Międzynarodowa Konferencja Naukowa "50 Shades of Popular Culture"

Conference Overview

Contrary to common belief popular culture is not that much coherent a phenomenon to be so easily isolated from cultural flow and defined in such splendid isolation. The persevering existence of the division between so called “high” and “low” is, as seems, fuelled primarily by a need of juxtaposing esteemed and engaging texts of culture. Today such a division is no longer intellectually acceptable since it clearly imposes a paradigmatic systematisation and introduces, once again, philosophically compromised binary oppositions. Meanwhile, in the past few decades, a new critical discourse have managed to emerge, a discourse pivoted around interdisciplinary popculture studies, and diverse at least as much as the research subject itself. One cannot use the same language while studying melodramas and speculative SF, or heavy metal and Marvel’s filmography, J. K. Rowling and first-person shooters in video games. The purpose of organising the 2nd = International Conference 50 Shades of Popular Culture would be, therefore, to see all the eponymous shades of this discourse and to encourage interdisciplinary re­flexion on:

• theoretical, philosophical, and critical analysis of popular culture;
• economy of popular culture: storytelling franchises and franchised universes;
• major tendencies in the evolution of popular culture (literature, video games, movies, TV shows, music, transmedia, internet);
• current trends in popular culture studies;
• popular culture and fan studies (fan fiction, cosplay, e-zins, convents, festivals, fan and aca-fan movement, self- and vanity publishing);
• fandom unlimited: how contemporary storytelling coincides with fans’ activity and creativity;
• remediation, renarration, and retelling in popular culture;
• dawn of genology in popular culture: from blurred genre boundaries to slipstream narratives;
• network culture: popular culture and digital humanities;
• pop-criticism and web 2.0/3.0: from blogosphere and e-zins to popular YouTube formats;
• dichotomy of mainstream and underground (high culture and low culture/mass culture, critically acclaimed and fan-bashed etc.) along with the ways of deconstructing it;
• artists-celebrities and new ways of promoting artistic ventures;
• global, local and “glocal” manifestations of popular culture;
• case studies of selected texts of popular culture across media.

Please note that all those topics only briefly outline the conference scope and authors of abstracts are strongly encouraged to develop their papers further on. We are interested in general analyses of popular culture theory, philosophy and practice as well as in specific case studies.

Registration, submission & fees

The conference language is English and Polish. To register for the conference, one should sent in editable format (.doc, .docx.) 600-words abstracts featuring (1) the title of presentation, (2) a concise bio-note, (3) current affiliation, and (4) all necessary contact information (official email address & phone number) at 50shades­ofpopculture@gmail.com by January 15th 2016. The conference fee is 100€ and includes wine reception, coffee breaks, and other conference essentials..

The conference fee will be 100€ for the full coverage of English editions of printed conference materials and all other essentials. Polish attendees will be kindly asked to transfer the equivalent of the fee in local currency (450 PLN).

Publication

The conference will be followed by a peer-reviewed monograph, published by Facta Ficta Research Centre and licenced under Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 as an e-book stored in a globally accessible repository (CeON Center for Open Science)―or as monographic issues of peer-reviewed open access journals that decide to co-operate with the Organising Committee.

More info

Any further details regarding the venue, accommodation and transportation will be continuously updated at the website 50shadesofpopculture.wordpress.com. Organisers are also open to answering all questions and requests at 50shadesofpopculture@gma­il.com.

We look forward to seeing you in Kraków!