*CFP* "ESTUDIOS DE FANS EN IBEROAMÉRICA", Nº38 (2022-2), REVISTA CONTRATEXTO

Estudios de fans en Latinoamérica

Revista Contratexto

Sección Dosier

Fecha límite: 15 de mayo de 2022

El número 38 de Contratexto se centrará en los estudios del fenómeno fan en Iberoamérica.

Editoras invitadas: María José Establés (Universidad de Nebrija, España), María del Mar Guerrero Pico (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, España), Johanna Montauban Bryce (Universidad de Lima, Perú). Se recibirán artículos originales o ensayos que aborden de modo preferente alguno(s) de lossiguientes ejes temáticos:

● Media fandom (series de televisión, cine, videojuegos, novelas, cómics y manga…)
● Otros objetos de fandom: música, deportes…
● Fandoms del ámbito hispanohablante y de la lusofonía (telenovelas, influencers, youtubers…)

*CFP* "EMERGING MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE TOURIST ENCOUNTER", SPECIAL ISSUE, TOURISM GEOGRAPHIES JOURNAL

This special issue examines practices, meanings and impacts of emerging media technologies: digital, mobile, geo/locative and augmented reality technologies within tourism geographies. The special issue aims to situate emerging media technologies within processes of the production and transformation of space, spatial knowledge and social relations within the tourist encounter. We ask contributors to the special issue to consider: What are the configurations of different technologies involved with tourist experiences? In what ways do emerging media technologies shape tourism imaginaries and experiences? What are the particular cultural inflections in the relationship between digital and tourist practices? How do broader infrastructural and economic conditions shape the relationships between digital and tourist practices?

Papers in this special issue will explore the unfolding contexts of media, digital and emerging technologies in tourism geographies across breadth and depth and may include the following topics:

• Culturally and geographically situated explorations of digital practices in tourist sites (including empirical investigations into travel photography, virtual reality headsets, online travel writing, and travel vlogs) 

*CFP* "LGBTQIA+ FANTASTIKA GRAPHICS", A DIGITAL SYMPOSIUM

“Fantastika” – a term appropriated from a range of Slavonic languages by John Clute – embraces the genres of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror, but can also include Alternate History, Gothic, Steampunk, Young Adult Dystopic Fiction, or any other radically imaginative narrative space. Our goal is to bring together academics, independent researchers, creators, and audiences who share an interest in this diverse range of fields with the aim of opening up new dialogues, productive controversies, and critical collaborations.

Following the 2020-pandemic hiatus, we are pleased to re-launch our annual conferences this year as a digital symposium. LGBTQIA+ Fantastika Graphics focuses on graphics and illustrations in its widest possible remit (comic books, manga, animes, cartoons, picture books, video games, and other such productions.) [This is an updated remit from ‘graphic novels’; please disregard previous CFPs.] We are interested in works that contain representations of the LGBTQIA+ community, relationships, and full spectrum of identities. We welcome abstracts for 15-minute papers or panels of 2-4 people on LGBTQIA+ Fantastika as they occur in the graphic form. Some suggested topics are:

*CFP* "PIKACHU'S TRANSMEDIA ADVENTURES: THE CONTINUING ADAPTABILITY OF THE POKEMON FRANCHISE", EDITED COLLECTION

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.

*CFP* "VFX AND FANS: PARTICIPATORY CULTURE AND THE INDUSTRY", SPECIAL ISSUE, KINEPHANOS JOURNAL

Interactions between creators from the entertainment industry and the fan community have been around for a long time. In 1891, Holmes fans reacted very strongly to the famous detective death. It resulted in a flood of angry letters sent to author Conan Doyle, who resurrected him in a subsequent episode. Even the Hollywood star system was first motivated by the fans’ desire to know their favorite actors appearing as anonymous shadows on the screen. Later on, communities gathered around sci-fi magazines such as Hugo Gernsbach's Amazing Stories in 1926. It was a decisive moment that saw the birth of "fandom" as we know it today, and it certainly contributed to the emergence of audiences known as "cultists", a term coined by Matt Hills (2002), which is a type of public that is increasingly knowledgeable, who feels a certain "empowerment" towards fetishized works. 

