Welcome to The Beatles 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!

 

CFP for The Beatles Area

Atlanta, GA, 2026

On August 18, 1965, four musicians from Liverpool landed in Atlanta, Georgia, where they performed a set list of 11 songs at the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. Their stay was brief (less than 12 hours), but their impact on the world has lingered for decades. As Ian Leslie writes, “The Beatles continue to permeate our lives. We listen to their songs while driving and dance to them in clubs and in kitchens; we sing them in nurseries and stadiums; we cry to them at weddings and funerals and in the privacy of bedrooms.” The story of the Beatles evolves in new AND old formats of media that include live webcams of Abbey Road and archival footage and pictures found by directing legends like Peter Jackson and Beatles scholar Kenneth Womack.

 

PCA’s selection of Atlanta is timely since Paul McCartney is returning to Atlanta, this time to extend his “Got Back” tour. As Bethany Easton and Richard Driver have argued, McCartney’s ongoing efforts in music, such as promotions for recent albums, his Carpool Karaoke with James Corden, and his ongoing presence at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts have created a new iteration of “Beatlemania” for today’s listeners, scholars, and fans. The last ten years have also seen the launch of the Journal of Beatles Studies and pilots of graduate programs that study the band in conjunction with tourism and local histories. The journal Rock Music Studies has a call for papers for a special issue on the Beatles to be published within the next few years. Podcasts on the Beatles have exploded in number, and Sirius XM continues to celebrate the band by giving them their own channel. Both McCartney and Ringo Starr released new albums that helped us navigate the Covid-19 pandemic. The duo even completed the last Beatles single, titled “Now and Then,” which won a Grammy for Best Rock Performance in 2025.

 

Join us at PCA to celebrate and study the Beatles legacy as it continues to unfold in 2026. Our Area is committed to multidisciplinary scholarship that includes fields such as history, musicology, English, media studies, cultural studies, and, most importantly, popular music and its transformative power to bring diverse people together. We hope you’ll join us for more than just your presentation. At the conference, the Area hosts social events that include listening to Beatles albums with discussion leaders, watching a Friday night movie (Beatles related), and sharing meals together. We host a panel on mid and late-career academic journeys (“The Long and Winding Road”), and we stay in touch during the year through online writing sessions and brainstorming of our research. In sum, our conversation continues long after panels are finished.

 

Submissions

For panel submissions, panel chairs should include their abstract and title of their paper as well as the title of the panel, names of panelists (typically 3 to 4 participants), and a 100-word summary of the panel’s focus. Individual panelists should submit a 200-word abstract, including the title. Please provide contact info with email address, university affiliation with city, and phone number.

Topics for consideration include but are not limited to—

 Recent biopics and documentaries of the Beatles and their contemporaries 
 The Beatles and fanfiction, fan videos, and online communities
 Famous collaborative partnerships like Lennon and McCartney
 Historical preservation of memorials in New York City, London, Liverpool, and elsewhere
 Social media and the Fab Four (Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat)
 Beatles’ remixes and covers of famous songs
 The Beatles and Black music
 The Beatles and live theater (example of Cirque du Soleil’s Love)
 Reissues and expansions of Beatles albums and related collector’s items
 Literature that centers or references the Beatles legacy (Tom Barbash’s The Dakota
Winters, Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood)
 The Beatles and podcasts (guests, special episodes, legacies, YouTube channels)
 Streaming Beatles content (Spotify, Sirius XM, Abbey Road live webcam, Apple Music)
 The Beatles and Artificial Intelligence
 The Beatles post-1960s and their solo work or collaborations with other artists (e.g. The
Traveling Wilburys)
 The Beatles and the 60s Counterculture
 The Beatles and the Avant-Garde
 How Pop Music Broke the Binary (Sasha Geffen’s book title): Queering the Beatles

 

Questions?

Please email Area Chair Shannon Howard at kshoward07@gmail.com. All submissions must be  sent to PCA’s website portal at www.pcaaca.org to be eligible for review. We look forward to seeing you in Atlanta!

 

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