CfP: I Love Pop: An Interdisciplinary Conference
Type: Call for Papers
Date: November 10, 2016 to November 11, 2016
Location: New York, United States
Subject Fields: Film and Film History, Popular Culture Studies, Cultural History / Studies, Women's & Gender History / Studies, Literature
November 10-11, 2016
Department of Comparative Literature
The Graduate Center, CUNY; New York, NY
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- Art, advertising, brands, products, food, consumption and the consumer
- Identity within pop culture, including race and gender
- Music
- Technology
- Comic books, Anime, and narrative forms across media
- Television
- Film, including Hollywood, Bollywood, Nollywood, YouTube
- Popular magazines, journals, sports, and news media
- Video games and gaming culture
- Image, the body, and pornography in various media forms
- Myth and mythology
- Camp and kitsch
- The internet and social media
- Questions of discourse and intellectual property
- Science fiction, fantasy, horror
- The taboo, banned media, subcultures, and cult classics
- Popular language, hybrid language, idioms, text language, and slang
- Fashion, style, and lifestyle
- Imitation, appropriation, adaptation
- Questions of social class and social capital
- Self-referentiality, pop culture icons and iconography
- Relations between pop culture and political populism
- Popular psychology
- Popular science
There
seems to be no end to the anxieties, fantasies, pleasures, and
possibilities of pop culture—how we consume it, avoid it, appreciate it,
and allow it to inform our identities.
Yet, can we theorize pop today? And if so, to what extent are we obligated to do so?
Conceptions
of pop culture are marked by continuous change, constant revision, and
ongoing re-appropriation. Pop can be a stabilizer of the canon, with its
distinction of high and low, while also a way to subvert the canon’s
very foundations through a critique of elitism. If,as Adorno argued,
mass culture is a deception, an industry that reproduces passivity and
perpetuates the reification of social life, is there a way to escape
this repetition? Or can we conceive of pop culture as a potential space
of resistance, following the work of Stuart Hall and other British
Cultural studies? Furthermore, are mass culture and pop culture
coterminous?
Pop culture and literary studies have maintained a
sometimes-uneasy yet necessary kinship. Thus, Elizabethan popular
culture becomes the foundation of the English literary canon, while
ephemeral magazine
columns and stories become permanent fixtures in the literary
landscape. The height of modernism makes reference to “The Wasteland” of
mass culture and everyday life, at the same time as it elevates the
everyman to Ulysses.The pattern continues today in media forms such as
TV, which now displays narrative and artistic complexityrivaling art
film of international acclaim.
Twenty-first century pop culture
presents new questions for consideration: who are we when we absorb or
participate in pop culture? The interactive nature of our contemporary
forms of pop culture promotes and engages a rhetoric of listening that
may in fact imply a dialectical agency for the receiver, rather than
blind consumption. However, the politics of this engagement are troubled
by various global contexts of reception. Does a study of pop involve
universalization and standardization that could pander to dangerous
types of political populism or does it engage various registers that
foster a productive sense of difference?
We invite papers and
presentations from all disciplines focusing on works from any historical
period and geographical region, including literature, theory,
philosophy, visual arts, film, television, social sciences, technology,
and alternative media. Traditional papers are welcome, as well as
multi-modal presentations and performances.
Please submit a 300-word abstract to cunypop@gmail.com for a 15-20 minute paper, performance, or presentation by September 15th.
Proposals should include the title of the paper, the presenter’s name, a
50-word bio including institutional and department affiliation, the
form that your presentation will take (if it is not a traditional
paper), and any technology requests.
Contact Info:
The Comparative Literature Department at the Graduate Center
Visit us at: cunypop.wordpress.com
Follow us on Twitter: @cunypop2016
Contact Email: