Welcome to our Events Calendar roundup for the month of April! 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.
- A two-day research conference, ‘Fifty Shades of Grey: An Inquiry into ‘Dangerous Things’, will be held in Brighton, England on 3-4 April. The conference is sponsored by the Centre for Research in 21st Century Writings at the University of Brighton and intends to explore issues of feminism in popular culture through the lens of fiction written for women. E.L. James’s trilogy will be used as a core text for this purpose as trends in “fiction for women” and popular culture are examined.
- YaYCon (Yaoi and Yuri Con) 2013 will be held on 6 April 2013 in Amersfoort, The Netherlands. The convention will feature lectures, panels, cosplay and cooking workshops, a game room, a manga library, video and cosplay contests, and a number of special guests. This year’s theme is ‘back to the future’ and will involve a science-fiction tie-in.
- Transmedia, Hollywood 4 will be held 12 April at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television in Los Angeles, California. The event, co-founded by Henry Jenkins and Denise Mann, is an annual one-day event focusing on transmedia and the entertainment industry. The event brings together those involved in creating entertainment media and researchers as part of an interdisciplinary symposium.
The first is for a volume of essays examining Joss Whedon’s Firefly to be published by Scarecrow Press. The anthology is set to include 12 essays in the areas of politics, race, class, and agency, and is being edited by Michael Goodrum and Philp Smith. Papers should be 5,000-7,000 words in length and proposals of 300-500 words are due to mgoodr[at]essex.ac.uk by 1 May. More information is available at the book’s WordPress site
Our second call is for papers and speakers for the Anime and Manga Studies Symposium being held as part of the Anime Expo from 4-7 July 2013 in Los Angeles, California. Proposals are being accepted across a full range of anime and manga related topics and should include a title, a 300 word (maximum) abstract, and a CV. Proposals are due to [email protected] no later than 1 May 2013. Additional details are available in the Anime and Manga Studies Symposium call for papers.
The OTW encourages anyone to submit an event that’s not already listed, and to check out the calendar throughout the year!