We invite scholars from all academic disciplines to submit a proposal on their variety of unpopular culture of choice—whether it be on Edgar Allan Poe or Stephenie Meyer, on Justin Bieber or Black Metal, on camp or hipsterism, on New Criticism or Queer Theory, on Atari’s E.T. or Duke Nukem Forever, on Birth of a Nation or Django Unchained, on Finnegans Wake or 50 Shades of Grey, or on anything that is unpopular or should be (or shouldn’t). Please send abstracts (or topical rants) of no more than 300 words, as well as a brief bio statement, to poehlmann[at]lmu.de by April 26, 2013.
Despite ongoing attempts to cross borders and close gaps, popular culture is still often construed in opposition to high culture in contemporary academic and non-academic discourses. Partly indebted to what could be labeled a ‘Birmingham-School-tradition’ of the study of the popular, scholars have repeatedly attempted to ‘deconstruct’ the popular by problematizing various binaries the study of popular culture might summon; especially with regard to processes of identity formation, agency, and political positionalities.
Yet the concept of popular culture itself also implies a dichotomy of a very different kind, and this conference seeks to explore the implications of this Other, an excluded middle that seeks to provide a new angle on popular culture: the unpopular. As an adjective, it can be used to describe either popular or high culture (and one might even define high culture by it), depending on one’s ideological perspective, but as a concept it offers a third term that complicates the other two, and that accordingly deserves more critical attention.
