CULTURAL HERITAGE INSTITUTIONS IN POPULAR CULTURE
Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)
42nd Annual Conference, Week of February 22-27, 2021
Submissions Open September 1, 2020
Submission Deadline: November 13, 2020
For the 2021 Conference, SWPACA is going virtual! Due to concerns regarding COVID-19, we will be holding our annual conference completely online this year. We hope you will join us for exciting papers, discussions, and the experience you’ve come to expect from Southwest.
Proposals for papers and panels are now being accepted for the 42nd annual SWPACA conference. One of the nation’s largest interdisciplinary academic conferences, SWPACA offers nearly 70 subject areas, each typically featuring multiple panels. For a full list of subject areas, area descriptions, and Area Chairs, please visit http://southwestpca.org/conference/call-for-papers/
Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:
• Histories and profiles of popular culture resources and collections in cultural heritage institutions; a chance to show off what you’ve got to scholars who might want to use it
• Intellectual freedom or cultural sensitivity issues related to popular culture resources
• Book clubs and reading groups, city- or campus-wide reading programs
• Special exhibits of popular culture resources, outreach programs, etc. of cultural heritage institutions
• Collection and organization of popular culture resources; marketing and ethical issues
• Web 2.0, gaming, semantic web, etc. and their impact on libraries, archives, museums, and digital humanities collections
• The role of public libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions in economic hard times and natural disasters
• Oral history projects
• Digital humanities and other digital/data-based projects on popular culture, the Southwest, and other relevant subjects, both those based in cultural heritage institutions and those in academia or other organizations.
We encourage proposals for panels and roundtables organized around common themes.
All proposals must be submitted through the conference’s database at http://register.southwestpca.org/southwestpca
For details on using the submission database and on the application process in general, please see the Proposal Submission FAQs and Tips page at http://southwestpca.org/conference/faqs-and-tips/
Individual proposals for 15-minute papers must include an abstract of approximately 200-500 words. For information on how to submit a proposal for a roundtable or a multi-paper panel, please view the above FAQs and Tips page.
SWPACA will offer registration reimbursement awards for the best graduate student papers in a variety of categories. Submissions of accepted, full papers are due January 1, 2021. SWPACA will also offer registration reimbursement awards for select undergraduate and graduate students in place of our traditional travel awards. For more information, visit http://southwestpca.org/conference/graduate-student-awards/. Registration for the conference will be open and available in late fall. Watch your email for details!
In addition, please check out the organization’s peer-reviewed, scholarly journal, Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, at http://journaldialogue.org/
If you have any questions about the Cultural Heritage Institutions in Popular Culture area, please contact its Area Chair, Dr. Suzanne Stauffer stauffer@lsu.edu.
