Personal / Website News
Fan2Fan Podcast Appearances
The Fan2Fan Podcast are doing a themed months for May and June: John Carpenter films! Episodes published during these months are about John Carpenter films, with a few about Pete and Bernie’s travels to locales exploring Carpenter pop culture.
Two of these podcast episodes Michele, Joshua Pruett, and myself got to be guests on The first one is on Christine.
And the second is on Prince of Darkness.
The episodes can be streamed at the Fan2Fan Libsyn website (link for Christine and link for Prince of Darkness), via the embedded players below, or through your podcast app of preference. Do check these episodes out!
John Carpenter's Christine – Fan2Fan Podcast
John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness – Fan2Fan Podcast
Two New Website Sections
I’ve added two new sections to my website.
The first is a “Support Me” page. For a consolidated list on ways to support me and my writing, this is the page to check out.
Next is a page of CFPs – calls for papers, proposals, and conferences. I like to proliferate other scholars’ CFPs when I can, so here is a resource folks can use. If you have a CFP you need shared around, let me know!
Calls for Papers/Proposals
Here are some new pop culture CFPs that have crossed my paths. Links to these will also be in the CFP page on the navigation bar.
“Children of the Night” International Dracula Congress 2024
It is our great pleasure to invite you to 2024 double edition of “Children of the Night International Dracula Congress”. This year, participants are invited to join the ONLINE part of the Congress on October 25th and 26th, 2024 (Friday and Saturday) via Zoom.
A few days later, we will gather IN PERSON for further Halloween sessions in Brașov, Romania from October 31st to November 2nd, 2024. We have decided to hold two parts of the Congress separate from one another, so that Brașov participants were able to fully engage in academic discussions, get to know each other and discover the wonders of Transylvania outside the conference venue.
October 31st (Thursday) and November 1st (Friday) will be devoted to academic speeches and discussions, with a walking tour of Brașov and various evening activities. On November 2nd (Saturday), we will set on a one-day trip to Bran Castle, a nearby Dracula related pop-cultural tourist attraction.
Additionally, from October 30th to November 2nd, International Dracula Film Festival is taking place in Brașov and the Congress participants will be able to join chosen festival events.
We invite everyone who is interested in speaking at the 2024 conference to submit an abstract of 150 – max. 250 words plus a meaningful title indicating the planned content of your presentation to dracongress@gmail.com. The official language of the conference is English. The abstracts must be submitted by email and fit the conference main topics (please, have a look at the slider with 8 workshops on our website). Deadline for abstract’s submissions: August 31, 2024. Please, state if you intend to participate online or in person.
Also, remember to dust your Vampire/Dracula/Gothic costume for our annual Costume Contest (in person and online entries welcome!).
Conference fee
- 50 euro (physical participation in Brasov)
- 10 euro (online participation).
- Listeners join free of charge.
The 2024 COTN International Dracula Congress is organised by:
- Transilvania University of Brașov, Romania (Florin Nechita),
- Maria Curie-Skłodowska University Lublin, Poland (Magdalena Grabias),
- State University of Rio de Janeiro in Brasil (Yuri Garcia).
- In collaboration with The Dracula Fan Club, Mexico (Enrique A. Palafox).
More details will be announced soon. https://dracongress.jimdofree.com/
Preternatural in Popular Culture
Monsters & the Monstrous Area of the Northeast Popular Culture Association 2024
The Monsters & the Monstrous Area of the Northeast Popular Culture Association (NEPCA) invites submissions under the general theme of the Preternatural in Popular Culture.
For this year, submissions should focus on creatures and/or creations that exist above, beyond, and/or outside the natural world and the ways these entities are represented in popular culture (anime, comics, fiction, film, manga, streaming video, television, etc.) from across time and space.
The Monsters & the Monstrous Area is among NEPCA’s largest areas, and we often have blocks of sessions running across the full event. To best accommodate everyone, single presentation submissions are preferred over panel submissions.
Please direct any questions or concerns to Michael A. Torregrossa, Monsters & the Monstrous Area Chair, at popular.preternaturaliana@gmail.com, and check out our blog Popular Preternaturaliana: Studying the Monstrous in Popular Culture for ideas and past sessions. The blog can be accessed at https://popularpreternaturaliana.blogspot.com/.
Conference Information
The 2024 Northeast Popular Culture Association (NEPCA) will host its annual conference this fall as a hybrid conference from Thursday, 3 October, through Saturday, 5 October. Presenters will be required to become members of NEPCA for the year.
Virtual sessions will take place on Thursday evening and Friday morning via Zoom, and in-person sessions will take place on Friday evening and Saturday morning at Nichols College, in Dudley, Massachusetts.
