CFP - Youth Literature and Media
Call for Papers: Youth Literature and Media
2016 Midwest Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association
October 6-9, 2016
Chicago, IL
http://www.mpcaaca.org
Deadline: April 30, 2016
We are looking for proposals for papers for arguably the hottest area in popular culture: Youth Literature and Media. Youth Culture is everywhere. From the rise of YA Lit to the fall of Facebook, twenty-five is the new eighteen and The Millennials are here. This area is for the study of Lit and Media for Youth (all three terms broadly conceived), representations of youth in Lit and Media, and youth as consumers and producers of Lit and Media.
We want to know all about the kids these days, in classrooms and parents’ basements, from S.E. Hinton to Luke Herzog, from the crew of really really rich youth who play videogames and apply make-up on YouTube to the many more who mod everything from videogames to movies to Legos into their own Maker-inspired, bricolage cultural productions. Who are “youth”, what are they reading and doing, why, and who cares? Pop Culture Studies is a multi-disciplinary endeavor, so bring us your close readings, your ethnographies, your visual analysis, and even your hard core stats: anything and everything as long as it’s about youth and popular culture!
Want more food for thought? How about...
- Expanding definitions and boundaries of youth (and diminished spaces for adults?)
- Revisiting youth through nostalgia and Netflix (Wet Hot American Summer!? Fuller House!?)
- Lit or media produced by youth (and the youth who produce lit and media)
- Adult audiences of YA Lit and other youth culture
- Images and discussion of youth in the news
- Youth and Social Media: where the kids go when their parents join Facebook
- Youth access to media
- Youth, literacy, and illiteracy
- Moral panics around youth
- Youth vs. youthful
Please submit abstracts of up to 300 words along with name, affiliation, and email to the Youth Literature and Media area at http://submissions.mpcaaca.org. Please include whether or not you will need a projector.