CFP: EUPOP 2015 (Extended, final deadline, 1 June)

CFP: EUPOP 2015

Humboldt University of Berlin, July 29th – 31st 2015

Extended, final deadline: Monday, June 1st, 2015

Individual paper and panel contributions are welcomed for the fourth annual international conference of the European Popular Culture Association (EPCA), to be held at the Humboldt University of Berlin (Hauptgebäude, Unter den Linden 6, Berlin) from July 29th – 31st 2015.

EUPOP 2015 will explore European popular culture in all its various forms. This could include European Film (past and present), Television, Music, Celebrity, The Body, Fashion, New Media, Comics and Popular Literature, Queer Studies, Sport, Heritage, and Curation.

The closing date for this extended call is Monday the 1st June, 2015.

There will be opportunities for networking, publishing, and developing caucus groups within the EPCA. Presenters at EUPOP 2015 will be encouraged to develop their papers for publication in a number of Intellect journals, including the EPCA’s Journal of European Popular Culture. Journal editors will be working closely with strand convenors – a full list of Intellect journals is available at: http://www.intellectbooks.com

Papers and Complete Panels for all strands will be subject to peer review. Proposals for individual presentations must not exceed 20 minutes in length, and those for panels – not more than 90 minutes. In the latter case, please provide a short description of the panel along with individual abstracts. Poster presentations and video projections are also warmly welcomed.
Proposals comprising a 300 word abstract, your full name, affiliation, and contact details (as a Word-file attachment, not a PDF) should be submitted to Pamela Church-Gibson (europop@arts.ac.uk – the same address is available for general administrative queries) until June 1, 2015. Receipt of proposals will be acknowledged via e-mail.

The conference draft program will be announced mid-June, 2015, along with the conference registration and accommodation details.
Keynote speakers: EPCA President Pamela Church-Gibson (University of the Arts, London), Professor Susanna Paasonen (Media Studies & IIPC, University of Turku), and Professor John Richardson (Musicology & IIPC, University of Turku).

The European Popular Culture Association

The European Popular Culture Association (EPCA) promotes the study of popular culture from, in, and about Europe. Popular culture involves a wide range of activities, material forms and audiences. EPCA aims to examine and discuss these different aspects as they relate both to Europe and to Europeans across the globe, whether contemporary or historical.

EUPOP 2015 is organised by:

European Popular Culture Association (EPCA): http://epcablog.wordpress.com/

International Institute for Popular Culture (IIPC): http://iipc.utu.fi/

Kind Regards,

EPCA President Pamela Church Gibson, p.church-gibson@fashion.arts.ac.uk
Dr Markus Heide (Swedish Institute of North American Studies, Uppsala University), markus.heide@engelska.uu.se
EPCA Vice-President, PCA-Finland Director, Adjunct Professor Kari Kallioniemi, kakallio@utu.fi
EPCA Secretary, IIPC Coordinator, Dr Kimi Kärki, kierka@utu.fi

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IIPC Debate 18 May

IIPC Debate 75
Mon 18 May, 2-4, Mikro Auditorium (Kiinanmyllykatu 13, Turku)
IIPC Visiting Professor Norma Coates (University of Western Ontario)
Recuperating Rock and Roll in American Prime-Time Television in the mid-1960s

Norma Coates is Associate Professor with a joint appointment in the Don Wright Faculty of Music and the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario. Her research, writing, and teaching focus on popular music history, identity, and engagements with visual media. She is presently completing two manuscripts: a cultural history of rock music on television before MTV; and a handbook about television music from a media studies perspective. She is a former member of the IASPM-US executive and JPMS editorial boards. In April-May 2015 she is affiliated to University of Turku as an IIPC Visiting Professor.

IIPC Debate 13 May

IIPC Debate 74
Wed 13 May, 4-6 Seminar Room Hovi V105 (Artium, Kaivokatu 12, Turku)
Professor Aaron Allen (University of North Carolina at Greensboro)
Ecomusicology and the Challenges of Sustainability

Aaron S. Allen is Associate Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he is also director of the Environmental and Sustainability Studies Program. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard and his B.A. in music and B.S. in environmental studies from Tulane University. Allen is a fellow of the American Academy in Rome, editor of the Ecomusicology Newsletter, and co-editor of the forthcoming collection Current Directions in Ecomusicology (Routledge). For further information about Dr. Allen and his publications, please visit

IIPC Debate May 11

IIPC Debate 73
Mon 11 May, 2-4 pm, Mikro Auditorium (Kiinanmyllykatu 13, Turku)
IIPC Visiting Professor Gil Rodman (University of Minnesota)
Lions and Writers and Birds, Oh My!: The Racialized Biases of Copyright

Gil Rodman is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Minnesota, US. He is the author of Why Cultural Studies? (Wiley Blackwell, 2015), Elvis After Elvis (Routledge, 1996), editor of The Race and Media Reader (Routledge, 2014), and co-editor of Race in Cyberspace (Routledge, 2000). He is currently working on two book projects: an introduction to the work of Stuart Hall, and a racial history of copyright in the US. In April-May 2015 he has been affiliated to University of Turku as an IIPC Visiting Professor.

