*CFP* "POPULARIZING STEM: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN 21ST-CENTURY US POPULAR CULTURE", THE POPMEC ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE 2021

"Popularizing STEM: Science and Technology in 21st-Century US Popular Culture"

The PopMeC Association for US Popular Culture Studies

15-19 November 2021 (mixed format conference)

 

We are particularly interested in presentations that seek to engage with questions of intersectional discrimination in STEM representations in popular culture, spanning from cultural products aimed at dissemination and debate on STEM to texts such as films, TV series, comics and graphic novels, genre fiction, video games, new media narratives.

Deadline for submission: August 1, 2021. 

Submit your abstract proposal (~ 300 words) at popmec.stem@gmail.com as an attachment, including name, affiliation if any, and contact email. Depending on the proposals and participants’ response, an editorial project might originate from the conference.

Sections

Suggested fields of analysis might include but are not limited to:

• STEM dissemination in popular culture: storytelling strategies, (in)accuracy, multimedia programs and projects promoting access, flexibility, and adaptability in STEM education and knowledge, deconstructing the existing barriers within the field and building equality in legitimacy
• Interrelationship between STEM and Popular Culture: Using popular culture to teach/educate on STEM (i.e., in STEM programs) and teaching about STEM via popular culture
• Economic discourses and the challenges of capitalism related to STEM in US popular culture and media
• Representation of STEM in popular culture aimed at children and young adults
• Intersectionality versus marginalization in the dissemination and communication of science and technology
• STEM and Gender Studies: the portrayal of masculine, feminine, and gender non-conforming individuals in STEM-centered popular media narratives
• Science, tech, and race/ethnicity: Afro(Latinx), Indigenous, and Chicana Futurism(s), minority perspectives, alternative narratives, borderland spaces
• Digital technology and virtual realities as safe spaces for marginalized groups
• The use of science and technology in depictions of the future as critiques or reevaluations of current realities: tech-noir and sci-fi utopias, dystopias, post/apocalyptic scenarios, and retrofuturism
• Cyborgs, AI, and the human: representations, conflicts, and horrific developments
• Health and technology: care robots and the representation of disabilities, human aging, biomedical issues
• Representations of surveillance, biometrics, and biological citizenship
• Tech, science, and the (non)human body: narratives related to experimentation, bioethics, artificial monstrosity, transhumanism, biopunk
• Pop depictions of STEM: (in)accuracy, “prediction” of future technologies, breaking down the science and tech behind superhero narratives

The conference will take place on the days 15-19 November 2021 in mixed format:

• Online | panels and main keynotes
• In presence at Universidad de Alcalá, historical campus | workshop/seminars (in particular focused on creators, graphic medicine, dissemination, and STEM communication), possibly keynote screening. If it will be feasible considering the changing COVID-19 related measures, we will allow selected panels to be carried out in person (if their participants wish to do so).

Participation fees

Free for PopMeC members
Non-members: 15€ students / non-tenured / unwaged / retired, 25€ regular