Call for Papers – DEADLINE EXTENDED!
Mothers, Motherhood, and Mothering in Popular Culture
Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)
40th Annual Conference, February 20-23, 2019
Hyatt Regency Hotel & Conference Center
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Proposal submission deadline: November 1, 2018 November 15, 2018
Proposals for papers and panels are now being accepted for the 40th annual SWPACA conference. One of the nation’s largest interdisciplinary academic conferences, SWPACA offers nearly 70 subject areas, each typically featuring multiple panels. For a full list of subject areas, area descriptions, and Area Chairs, please visit http://southwestpca.org/conference/call-for-papers/
For our 40th Annual Conference celebration, we are exited to announce that special guest Pam Houston will be joining us as a keynote speaker. She is the author of short story collection Cowboys are My Weakness and Waltzing the Cat, novels Sight Hound and Contents May Have Shifted, and the essay collection, A Little More About Me. Houston is a professor at the University of California Davis and teaches in the Low Residency MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She also cofounded and directs the literary nonprofit Writing By Writers.
SWPACA will also offer 3 preconference workshops scheduled for Wednesday, February 20th, 9am-12pm. Join us this year for workshops in academic publishing, self-publishing, and using popular culture in the classroom!
In her introduction to 21st Century Motherhood: Experience, Identity, Policy, Agency, Andrea O’Reilly identifies three categories of inquiry for scholars engaged in motherhood studies: “motherhood as institution, motherhood as experience, and motherhood as identity or subjectivity” (2). The panel area chairpersons seek papers that study one or more of O’Reilly’s motherhood categories by exploring how popular culture representations of mothers complicate notions of societal ideals of motherhood, mothering performance, or mothering identity. We invite papers that consider motherhood depictions in popular media such as television, movies, magazines, advertising, art, government policy, child-rearing manuals, photography, online media, and literature. We particularly encourage papers that also take up issues of intersectionality and mothering including gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, age, ability, citizenship, nationality, and social class.
All proposals must be submitted through the conference’s database at http://conference.southwestpca.org/
For details on using the submission database and on the application process in general, please see the Proposal Submission FAQs and Tips page at http://southwestpca.org/conference/faqs-and-tips/proposal-submission-faqs-and-tips/
Individual proposals for 15 minute papers must include an abstract of approximately 200-500 words. Including a brief bio in the body of the proposal form is encouraged, but not required.
For information on how to submit a proposal for a roundtable or a multi-paper panel, please view the above FAQs and Tips page.
The deadline for submissions has been EXTENDED to November 15, 2018!
SWPACA offers monetary awards for the best graduate student papers in a variety of categories. Submissions of accepted, full papers are due December 1. For more information, visit http://southwestpca.org/conference/graduate-student-awards/
Registration and travel information for the conference is available at http://southwestpca.org/conference/registration/
In addition, please check out the organization’s peer-reviewed, scholarly journal, Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, at http://journaldialogue.org
If you have any questions about the Mothers, Motherhood, and Mothering in Popular Culture area, please contact its Area Chair, Kathleen Lacey, at klacey@southwestpca.org, or Assistant Area Chair Jennifer Martin at jdmartin@email.sc.edu.
We look forward to receiving your submissions!
Kathleen Lacey
Area Chair, Professional Development, and Awards Coordinator
Southwest Popular/American Culture Association