[ecrea] CFP: "Jersey Shore" conference at UChicago

Call for Papers

*The UChicago Conference on Jersey Shore Studies*
October 28th, 2011
The University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is proud to announce *The UChicago Conference on
Jersey Shore Studies*, the first conference to interrogate the landmark MTV
reality television show "Jersey Shore." The conference will take place on
the campus of the University of Chicago on Friday, October 28th, 2011.
Confirmed speakers include Alison Hearn (University of Western Ontario),
Candace Moore (University of Michigan), and Brian Moylan (Gawker Media).

The conference is open to graduate and undergraduate students, scholars, and
cultural commentators researching and writing about "Jersey Shore." Papers
on all topics related to "Jersey Shore" are welcome.

*Possible topics include (but are not limited to):*
 -Guido lifestyle, culture, and identity
-The construction and performance of ethnicity
-Gender norms, gender roles, and gendered forms of behavior and emotion
-Reality television as documentary, laboratory, and ethnography
 -Confinement, surveillance, and small group dynamics
-Celebrity and the illusion of "reality"
-Temporal and narrative structures within and between seasons
-Rhetorics of  "Jersey Shore": authenticity and "fake"-ness, nicknames and
metonyms, being "done" and being "over," etc.
-Parody, self-referentiality, and intertextuality in the later seasons of
"Jersey Shore"
-Familial metaphors, relations, and imagery
-Fetish objects, ritual practices, and sacred spaces
-Violence, vulgarity, and the morality of "Jersey Shore"
-Textual and characterological analysis of Snooki's novel, *A Shore Thing*
-The impact of "Jersey Shore" on the reality television industry
-The "Jersey Shore" ecosystem: spin-offs, endorsements, and multimedia
marketing

To submit, *please send an abstract of 500 to 600 words* to David Showalter
at (davidshowalter /at/ uchicago.edu). Be sure to include an email address. The
deadline for submission is 5 pm (EST) on *August 1st, 2011*. All presenters
will be notified by August 12th, 2011.

The conference is free and will be open to the public. Please direct any
questions to: David Showalter at (davidshowalter /at/ uchicago.edu). You can also
follow the conference on Facebook (search for "The UChicago Conference on
Jersey Shore Studies") and Twitter (@JerseyShoreConf).


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