Welcome to our Events Calendar roundup for the month of August! The Events Calendar can be found on the OTW website and is open to submissions by anyone with news of an event. These can be viewed by event-type, such as Academic Events, Fan Gatherings, Legal Events, OTW Events, or Technology Events taking place around the world.
- Nine Worlds Geekfest 2014 is a “large fan-run multi-genre geek event in London August 8-10. Nine Worlds aims to promote fan-led events, and have conversations with creators (writers, directors) in a safe, diverse environment.” All proceeds from the Nine Worlds convention will go to their charity partner English PEN, a charity that supports persecuted writers around the world and is the UK’s oldest human rights organization.
- SMASH! Sydney Manga and Anime Show is a Japanese pop culture convention August 9-10 that is devoted to artists, creators and fans alike. The primary focus is to allow fans to meet and interact with other like-minded people, show off their own creative talents, buy anime and manga related goods, and celebrate their fandom in a social environment. SMASH! encourages all forms of anime fandom through a variety of activities such as cosplay, panels, games, and other special popular culture events.
- Creatures of the Night is a one day convention August 10 in Sydney, Australia. Teen Wolf fans can participated in Guest Talks, Photo and Autograph sessions, VIP option and lots of fun! Live guests include Holland Roden, Ian Bohen, and Sinqua Walls
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LonCon 2014 will be the 72nd meeting of the World Science Fiction Convention in London August 14-18. It will be the 75th anniversary of the very first Worldcon held in New York in 1939 – something they will be celebrating within their programme and events.
Loncon 3 will be a celebration of science fiction in all its forms with over 7,000 fans expected, along with hundreds of writers, editors, artists, and other professionals from across the genre.
Transformative Works and Cultures editor, Karen Hellekson, will be delivering one of the Academic keynote presentations, and will discuss a range of Doctor Who fan videos, including those that recreate missing episodes and reframe post-2005 episodes.
- Wizard World Comic Con will hit Chicago August 21-24! Chicago Comic Con is a comic and pop culture convention featuring panels involving celebrities, entertainers, and creators from a diverse range of entertainment. Special events, autograph signings, an exhibition hall, and meet and greets. Featured guests include, cast of the Walking Dead, Doctor Who, Marvel Films, and more.
Calls for Papers this month come from:
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Fandom: Practices and Participatory Cultures. Fandoms represent participatory communities that are so thoroughly inscribed within our social fabric, and integral to the way many individuals understand their identity, that it warrants holistic study in an interdisciplinary context.
The 2nd Global Conference on Fandom: Practices and Participatory Cultures facilitates deeper engagements involving participants from across disciplinary and professional backgrounds in explorations of the nature, meaning and implications of fandom as it impacts individuals, fan communities and the societies in which they operate. The Steering Group welcome the submission of proposals for presentations, workshops, preconstituted panels, performances and installations that explore themes such as Intersections between Fandom and Tourism, Fan Practices and Culture, “Understanding the fan” and more. Deadline for 300 word abstract is 15 August 2014.
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Harry Potter on the Page and on the Screen: Adaptation/Reception/Transformation is an essay collection that proposes to explore the cultural, political, aesthetic, and pedagogical implications of the adaptation of this generation-defining young adult narrative in order to expand our scholarly understanding of this far-reaching international literary and cinematic event, consider what we can learn about the process of cinematic adaptation of literary sources, and facilitate the classroom exploration of the Harry Potter series. Some questions that might be considered:
· How does the overlapping adaptation history of the Harry Potter series affect theoretical questions of fidelity, interpretation, and transformation in film adaptation studies?
· In what ways do the novel and movie series represent the same or different narrative universes?
· How was the dual development of the novel and film series affected by the concurrent development of Web 2.0 and interactive fan culture?
Interested contributors may email inquiries or one page abstracts by 15 August 2014.
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CFP: Otherness and Transgression in Celebrity and Fan Cultures Cultural Transformations Research Group at Aarhus University, located in Aarhus, Denmark, is pleased to announce that qualified research papers are considered for prospective publication in a special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Otherness: Essays and Studies. The notions of otherness and transgression play an essential part in the cultural work and practices celebrities and fandoms perform inasmuch as these concepts are inseparable from the celebrity and fan cultural processes of social in/exclusion, identification and dissociation, uniformity and diversification, and forces both drawing and disrupting demarcations between normalcy and deviance.
Welcome Topics Include: The Intersection of Celebrity and Fan Studies, Sex, Gender, Sexual Differing, and Queering the Fan / Celebrity Body, Cross-Over Celebrities; Ethnicity, Hybridity, and Fandom in Transcultural Contexts, Social Media and the Construction of Celebrity as Other
Submit abstracts of no more than 300 words by Friday, August 22, 2014
Help out a researcher!
This month we have received two requests for fans to take part in research.
The first request is from Lucy Baker. She is researching genderswap fanworks (commercial and non-commercial) as part of her thesis and is asking for fans to take a survey about fans’ perception and enjoyment of genderswap fanworks. She is also looking for participants to interview as well.
Her research has been approved by the Griffith University Human Research Ethics Committee and if anyone has any queries they can email her at lucy.baker [at] griffithuni.edu.au or contact her associate supervisor Margaret Gibson at margaret.gibson [at] griffith.edu.au or supervisor David Ellison at david.ellison [at] griffith.edu.au.
Lucy is also available by Skype at ID mslucybaker, by telephone +61 422 415 238, or by mail at:
School of Humanities,
Nathan campus,
Griffith University,
170 Kessels Road QLD 4111, Australia.
The research results will be shared with participants and online as part of her completed thesis.
Our second request is from Katie Morrissey. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and is researching fan fiction for her dissertation. She’s been researching fan cultures for some time and wants to publicly share some of her research with fans/fan communities and get your comments!
The Fandom Then/Now website has been launched to share this work. In turn, the project seeks comments and observations from fans on the project and some its ongoing research questions. These comments will be used for research purposes and may be incorporated into the project. Keep in mind that your public comments on this project and the pseudonym you use with them could potentially be used as part of presentations and publications connected to this research, so if this is a concern you can protect your identity to keep your fan pseudonyms out of any publications/presentations.
Katie’s project has been reviewed and granted Exempt Status by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s (USA) Institutional Review Board. The project identification number is IRB#: 14.399. The UWM IRB may be reached by emailing irbinfo@uwm.edu or calling (414) 229-3173.
If you have questions about the research, her dissertation advisor is Dr. Tasha Oren. She can be reached at tgoren [at] uwm.edu or through the English Department’s phone number at 414-229-4511. Katie can also be reached at fandomthennow [at] katiedidnt.net or morriss9 [at] uwm.edu.
If you have requests for research participation, please view our policy for inclusion at our website.
The OTW encourages anyone to submit an event that’s not already listed, and to check out the calendar throughout the year!