The end of the 20th century, with the development and democratization of digital technologies, has witnessed the rise of this new consumer-producer paradigm that thumbs its nose at the ideology of the Frankfurt School's passive consumer. Without forgetting that the modern fan is the product of a long line of popular works and "B-movies", from Flash Gordon (1936) to the science fiction films of the 1940s and 1950s in the United States (with the rise of communism and its alien invasion films), from Star Trek in the 60s to Star Wars in 70s - a wave on which the franchise is still "surfing". Special effects films, a cinema of attraction that traditionally places "the effect" at the center (Gunning), have always fascinated the public, but always from a distance without being able to really interact with them or create or propose their alternative versions. The only interventions possible were, until now, centered on "a posteriori" actions, via journal sections of readers' letters, for example, or web forums, without much impact on the result.

*CFP* "PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING AND AUTHENTICITY", SPECIAL ISSUE, CELEBRITY STUDIES JOURNAL

We are currently editing a special issue of Celebrity Studies on the topic of Professional Wrestling and Authenticity. At present the issue ranges from general theorisations to specific case studies unpacking how authenticity and celebrity can be figured in the world of wrestling, drawing upon star studies, celebrity studies, sports studies and audience studies to gain a full understanding of the wrestling star image.

We are seeking further submissions to our issue, particularly focussed on how formations of authenticity and celebrity within wrestling have been impacted by the pandemic.

Article topics might include, but are not limited to:

• Wrestlers, social media, and Covid awareness 
• Case studies of wrestler star images and transitions to new forms of labour (e.g. streaming, OnlyFans) 
• The development of ‘cinematic’ wrestling and its relationship to ‘authentic’ performance

 

*CFP* "PARTICIPATORY CULTURE WARS: CONTROVERSY, CONFLICT AND COMPLICITY IN FANDOM", EDITED COLLECTION

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. 

*CFP* "MEDIA, SPORT, AND DIVERSITY", ECREA TEMPORARY WORKING GROUP COMMUNICATION AND SPORT VIRTUAL SEMINAR

"Media, Sport, and Diversity"

Virtual Seminar 

ECREA Temporary Working Group Communication and Sport

Aarhus University, Denmark (the seminar will take place online via Zoom)

November 5-6, 2021

 

Sport is an essential element of the culture around the world. As a growing social and economic phenomenon, it plays a key role in contemporary societies. This significance has become particularly obvious during the COVID-19 pandemic as measures prohibiting the performance of sports and on-site spectatorship have affected (and continue to affect) individual well-being as well as the function of sport in society including its health-related, educational, social, cultural, and recreational dimension.

*CFP* "DREAM FACTORIES: PRINCE, SIGN O’ THE TIMES, BOX SETS & CULTURAL ARTEFACTS", BOOK CHAPTER

The guest editors – Dr Kirsty Fairclough (Manchester Metropolitan University) and Prof. Mike Alleyne (Middle Tennessee State University) – are seeking abstracts for papers that examine the expansive super deluxe Sign O’ The Times 2020 box set. The essays will explore its multiple levels of musical and cultural significance, while critiquing the value of its presence as a commercial artefact and a signifier of Prince’s creative legacy in the context of previous posthumous deluxe edition reissues. Following Prince’s death in 2016, his estate embarked on a series of reissued albums and new compilations, inclusive of previously unreleased material. In its original form in 1987, Sign O’ The Times became one of Prince’s most critically acclaimed records while also being his second double album and a major commercial success.

In this special journal issue, the 2020 box set with eight discs of music and a live DVD provides multiple opportunities for critical reassessment of both the album and its posthumous inclusion of rare and/or previously unreleased items. This issue will explore the ways in which the box set has become part of a parallel Prince career which allows fans and critics to reassess his output and provides a new lens through which to understand the album as cultural artefact. With this central focus, the specific analytical angles will be left to the individual contributors, defining what they perceive as the key characteristics of this deluxe edition compilation and its comparative relationships to earlier catalogue reissues. Such discussion will primarily incorporate the following:

*CFP* "DREAM FACTORIES: PRINCE, SIGN O’ THE TIMES, BOX SETS & CULTURAL ARTEFACTS", SPECIAL ISSUE, INTERACTIONS JOURNAL

The essays will explore its multiple levels of musical and cultural significance, while critiquing the value of its presence as a commercial artefact and a signifier of Prince’s creative legacy in the context of previous posthumous deluxe edition reissues. Following Prince’s death in 2016, his estate embarked on a series of reissued albums and new compilations, inclusive of previously unreleased material. In its original form in 1987, Sign O’ The Times became one of Prince’s most critically acclaimed records while also being his second double album and a major commercial success. In this special journal issue, the 2020 box set with eight discs of music and a live DVD provides multiple opportunities for critical reassessment of both the album and its posthumous inclusion of rare and/or previously unreleased items.

