[ecrea] CFP: Picturing the Popular

Call for Papers

7th Annual Critical Studies Graduate Student Conference

“Picturing the Popular”

University of Southern California

Los Angeles, CA

Saturday, April 13, 2013



Submission Deadline: Monday, January 14, 2013



The graduate students of Critical Studies at the University of Southern 
California’s School of Cinematic Arts seek presentations from fellow 
graduate students that examine the relationships and tensions between 
popular culture and academia.



In engaging with popular objects, scholars, critics, and consumers must 
all negotiate the potential discontinuities between popularity and 
cultural or artistic merit.  “Picturing the Popular” turns critical 
inquiry back onto the scholar to explore how our own intellectual and 
pedagogical praxes impact, and are impacted by, the study of popular 
culture.



This conference poses two sets of questions.  One: what does academic 
scrutiny and critical inquiry reveal about our criteria for defining and 
evaluating popular culture?  Does academic attention always recognize 
the depth and cultural significance of a work, or is there a risk of 
artificially inflating the importance of a work that is otherwise 
unremarkable?  How does academic thinking define our understandings of 
what is popular or unpopular?



Two: How is our very understanding of the popular informed by the 
functions of academia?  To what extent is academic inquiry determined by 
popular trends, accessibility of media objects, accepted wisdoms, and 
academia’s own tastes and biases?  How does the specialized set of 
intellectual parameters employed by academics impact our 
professionalization?



We welcome papers, creative projects, and other non-traditional 
presentations exploring the roles that popular, mainstream, or hegemonic 
media (and their opposites) play in our scholarship and our classrooms.  
Presentations may address popular culture in connection to the widest 
possible range of social, cultural, political, and economic phenomena.  
Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:



•       fandom and user-generated media

•       star studies

•       genre studies

•       industry research

•       issues of taste, value, quality

•       canonicity

•       popular or "accepted" histories, identities, political narratives

•       populism and social movements

•       popularity across national boundaries, issues of translation, 
adaptation

•       alternatives to mainstream popularity (avant-garde/art cinema, 
trash cinema)

•       “disreputable” media, such as reality television or pornography

•       “aca-blogging” and other forms of popular culture production by 
academics

•       academic practice, pedagogy, professionalization



Please submit your proposals to Lorien R. Hunter ((lrhunter /at/ usc.edu)) and 
Mike Dillon ((dillon /at/ usc.edu)) by Monday, January 14, 2013.  Submissions 
should include a 250-300 word abstract and a brief bio.  Please feel 
free to contact us with questions.

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