Disasters, Apocalypses, and Catastrophes (Ficociello and Bell)
Call for Proposals: Sessions, Panels, Papers
POPULAR CULTURE ASSOCIATION & AMERICAN CULTURE ASSOCIATION
2020 JOINT NATIONAL CONFERENCE
2020– Philadelphia – 4/15-4/18
For information on PCA/ACA, please go to http://www.pcaaca.org
For conference information, please go to http://www.pcaaca.org/national-conference/
PROPOSAL DEADLINE: NOVEMBER 24, 2019
In a hyper-mediated global culture, disaster events reach us with great speed and digital detail, and we begin forming, interpreting, and historicizing catastrophes simultaneously with people worldwide. Are we inside the era of disasters or are we merely inundated by mediated accounts of events categorized as catastrophic? How do these mediated accounts affect policy, poverty, and the public? Of particular interest is the question of what role do academics play in disaster culture and policy?
Disasters, Apocalypses, and Catastrophes offers a forum for these questions and critical approaches surrounding the culture of disasters, catastrophes, accidents, and apocalypses in global art, literature, media, film, and popular culture. Disasters, Apocalypses, and Catastrophes will address broader disciplinary topics and innovative intersections of humanities, musicology, social science, literature, film, visual art, psychology, game studies, material culture, media studies, ecology, and information technology.
General Topics
- Eco Criticism, Eco Culture
- Teaching ecocriticism and disasters
- Trump Administration and Climate Policy
- Global Warming, Climate Change
- Deniers of climate change
- Disaster capitalism
- War Ecology
- Slow Violence
- Hyperobjects
- Native Cultures and Eco-policies
- TV and Film: The Walking Dead, The Leftovers, Falling Skies, The Dome, etc.
- Zombie and Apocalyptic imaginaries
- Social Media and disasters
- Doomsday preppers
- History and disasters
- Eco/Culture Events
- Disasters in popular culture
- Time and temporalities of disasters
- Representations and narration of disaster
- Disasters and personal narratives
- Disaster aesthetics
- Disaster metaphors, concepts and symbolic forms
- Ethics and politics of disasters
- Natural disasters in climate rhetoric
- Disaster literature and art
- Notions of national identity through disaster representation
- Portraying suffering in news, digital culture, literature, and TV
- Affective responses to disaster in local, national, and global contexts
- Celebrity humanitarianism and disaster engagement
- Distinctions between man-made and natural disaster
- Public, private, and nonprofit responses to disaster
- Epidemics, pandemics, and disease
Interested individuals are asked to submit an abstract of no more than 250 words (including presentation title) and complete contact information to http://conference.pcaaca.org.
Although the site is pretty user friendly, find general instructions at
http://pcaaca.org/national-conference/proposing-a-presentation-at-the-conference/
Travel and research grants are available: http://pcaaca.org/grants/
Questions may be addressed to either:
Robert Ficociello
Holy Family University
Philadelphia, PA
disasterculture@yahoo.com
Robert Bell
Loyola University
New Orleans, LA
504.865.3094
