IASPR Conference News

--Eric Selinger

A number of logistical complications have come up for the September, 2013 IASPR conference planned for San Francisco.  In the end, we’ve decided to postpone the Fifth International Conference until sometime in 2014, with the details—date, location, conference committee, Call for Papers, etc.—to be announced later this spring.

This is a disappointment, but it’s also an opportunity. 

As you’ve probably seen here at Teach Me Tonight there are a number of upcoming conferences on love and popular culture.  Indeed, it seems to be something of a hot topic in academia now, as Laura's handy "Forthcoming Conferences" page makes clear.  

Some of these conferences have CFPs that have just closed, including the “Love and Sentimentalism in Popular Music” conference and the 2013 Elizabeth Jolley Conference, “Reading and Writing Romance in the 21st Century” both of which closed on January 31—you might be able to slip in under the wire if you contact the organizers right away. 

Others have deadlines that are still several weeks off, giving you plenty of time to submit.    

Let me just quickly call your attention to the “Radicalism of Romantic Love” conference in Australia (deadline March 8, 2013); the “Gender and Love” and “The Erotic” conferences at Oxford (March 22, 2013 deadline for both); and the romance areas of the EUpop conference (March 29, 2013 deadline) and PopCAANZ (April 1, 2013 deadline).

It would be great for IASPR members to fan out to these other gatherings, spread the word about our organization, and encourage those presenting good work to submit it to JPRS.  

There have long been links between IASPR and the Popular Culture Association here in the US; let’s use this postponement as the chance to build the representation of romance at the EU and Australia-New Zealand popular culture gatherings, as well as at the organizations that focus on Love Studies, the Erotic, and other related topics. 

Meanwhile, if you’re interested in helping me work on the 2014 IASPR conference, please get in touch!  I’m easy to reach at eselinge@depaul.edu.