For more information about the conference and to submit a proposal, please visit our NEPCA’s dedicated Conference site at https://nepca.blog/2024-conference-page/. Be prepared to answer the following questions about your proposal:
- Proposal Type (Single Presentation or Panel)
- Modality (in person or virtual)
- Subject Area
- Working Title
- Academic Affiliation (if any)
- Abstract (250 words)
- Short bio (50-200 words)
- Accommodations
- Preferences for when to present
The submissions site will be open until 11:59 PM (EDT) on 15 June 2024.
Toyetic Television: A Companion
From G. I. Joe workout routines and Sailor Moon wedding gowns to Bratz doll make-unders and Ferby modding, toyetic, merchandise-driven television from past decadeshas proved remarkably resilient. Toyetic television clearly holds a far greater and more enduring cultural significance than definitions such as “glorified half-hour commercials” (Hilton-Morrow & McMahan 2003, p. 78) might suggest. It is meaningful to individual viewers, it becomes “social lubricants facilitating communication between one child and another” (Steinberg 2012, p. 90), and it can connect generations through shared viewing and playing pleasures. The idea of the program created to sell merchandise has been reversed in cases where the production of a program is funded through the
sale of its merchandise, such as The Amazing Digital Circus. The boundary between quality and merchandise-driven television is no longer clear, with even educational programs such as Sesame Street now associated with significant merchandising. One of the aims of this volume, then, is to ask how we might define toyetic television as we move into the second quarter of the millennium. Intended for Peter Lang’s Genre Fiction and Film Companions series, this volume turns a critical eye to the genre of toyetic television and its many transmedia intertexts, exploring the significance and resonance these texts hold for children, adults, and communities. It examines the
movement of toyetic texts cross-culturally, intergenerationally, and between media. It analyses texts and audiences, industry and regulators, to uncover the significance of toyetic television to the contemporary moment.
Children’s programming is the most widely internationally traded category of television, while simultaneously being subject to intensely localized regulatory systems. Sesame Street has had numerous localized versions, for example, including Nigeria’s Sesame
Square, Mexico’s Plaza Sésamo, and pan-Arabic collaboration Iftah Ya Simsim. When toyetic television moves transculturally, it encounters new reception contexts. Japanese animation Dragon Ball found a devoted fanbase across Latin American, leading to new merchandise such as Argentinian soccer jerseys featuring Dragon Ball characters. A particular focus of research, advocacy, and debate around toyetic television has been concern about potential negative impacts on children from the blurring of boundaries between entertainment and advertising. While it may seem quaint in the current era of toy unboxing YouTube channels, the fear that toyetic
television would cause rampant consumerism, rigid perceptions of gender roles, increased American cultural imperialism, and actual acts of violence amongst children was widespread in the 1990s. Those fears are mirrored in recent years by hope that the same toyetic franchises could reflect socially progressive ideas such as body positivity in the remake of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018-2020), queer representation in recent seasons of Power Rangers, and greater racial diversity in last year’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023). Toyetic Television: A Companion moves beyond these good/bad media effects binaries to consider how and what meaning is made with, through, from, and by the various networks surrounding toyetic television and its consumers.
Topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Transnational and intercultural approaches to toyetic television
- Gender, race, disability, and sexualities in toyetic television
- Material cultures: Collections, cosplay, and toy modification
- Toyetic television production and consumption in the Global South
- The future of toyetic television in the streaming age
- Remakes and reimaginings
- Nostalgic engagement with toyetic television
- Afterlives of toyetic television in fan fiction and paratextual play
- Video games and digital paratexts
- Theoretical approaches to transmediation, media-mix, and franchising
- Regulation, national or cultural identity, and children’s television
- Educational and psychology approaches to toyetic television
- Music and sound effects in toyetic franchises
- Toyetic media for adults and intergenerational consumption
- Ludic approaches to television
- Fan studies approaches to toyetic television
- Toyesis and toyetics in unexpected places
Please send 300 word abstracts and a short biographical note (50-100 words) to Dr. Sophia Staite at staitepublications@gmail.com by August 30th 2024, with a view to having a completed essay by early 2025. Finished essays will be approximately 4000 words long (excluding bibliography), should be accessible but touch on the big ideas, and will ideally take a main example as a ‘lens’ to look at the wider topic.
Miscellaneous Tidbits
The Neverending Streamer – Fallout Episode 1 and 2
My friend, Travis Lakata, has started watching Fallout on Netflix and doing a write up on each episode. Check out his thoughts on episode one and on episode two at his Substack.
