PCA 2013 (and a bit more about IASPR 2012)

Laura Vivanco

Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association

2013 National Conference

Washington D.C., March 27 – March 30

Call For Papers: Romance Area
Area Co-Chairs: Eric Selinger and An Goris


Deadline for submission: November 30, 2012.

Love and romance are mainstays of popular culture, cutting across the great divides of medium, language, and historical period. From Beyoncé to Bollywood, Dan Savage to Sweet Savage Love, K-Pop to qawwali: if it’s about love, it’s a welcome topic at the PCA Romance area.

We will consider proposals for individual papers, sessions organized around a theme, and special panels. Sessions are scheduled in 90-minute slots, typically with four 15-minute papers or speakers per standard session, with the remaining time available for discussion.

If you are involved in the creative industry of popular romance (romance author/editor, film director/producer, singer/songwriter, etc.) and are interested in speaking on your own work or on developments in popular romance culture, please contact us!

Some possible topics for Romance (although we are by no means limited to these):

• Love, Globally:  local traditions, transnational media, adaptation and translation issues
• Fifty Shades of WTF:  the reception of popular romance
• Romance Across the Media
• Romance High and Low (i.e., texts that remix or blur distinctions between “high” and “low” culture)
• Modern Love, Postmodern Love, and Romantic Nostalgia
• Romancing the Marketplace: romantic love in advertising, marketing, and consumer culture
• Queering the Romance: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Kink romance
• Gender-Bending and Gender-Crossing / Genre-Bending and Genre-Crossing / Media-Bending and Media-Crossing Popular Romance
• Romance communities, IRL and on-line
• The Politics of Romance, and romantic love in political discourse (revolutionary, reactionary, colonial / anti-colonial, etc.)
• African-American, Latina, Asian, and other Multicultural romance
• Young Adult Romance
• History of/in Popular Romance
• Individual Creative Producers or Texts of Popular Romance (novels, authors, film, directors, writers, songwriters, actors, composers, dancers, etc.)

More details here.

The BDSM/Kink/Fetish area is chaired by Sarah Frantz and they're

interested in any and all topics about or related to the study of BDSM, sexual kink, or sexual fetishes in all genres, all media, all countries, all kinds, and all eras. All representations of BDSM, Kink, and fetishes in popular culture (fiction, stage, screen—large or small, commercial, advertising, music, song, dance, online, real life, etc.), from anywhere and any-when, are welcome topics of discussion. We also welcome any academic discussion of the real-life practice of BDSM, sexual kink, or sexual fetishes, as well as the lived experiences of people identifying as kinky.

The full details about that call for papers can be found here.

As mentioned earlier, Dr Nick Redfern posted his paper, on romance at the box office, at his blog. Now Remittance Girl has posted a summary of the conference. Jane Lovering, who "recently won the Romantic Novel of the Year 2012, awarded by the Romantic Novelist’s Association, for her book Please Don’t Stop the Music [... which] has also been shortlisted for the Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance" (IASPR) spoke at a special session and she's got a brief comment about it at her blog.