[Commlist] Call for Panels: Popular Cultures

Call for Panels

»Popular Cultures«

8th annual conference of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft (KWG)

Saarland University, 27–30 September 2023

A serious interest in academic research on the ›popular‹ arose probably 
mainly out of the critical consciousness of the »Cultural Studies«, when 
from the 1960s onwards, ›other‹ aesthetics and practices increasingly 
caught the attention of scholars. It was particularly the search 
for cultural artifacts which reproduce social norms and hierarchies in 
the (mass) media sphere that promoted a first critical examination of 
advertising or soap operas, of ›trivial‹ literature or comics, of 
television series or pop music. The fact that popular 
products—especially since the beginning of modernity—have been 
more widely received than the supposedly ›high-quality‹, intellectual 
works of art supported by elitist bourgeois institutions, had until then 
been pushed into the background by an uncritical canonization and the 
one-sided aggrandizement of high culture. Yet the skepticism and even 
rejection of the ›popular‹, often accused of a schematic, innovationless 
culture industry (»Kulturindustrie«) following capitalist principles, is 
countered by a multiplicity of different aesthetics, media, and 
practices: Pop art and pop music, for example, also (self-)critically 
reflect their mass character; pop literature writing creates a 
comprehensive archive of everyday life and brands; and fan fiction or 
cosplay enable the participation of the otherwise passive recipient. In 
the meantime, the academic debate of popular aesthetics and 
practices—already institutionalized at universities as »Popular Culture 
Studies«—has become an integral part of Kulturwissenschaften/Cultural 
Studies in its broadest sense.

The focus of the conference will be on cultural studies questions both 
from historical and contemporary as well as from synchronic and 
asynchronous perspectives. Possible topics for panels and papers 
include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Theories of the ›popular‹ as well as methodological approaches to the 
study/analysis of

popular culture(s)

• Issues of race, class, gender, and diversity as they relate to popular 
culture(s)

• Analysis of specific media, materials, practices, or aesthetics of the 
›popular‹

• Examination of the relationships, influences, and interdependencies 
between the ›popular‹

and the ›high-brow‹ or ›subcultural‹

• Manifestations of the ›popular‹ outside European and North American 
cultures

• etc.

How to apply:

The duration of a panel is 120 minutes and should include 3-4 
talks/papers. Panel proposals can be submitted to the organizers by 15 
October 2022 and should include an abstract (approx. 300-500 words) as 
well as a short biobibliographical note of the organizers. Feedback on 
your abstract can then be expected promptly. For organizational reasons, 
the list of presenters within the panels as well as the abstracts 
must then be received no later than 31 January 2023, so that we can seek 
(partial) travel funding for participants from outside of Germany.

There will be separate time-slots reserved within the program for KWG 
section meetings; likewise, a student section is planned within the 
annual meeting.

Organization:

Astrid M. Fellner ((fellner /at/ mx.uni-saarland.de))

Jonas Nesselhauf ((jonas.nesselhauf /at/ uni-saarland.de))

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