*CFP* "THE US REPRESENTATION IN POPULAR CULTURE AND MEDIA", ARTICLES FOR THE POPMEC ACADEMIC BLOG

We are a lively academic collective interested in investigating the articulation of the numerous and heterogeneous representations which have been constructing images of the US. Our research delves into how the US—their history, society, and diverse cultures—have been represented in popular media and cultural creations. Our blog aims at providing a collaborative, engaging, and fair environment for any interested scholar, promoting the sharing of knowledge, experience, and ideas across disciplines and thematic fields. We’re also working to foster a stimulating space for early career researchers and postgraduate students in North American studies, thus we’ll warmly welcome their proposals.

True to the PopMeC spirit, we would like to take advantage of this (confusing and boring) quarantine moment to keep on producing and sharing engaging, stimulating, fun academic work. We invite you to browse the academic blog popmec.hypotheses.org, and write write write! Contribute to feed our space with your work, have fun jotting down your thoughts, ideas, reshaping your working papers, putting your pop review out there!

*CFP* "LIFE STORIES IN COMMUNICATION: FROM STEREOTYPES TO (THE POSSIBILITY OF) HUMANIZATION", DOSSIER, THE OBSERVATORIO JOURNAL

The Observatório Journal  invites researchers to submit their papers to the dossier Life Stories in communication: from stereotypes to (the possibility of) humanization, expected to be published in the second half of 2020.

The dossier aims to gather papers, resulting from research projects that are either completed or in progress, addressing the presence of life stories in the various discursive genres of the field of Communication, with an emphasis on journalism, documentary films, corporate communication, advertising, and marketing. It will thus include studies that reflect on characters, whether or not fictional, seeking to comprehend the meanings attributed to the subjects depicted in such genres.

*CFP* “US REPRESENTATION IN POPULAR MEDIA AND CULTURE”, 1ST POPMEC CONFERENCE

US Representation in Popular Media and Culture 

1st PopMec Conference

27-28 de Mayo de 2020

Instituto Franklin-UAH, Universidad de Alcalá de Henares, Spain

PopMeC is a recently founded academic collective interested in investigating the articulation of the numerous and heterogeneous representations which have been constructing images of the US. Our research delves into how the US—their history, society, and diverse cultures—have been represented in popular media and cultural creations. Thanks to the pervasiveness of popular culture in everyday life, its products embody a fundamental driving force in forging the collective imaginary of both national and foreign publics. The timely construction, consolidation, and intrinsic political potential of popular representations—myths, symbols, images, and signs—has undeniably facilitated the shaping of identities, discourses, and communities. The diversity and peculiarities of the American society can therefore be traced through the analysis of popular culture and multimodal cultural expressions, conveyed by means such as film, comics and graphic novels, TV and web series, videogames, books, and whatnot.

*CFP* “OCCIDENTALISM: THE WEST SINCE 1945”, 2020 CONFERENCE

Occidentalism: The West Since 1945

10-12 de Junio de 2020

University of Paris 8, Paris

Keynotes

Manuel Burga Dìaz, Emeritus professeur of history and former rector of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Peru

Alastair Bonnett, Professor of social geography at the University of Newcastle and author of the book, The Idea of the West : Culture, Politics and History

This conference will examine the notion of Occidentalism, which is defined by The Dictionary of Human Geography (5th edition, 2009) as “The systematic construction of ‘the West’ (‘the Occident) as a bounded and unified entity.” This construction exists among those who consider themselves as “Western” and those who do not. The term is obviously envisaged as the counterpart of “Orientalism” by Edward Said (1978). The idea of the “West”, in opposition to the “East”, is an ancient one, although this conference will focus on the period since the Second World War, using a perspective that is pluricultural and interdisciplinary.