Warm welcome!

IIPC Debate 5 May

IIPC Debate 72
Tue 5 May, 12-2 pm, Mikro Auditorium (Kiinanmyllykatu 13, Turku)
Francien Broekhuizen (University of Coventry)
Becoming Beautiful, Becoming Perfect, Becoming Happy
& Dr Adrienne Evans (University of Coventry)
Getting Stuck in ‘Sexy’

Adrienne Evans:
Getting Stuck in ‘Sexy’

‘Sexiness’ has become an emotional and conflicted concept in debates about contemporary gender relations. In this paper, I consider these debates as a series of ‘double stagnations’ or stuck places that have become repetitive and circular, but which draw people in because of their emotive appeal; for example, in concerns about the sexualisation of children, social commentaries on the ‘problem’ of young women, and in worries over the future and direction of current feminist activism. In research we are left with a sense of methodological doubled stagnations; of analytical sideways debates that reproduce and rehearse tired – but still emotive – arguments that are unable to develop forward momentum. Rather than getting stuck in these doubled stagnations, a more productive way of doing research might be to analyze what produces these sticking points, as well as understanding our own emotional investments in thinking through sexiness. This would mean thinking about a methodological space from which to work more productively within these debates.

To explore these issues I draw on interview data with Gwen, were we discussed what sexiness meant to her. Gwen’s interview was significant because it was emotionally charged and painful. Her own sense making of sexiness was tied to discourses of fidelity, intimacy, and sexual insecurity. The interview was also marked by differences between Gwen and myself, in age, marital status, religion and attitudes towards sexuality. I map the way Gwen’s interview, and others like it, calls for a more sophisticated methodology that takes seriously our own emotional investment in debates on sexiness, and reveals a series of blind spots in how we think with ‘sexy’.

Adrienne Evans is a Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications, and Course Director for the MA in Communication, Culture and Media at Coventry University. Her research explores contemporary gender relations in the context of postfeminist sentiment. Her work has been published in the Journal of Gender Studies, Feminism and Psychology, European Journal of Women’s Studies, and Men and Masculinities, among others. She is co-author of Technologies of Sexiness: Sex, Identity and Consumer Culture (Oxford University Press, 2014).

Francien Broekhuizen:
Becoming Beautiful, Becoming Perfect, Becoming Happy: The promise of contemporary wedding cultures

Contemporary media representations of weddings depict the bridal performance as a moment of post-feminist perfection through a focus on the bride’s perfect body and beauty (Broekhuizen and Evans 2014). This is exemplified in the media and its intense coverage of royal and celebrity weddings (e.g. the weddings of Kim Kardishian) where the bride is represented as the central focus point of attention. The intensive focus on the bride is mirrored in the re-immergence of discourses that locate the wedding as one of the most important milestones in a woman’s life. However very little research has explored how wedding cultures in 21st century Western societies are rooted within a post-feminist sentiment that is characterized by a reliving of traditional values (e.g. weddings and baking culture), alongside modernization discourses that include new forms of femininity (e.g. in work and career).

This paper aims to bridge this gap, by exploring how the perfect bridal experience is represented, and how these representations resonate and become part of the lived experience of being a bride. Drawing from an ongoing ethnographic immersion that combines digital ethnographic practices with auto-ethnographic reflection on my own bridal experience, I aim to explore how the wedding promise of ‘becoming beautiful, becoming perfect, becoming happy’ is lived and retold. Combing different methodological approaches, my fieldwork enabled me to obtain a more holistic understanding of the wedding experience. In this paper, I draw specific influence from Barad’s (2007) notion of intra-action to show how discourses of beauty, perfection and happiness are complex entanglements where desire, doubt and pain form lived experience of contemporary bridal becomings.

Francien Broekhuizen is a PhD-student at Coventry University, her research aims to explore the way women negotiate their bridal becoming through ethnographic practice that crosses the boundaries between offline and online orientated research fields. In doing so she draws from contemporary research about gender and affect studies.

Warm welcome!