This issue will explore the ways in which the box set has become part of a parallel Prince career which allows fans and critics to reassess his output and provides a new lens through which to understand the album as cultural artefact. With this central focus, the specific analytical angles will be left to the individual contributors, defining what they perceive as the key characteristics of this deluxe edition compilation and its comparative relationships to earlier catalogue reissues.

*CFP* "SERIALITY AND STREAMING", SPECIAL ISSUE, GLOBAL STORYTELLING JOURNAL

This special issue of Global Storytelling will investigate how streaming media has impacted the production, distribution, and reception of serial narratives. Television research, beginning with Herta Herzog’s landmark study of radio listeners “On Borrowed Experience”, privileged the soap opera as an object of research due to the special problems posed by seriality and melodrama and the construction of gender within the text and within the audience. When prime-time serials Dallas and Dynasty achieved sensational success both domestically and internationally, and the fear of “Wall-to-Wall Dallas” swept Europe, important foundational works in television studies by Robert C. Allen, Ien Ang, Elihu Katz and Tamar Liebes, Jostein Gripsrud, Jane Feuer, Dorothy Hobson, Tania Modleski, Charlotte Brunsdon and others used television serials to consider questions of reception, cross-cultural readings, and the problematics of genre and ideology. Today, seriality is less the exception than the rule for the offerings of subscription streaming platforms in all genres and is a core industrial strategy for courting audiences in an increasingly crowded marketplace.

The development of streaming platforms and new distribution strategies in which entire seasons of new television shows are “dropped” online on one day have only complicated contemporary theorizations of the production and consumption of serialized narratives. Netflix routinely releases its first-run television serials as entire seasons, while other platforms premiere a handful of episodes simultaneously to entice viewers, then switch to a more conventional schedule of weekly single episodes. Web series such as Skam (in its various transnational incarnations) craft soap opera narratives at the intersection of fictive social media posts and videos that play in real storyworld time, weaving serial narratives into the everyday lives of audiences through their phones, tablets and laptops.

*CFP* "NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS", EDITED COLLECTION

This edited collection will consider Nightmare Before Christmas as a milestone in animation and film history as well as a key cultural object with lasting impact. The book will be inserted in Bloomsbury’s Key Film/Filmmakers in Animation series.

In the thirty years since its release, Nightmare Before Christmas has drawn repeated academic attention. Many of these contributions have seen the film as an entry point to larger arguments about Tim Burton’s work, whether in terms of its animation (Cuthill 2017), representations of gender (Mitchell 2017), and use of fairy tales (Burger 2017). Less often, Nightmare Before Christmas has been considered in relation to other frameworks, such as its presence beyond the film industry, in theme parks (Williams 2020a, 2020b), and the way it negotiated changing cultural expectations of children’s media and horror (Antunes 2020). Though this literature has shed light on several aspects of the film’s significance, there is to date no sustained scholarly inquiry that brings these insights together and examines the historical and cultural significance specifically of Nightmare Before Christmas. This edited collection seeks to address this gap, considering the different layers of meanings and history of Nightmare Before Christmas from pre-production to the present day.

*CFP* "ADAPTING BRIDGERTON", BOOK CHAPTER

If Jane Austen and the history books present one version of the regency, Bridgerton shows a far different one. While the series had many surprises for viewers, it’s less clear what’s responsible. Does this come from being a 2020 show? From Netflix's style? From the romance novels source material? Let’s consider and also weigh what worked and what didn’t.

Length will depend on how many submissions arrive. They will be in MLA format, secondary sources welcome, scholarly be approachable and fun for fans. These will be published in a scholarly collection--McFarland is interested.

Abstracts Due May 1, essays due August 1.

Please send to valerie@calithwain.com with a subject of Bridgerton.

