely debated concepts in contemporary media research. As conceptualised by Henry Jenkins, convergence manifests itself i.e. in transmedia storytelling (Jenkins, 2006: 334). The investigation of transmediality, however, most often concentrates on contemporary networked digital media. As concerns the historical research of popular culture, transmediality is limitedly explored (however not entirely unexamined). Yet that kind of cross-textual practices can be traced as early as the modern culture industry came into existence. For example, according to Matthew Freeman, at the beginning of the 20th century in the USA we can find examples of “cross-textual self-promotion and cross-media branding (…), grounded in such cultural factors as turn-of-the-century immigration, new forms of mass media – such as, most notably, newspapers, comic strips, and magazines – and consumerism and other related textual activities” (2014: 2).

Therefore, we would like to explore the transmedial dimension of pop culture in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. How did motives, characters, narratives circulate between various media platforms and cultural circuits? What was the transmedial dimension of the emerging global culture industry? How did mediatization processes impact on local practices (especially in the peripheral media environments)?

POSSIBLE TOPICS
Going beyond traditional notions of adaptation, remediation and intermediality, we would like to reconsider dominant history of media in modernity and to examine the constitution of the transmedia dimension of culture industry and entertainment. We are interested in transmedia flows, business synergies and connections between different media and cultural spheres:

· literature

· radio

· cinema

· music

· stage (cabaret, revue, vaudeville, variété)

· popular press

· comic strips

· graphic design and advertisement

· modern art

Submission may include, but are not limited to, the following themes:

· circulation of texts, motives, etc. in the 19th and early 20th century (i.e. vaudeville and radio relations)

· business synergies between film, radio, press, phonographic industry, etc.

· local histories of the proliferation of the technical media (especially in the peripheral and semi-peripheral countries)

· relations between “transmedia” and theories of intertextuality, adaptation, etc.

· vernacular practices of media producers and audiences

· vernacular reception and grassroot practices of fans

Theoretical and historical contributions concerning all geographical areas before 1939 are welcomed.

SUBMISSIONS & DETAILS
Please address abstracts (max. 200 words) along with institutional affiliation and a short bio (max. 150 words) to: lukasz.biskupski@swps.edu.pl

Deadline for submission: 31.01.2015. Confirmation will follow shortly thereafter.
The workshop language is English.
Workshop attendance is free, but valid NECS-membership is required to participate, see: http://necs.org/user/register.

Organizers: Łukasz Biskupski (University of Social Sciences and Humanities SWPS in Warsaw), Mirosław Filiciak (University of Social Sciences and Humanities SWPS in Warsaw) and Michał Pabiś-Orzeszyna (University of Łódź).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The organization of the workshop is supported by the Polish National Center for Science under Grant DEC-2012/07/E/HS2/03878.

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