PCA/ACA

Eros, Pornography & Popular Culture

Primary tabs

The Eros, Pornography & Popular Culture Area of the National Popular Culture Association (PCA) invites scholars to participate in the PCA’s annual conference. Details of the conference can be found at pcaaca.org.

 

In academia, “porn” is often at best ignored and at worst outright shunned because of its association with lowbrow culture, obscenity, and general embarrassment. However, it remains one of the oldest, most diverse, most progressive, and most popular forms of literature and popular culture. Eros can take many forms: from men’s magazines to steamy romance novels, from to queer cartoons to ancient poetry, from classic art to drawings on bathroom stalls. Pornography may be satirical or transgressive. Erotica may be implied or explicit. It may be used to push cultural boundaries of constructions of gender or sexuality or to allegorically explore social and political forces in news media. It may redefine the concept of high art or simply satisfy base carnal desires.

 

The Eros, Pornography & Popular Culture Area requests submissions exploring the erotic culture or the use of the erotic in media. Papers dealing with any aspect of eros and pornography, broadly defined, will be considered. Some samples of past topics include:

  • BDSM and Authority Exchange Relationships: Real Life Relationships and How They Work
  • From Wanderlust to Steven Universe: The Imaginal Potential of Ethical Non-Monogamy in Television
  • Fifty Shades and the Tampon Taboo: Menstruation and the Media Marketplace
  • Between the Fold: “Pornified” Visual Metonymy in Advertising
  • Unbridling Experiences: Playing with Guilty Pleasures
  • Curing a Moral Illness: Folk Etiology and Treatment of Addictive Sexuality in Modern Cinema
  • Consuming From the Margins: Micropopcorn and the Sexual Scavenger
  • Polyamory 101 – A Roundtable

Submission requirements: Scholars interested in presenting a paper at the national conference should submit a 200-word abstract and a short introductory bio (2-3 sentences) to the PCA database.  

 

This call asks for individual paper proposals or submissions for entire panels. If you are submitting a panel, please make sure to note the members of your panel.  

 

Papers should be delivered in 15-20 minutes. The PCA limits presenters to one paper given at the conference.

 

Please send all inquiries to the area chair:

Christopher Maverick

[email protected]

 

2023 Conference Dates and Deadlines

15 Aug-22                                            2022 Conference Information Available on Website
15 Sept-22 Submissions Open 
07 Oct-22 Early Bird Registration Begins
20 Dec-22 Deadline for Paper Proposals
02 Jan-23 Early Bird Registration Ends
03 Jan-23 Regular Registration Begins
13 Jan-23 Preliminary Schedule Available
01 Feb-23 Regular Registration Ends for Presenters; Those Presenters Not Registered by the Date Will be Dropped From the Program; Late Registration Continues for Nonpresenters
17 Mar-23 Late Registration Ends for Nonpresenters
 5-8 April-23

conference in San ANTONIO, TX
 

All presenters must be current, paid members of the PCA and registered for the conference. Non-presenters who attend the full conference must also pay membership fees.

To attend the National Conference, members must pay the membership fee and the registration fee. Membership fees are non-refundable and non-transferable.

 

Submit a Paper Proposal for the 2023 PCA Conference: 

Submissions for paper proposals are now open. The submission deadline is December 20, 2022. Please be sure you read and understand all instructions, policies, and procedures before you submit your proposal. 

 

SUBMIT

 

 

 

Area chairs

Christopher Maverick