Suggested topics include but are not limited to the following:

*CFP* "GLOBAL QUEER FANDOMS OF ASIAN MEDIA AND CELEBRITIES", 21.6 ISSUE, COMMENTARY AND CRITICISM SECTION, FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES JOURNAL

Since the 2010s, K-pop music groups, Chinese, South Korean, and Thai TV dramas, Japanese ACG (anime, cosplay, and gaming) cultures, and Hong Kong, Taiwanese, and Singaporean films have continued to grow in popularity on a trans-geocultural scale. With little doubt, global flows of Asian entertainment media and pop culture have been paving the way for a decentering of the Western-dominated global mediascape. Certainly, due to the increasingly close and frequent collaborations between media industries in diverse geolocales, the too-often essentialized notion of “Asianness” and the problematic theoretical binarisms of East/West, global/local, and center/periphery need urgent contestation. It is also hard to ignore the central role played by androgynous personas, homosocial and homoerotic narratives, and norm-defying performances in the worldwide prominence of Asian media and celebrity cultures, as well as their flourishing queer fan communities in inter-Asian and Anglophone contexts.

This special Commentary and Criticism section aims to re-center Asia within fan studies through a combined global feminist and queer lens. It highlights the multivalent potential of queer in forming disruption and alternation to established meanings, identities, and norms in global media flows and fannish spaces devoted to Asian media and celebrities. It thus invites contributions that bridge global media studies, Asian pop culture studies, LGBTQ media and audience studies, and queer fan studies to identify promises and problems rooted in or emerging from transcultural, cross-linguistic, multi-ethnic, and (de-)globalist settings.

*CFP* "REVISITING THE WARRIOR PRINCESS AND HER LEGACY: XENA 20 YEARS ON", VIRTUAL CONFERENCE

Revisiting the Warrior Princess and her legacy: Xena, 20 years on

18th and 19th June 2021

Virtual Conference

 

On 18th June 2021 it will be twenty years since the controversial final episode of ground-breaking television series Xena: Warrior Princess, ‘A Friend in Need Part II’ aired. Although the series was first conceived as a spin-off from a series featuring a male hero, Hercules The Legendary Journeys, Xena's popularity surpassed that of Hercules, and ran for six seasons from 1995-2001. Xena paved the way for subsequent action heroines, from Buffy in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who reached our television screens in 1997, to the re-envisioned Wonder Woman in the recent blockbuster films. The (initially subtextual) relationship between Xena and Gabrielle also influenced the depiction of LGBT relationships in popular culture. Xena garnered a large fan base and spawned an interest in the ancient world for a generation of young viewers.

*CFP* "MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES IN FANDOM", BOOK CHAPTER

Rationale: Before the concretization of fan studies as an academic discipline, fans would routinely be labeled and treated as “fanatics” - people with excessive love for something or someone that could lead them to engage in maladaptive, even dangerous, behavior. Over time the term mental health disorders developed to mean a condition that affects a person’s behavioral, and emotional well-being. As both fanaticism and mental health are framed as being all about how people think, feel, and behave, public discourse framed fandom as a mental health issue. Along with being problematic due to class, racial, gender and other issues, this positioning meant that fandom was not well understood until the recent couple decades.

Now, scholars return to this idea of mental health and fandom, but for the purposes of understanding how being a fan relates to their own mental health. This collection explores what fans learn about mental health from their fandoms and how their fandoms can impact their own mental health, for better or worse. Discussing these issues and intersections will further our understanding of the complex ways in which fandom weaves into people’s lives.

*CFP* "A CRITICAL COMPANION TO JULIE TAYMOR", CRITICAL COMPANIONS TO CONTEMPORARY DIRECTORS LEXINGTON BOOKS SERIES

Considered as a true visionary, Julie Taymor is one of the of the most experimental and intellectually engaged film and theatrical directors working today. Her fusion of folklore, pop-culture, and classic literature has resulted in a series of fascinating and intellectually demanding works, both on stage and screen. From her beginnings with downtown not-for-profit theater through her Broadway successes and failures to her idiosyncratic career in Hollywood, Taymor has proven herself a notable and important artist. 

