[Commlist] CfP: Reactionary politics, women, and popular culture

Call for Papers

*Reactionary politics, women, and popular culture*
*One day symposium: 21st May 2025*
*Loughborough University, East Midlands campus (and online) *
/Opening keynote: Professor Angela McRobbie (Goldsmiths)/
/Welcome and introduction: Dr. Jilly Kay (Loughborough)/

Feminist media and cultural studies scholarship has long wrestled with 
the complex and historically shifting relationships between feminism, 
gender politics, and popular culture.  In this one-day symposium, we 
invite papers that focus on feminised popular culture in a context of 
resurgent reactionary politics. While there is an increasing recognition 
of the role that women are playing in the rise of the organised far 
right - a phenomenon emblematised by Marine Le Pen - what remains 
under-researched and under-theorised is how female-centric/ popular 
culture/ is responding to, shaped by, or entangled with these 
reactionary forces.
We are living in a time of rising right-wing authoritarianism, racism, 
anti-migrant hatreds, and the insurgent “anti-gender” movement - 
including attacks on gender studies. Scholarly attention has 
increasingly trained on the role that /masculinist/ digital culture 
plays in these phenomena, including the rise of the manosphere and the 
alt-right, reactionary "wellness" influencers, anti-feminist 
“manfluencers” such as Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson, and the growing 
power of the anti-feminist “red pill” philosophy. These have all been 
subjected to critical scrutiny because of their constitutive role in the 
spreading moods of nihilism, resentment and hate. But what should we 
make of popular culture and digital media forms that are addressed to 
/women/ - what role do tradwives, “dark feminine” influencers, the "4B" 
movement, and so-called “reactionary feminists” play in this 
conjuncture? To what extent are social media genres of feminine fitness 
content, women’s wellness influencers, and female dating influencers 
entangled with reactionary forces?
This symposium invites papers that analyse this “reactionary turn” in 
feminised popular culture and digital media. We particularly encourage 
submissions from postgraduate students and early career scholars. In 
addition, we welcome submissions from those whose work focuses on 
non-anglophone, non-western contexts.
Questions that papers may consider are:
How does reactionary politics interpellate women through popular culture 
and digital media forms?
How should we understand the shifting role of popular feminism in this 
reactionary conjuncture?
What new theoretical frames do we need to understand the perplexing new 
entanglements of feminised cultural forms with reactionary politics?
To what extent do these emergent forms of reactionary, female-centric 
popular culture represent a break with post-feminism, and to what extent 
may they be continuous?
How might we theorise these phenomena which take shape in culture and 
media? What specific role is being allocated to culture in the 
production of female subjects aligned with these reactionary and far 
right politics?

*Submissions should be sent to **(_j.kay /at/ lboro.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(j.kay /at/ lboro.ac.uk)>_**by 22 January, 2025 *
*Please include an abstract of 300 words and a short author biography *
*Please state whether the paper will be presented in-person or online *


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