Welcome to the Popular History in American Culture community! We’re so happy you’re here and we want you take full advantage of the opportunities our new platform provides. Please read over the code of conduct so we can continue to ensure a safe and supportive space for all. Thank you for your dedication to the Popular Culture Association!

Call For Papers

Popular History is a genre of history writing/presentation that aims at a general audience rather than an academic audience. However, it’s so much more than that. Popular history isn’t bound by a single medium – it’s everywhere. We see it in movies, television and streaming series, music, theater, video games, advertising, museums, living history sites, family history, historybounding, and podcasts, just to name a few areas.

Although media tells an often-fictionalized version of history, it still introduces audiences to something that eclipses their educational experiences. It can bring to mind the idea that the historical past is just a generation or two away and can serve as a spark that lights a deeper interest or fuels an already existent one. For some, it’s deeply personal and exploring genealogy, genetic testing, and claims of heritage can lead to the pursuit of an authentic, individual connection to our nation’s history.

History means something new to each new generation. What stories do we tell and retell? How is history used as shorthand? What do we take of the past to tell more about who we are in the present?

This area welcomes abstracts, single paper proposals and panel proposals on any aspect of popular history in American culture, including, but not limited to, exploration of history beyond a classroom or other academic setting through popular portrayals of historical events, people and/or eras in movies, television, and popular fiction, historically-based leisure activities such as genealogy, quilt and antique collecting and scrapbooking, local history collections and activities, visitorship to historical museums/sites, and heritage tourism. Presentations exploring nostalgia and heritage in popular culture are also encouraged.

Previous conference presentations have included:

·      Historic Preservation and Heritage Tourism in Television Towns

·      “Interpreting a Moment in Time: The American Revolution in Public and Private Museums,”

·      “This Work Is Based On…: Adaptation and Holocaust Knowledge in American Film and Television,”

·      Making Our History: How Artists Rendered Lincoln’s Legacies

·      “Good Times?” : Using Norman Lear to Teach about Race and Gender

·      Using the Story Song to Explain Culture, History, and Cultural History

·       Fostering Inter-generational Conversations with Old-Timey Mexican Ballads

·      Nobody’s Baby: Virginia Hill as a Feminist Icon

·      In Vino Veritas: How Drunk History tells a version of the truth, but is it good enough?

·      What are they doing with their hands?: Skinny American Revolutionaries, French flights of fancy, and Colonial Williamsburg

·      Display, Décor and Decorum: Problems and Possibilities of the Smithsonian’s First Ladies Collection

·      Who Tells Your Story: Tracing Alexander Hamilton’s Narrative

·      The World Turned Upside Down

·      From Remembering the Past to Forgetting the Present in American Historical Reenactment

·      More than Wearing White: Working Class Commemoration and Modern American Culture

·      The Presentation of War in the American Girl Collection

·      My, How the Past has Changed: The History of History on TV

We are working with other areas this year on joint panels. If you are interested in proposing a joint venture with another area, please reach out.

Potential participants need to be active, paid members in order to submit proposals; both membership in PCA/ACA and registration for the conference are required in order to present.

Please submit (100-250 words) paper proposals, panel proposals (up to 4 speakers and/or discussion panels of up to 4 participants) or abstracts (including title).

Paper acceptance obliges participants to present the paper at the conference. Multiple submissions to different areas are not allowed. Please note that you must be present at the conference to read your own paper.

Please direct any questions to the area chair --

Dr. Tiffany L. Knoell

tknoell@bgsu.edu

Important Dates to Remember:

• Database opens for Submissions - Sept. 1, 2025
• Early Bird Registration Begins - Sept. 1, 2025
• Deadline for Paper Proposals - Nov. 30, 2025
• Travel Grant Applications Due - Dec. 15, 2025
• Early Bird Registration Ends for Presenters - Dec. 31, 2025
• Regular Registration Begins for Presenters - Jan. 1, 2026 
• Travel Grant Decisions / Notifications - Jan. 31, 2026
• Regular Registration Ends for Presenters - Jan. 31, 2026
• Late Registration Starts for Presenters - Feb. 1, 2026
• Preliminary Program draft available - Feb. 6, 2026

Those Presenters Not Registered by Feb. 15 Will be Dropped from the Program

CONFERENCE IN ATLANTA, GA - April 8-11, 2026