This collection will explore Taymor’s career, with an emphasis on her work in film, from Fool’s Fire (1992) to more renown productions such as Titus (1999), Frida (2002), The Tempest (2010) and the recent The Glorias (2020). As the first comprehensive scholarly volume on Taymor, covering her entire career in cinema, we are currently inviting the submission of 250-300 word abstracts for essays to be included in A Critical Companion to Julie Taymor set to be published in the Lexington Books series Critical Companions to Contemporary Directors, edited by Adam Barkman and Antonio Sanna.

*CFP* "HORROR OUTSIDE OF FILM/TV", SPECIAL EDITION, REFRACTORY: A JOURNAL OF ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA

This is a CFP for a special issue of 'Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media' that will be themed around Nightmares, Nations and Innovations. This edition will focus on horror outside of film/TV and will be published on Halloween 2021.

Ndalianis (2012) theorises that horror is about the crossing of boundaries, suggesting that horror manifests where order falls into chaos and meaning collapses. Jowett and Abbott (2013), persuasively assert that horror has long ago successfully entered the mainstream, permeating popular culture. If these are so, have scholarly distinctions in horror been outmoded by new technologies, experiences and audience practices? Are academic distinctions in horror supported, complicated or eroded by such developments?

If horror has transcended cultural boundaries can national ones be far behind? Horror films and literature are marketed internationally. Creations like Carpenter and Hill’s homicidal Michael Myers are international brands, almost global folk characters, and worth millions. Popular Halloween experiences, immersive horror and dark rides take the intellectual chills of the horror story and embody them for corporeal, haptic experience, transforming the narrative into the material, fright into flesh. Horror, Cherry (2009) reminds us, is highly adaptable, finding expression in a multitude of forms; nationally, internationally, globally and across a wide palette of media. The aesthetics of horror and cute culture collide/converge in merchandise, figures toys and GIFs.

*CFP* "POPULAR MUSIC AND POPULISM", SPECIAL ISSUE, POPULAR MUSIC JOURNAL

Populism has been researched from a great array of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences over the last decades. In musicology and popular music studies, however, the concept has been relatively neglected so far. This is all the more surprising since populism and music have been intricately connected at least since the nineteenth-century populist movement in the U.S. (Patch 2016; Kazin 2017), and popular music studies have a long tradition of research into music and politics (Street 2017; Garratt 2019), subcultures and counter-cultural movements that challenge the hegemonic ‘power bloc’ (Clarke et. al. 1975; Hebdige 1979; Eyerman and Jamison 1995). This special issue, therefore, seeks to explore the nexus between popular music and populism.

Research on populism is complicated by the concept’s ambivalence. Populism has been defined as a democratic movement (Goodwyn 1976), an emancipatory resource (Laclau 2005), a political strategy (Weyland 2017), an economic policy (Dornbusch and Edwards 1992), a communication style (Block and Negrine 2017), or an ideology (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017). Due to its wide scope, populism has been subdivided into various classifications, including inclusionary, exclusionary, right-wing, left-wing, nineteenth-century, contemporary, US, South-American, and European varieties. However, although populist movements assume highly diverse shapes across the world, they share a common ideological core based on a dichotomous understanding of a basic conflict between the two antagonistic camps of the essentially ‘good’ people and an inherently corrupt elite. As Michael Kazin (2017) has noted, populism’s power lies precisely in its adaptability.

*CFP* "MAINSTREAM VS MARGINAL CONTENT IN WEB HISTORY ADN WEB ARCHIVES", 4TH RESAW CONFERENCE 2021

4th RESAW Conference 

Mainstream vs marginal content in Web history and Web archives

17-18th June 2021

University's Belval Campus, Luxembourg

 

 

“Pathetic. There’s no other word for it. The website for the Fête de l’Internet has statistics that are desperately low, to say the least. Do they reflect the state of the Net? They certainly give rise, once again, to that worrying question: if no one in cyberspace knows that you are a dog, is the reason not simply because there is no one in cyberspace?” 

Kitetoa.com, March 2001, retrieved from Internet Archive (archived on 25 June 2003)

While at the end of the 1990s some were complaining that there was no one on the Internet, others were already experiencing success, like the “I kiss you” Web page (1999) – a personal page created by a Turkish man which attracted 12 million visits over five years: “His picture-laden personal homepage, which exclaimed in broken English his love of the accordion, travel, and women was visited by millions and spawned numerous fansites and parodies.”