We are pleased to announce a Call for Papers for submissions to the Eighth Annual Fandom and Neomedia Studies (FANS) Conference in Irving, TX, 3-5 June 2022, at the Irving Convention Center at Las Colinas.

Fandom for us includes all aspects of being a fan, ranging from being a passive audience member to producing one’s own parafictive or interfictive creations. Neomedia includes both new media as it is customarily defined as well as new ways of using and conceptualizing traditional media.

Ours is an interdisciplinary group, including historians, psychologists, scientists, writers, independent scholars, and industry professionals. This allows for a wide range of opinions in our peer review process, both for the conference and the journal. We welcome contributions from all disciplines and from all levels of academic achievement as we value the intersection of fandom and academia. Our conference is thus unique in its blend of traditional and modern elements. Submissions are welcome from professors, students, and independent researchers. Topics may come from anime, manga, science fiction, television series, movies, radio, performing arts, or any other popular culture phenomenon and their respective fandom groups.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

Women and minorities in media
Esports and team dynamics
Stage performance and puppet shows
Twitter literature
Science in cinema
Webcomics
Fanfic communities
Politics in video games
Historical fiction
Race in popular culture
Multilingual media and code switching
Pop culture parenting
Religious media
Media technologies
Costuming and cosplay
Social media in war zones
Ecocinema and ecocriticism
Economics of fandom

Abstracts of no more than 500 words must be submitted by 1 April 2022. Please also include your CV. Authors accepted for the conference will be notified by 15 April 2022. Successful submissions to the conference will also be published in the following Summer edition of The Phoenix Papers, our annual peer-reviewed journal. If you wish to submit a paper for inclusion in the journal but not for conference consideration, the same requirements and deadlines apply but no registration fee is required. Please indicate your preference in your submission email.

Because conference papers will be included in our journal, they must conform to our Style Guide. Presentations will be 20 minutes long with 10 minutes for Q&A sessions. We are open to full panel discussions if a group of presenters wishes to be scheduled together.

The FANS Conference is hosted and sponsored by A-Kon, the longest continually-running anime and manga convention in North America. Conference registration entitles you to the full enjoyment of A-Kon and its activities, including a chance to study anime, manga, and gaming fans in their native environment.

We are also accepting panel proposals for general fandom audiences. These may be on any topic within the FANS fields of study and should be formatted to be interesting and informative for both academic and popular groups.

Registration information will be posted in January 2022.

We also accept article and review (book, film, game, etc.) submissions for those who are unable to attend the conference in person. No registration or fee is required for non-presenting publication.

Please use our Contact Us page should you have any questions. All submissions should be sent by email.

ISSN: 2325-2316

Conference and Editorial Board:

Chair: J. Holder Bennett, Professor of History, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas, USA

Co-Chair: Andrew Tague, Texas A & M University at Commerce, Commerce, Texas, USA

Dr. Marc Hairston, Research Scientist, William B. Hanson Center for Space Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas, USA

Dr. Michael Vandehey, Professor of Psychology, Midwestern State University, Wichita Falls, Texas, USA

Jonathan Davis, Independent Entrepreneur, Colleyville, Texas, USA

Helen McCarthy, Author and Founder of Manga UK, London, England, UK

Jonathan Tarbox, Instructor, Prince Sultan University, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Kyle Hammonds, Graduate Student Liaison, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA

Karson Bryant, Undergraduate Student Liaison, Collin College, McKinney, Texas, USA
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