NeoLit Student Conference at the Faculty of Philology, University of Silesia

15-16 May 2014

NARRATIVES OF POPULAR CULTURE

“Popular Culture”, writes John Fiske in his Reading Popular Culture (1989), “is always in process.” He suggests the constant progression of popular practices and textual frames. Multidimensional, complex and intertextual, popular culture offers forms that challenge and change traditional aesthetics (visual, discursive), producing narratives that re-invent and re-create themes of cultural heritage and generate new means / devices of artistic expression.

Narratives of Popular Culture is an attempt to address the change by analysing new forms of culture / art production as offered by the emerging styles / stylizations of the popular. It wishes to focus on most recent trends in popular media (literature, computer games, TV series etc.) and have a closer look at the cross-pollination of themes and representations growingly observable in the popular practice.

We welcome 350-500 word paper / presentation proposals that critically and creatively engage in the problem defined in the theme and explore, but are not limited to:

• The new genres of popular culture;
• The new forms of popular production;
• The hybridization of popular discourses;
• New popular representations;
• Popular literatures, popular arts, popular media;
• Interpretive possibilities raised by the development of the popular and its forms;
• The “popularisations” of specific genres, forms and fields of cultural production;
• Prophecies of popular culture (popular discourses of the future);
• The permeation of the digital and popular;
• Change in popular representations
• and any other topic relevant to the theme.

All abstracts should be sent to Claudia Lubszczyk on claudia.lubszczyk@gmail.com by 15th April 2014. Presentations should last maximum 30 minutes (including discussion and questions). Notification of acceptance will be sent by 25th April 2014. The conference will take place at the Faculty of Philology in Sosnowiec, 15-16 May.