MAPACA Newsletter - April 2025
This is the April MAPACA Newsletter.
In this newsletter, we have:
Our new look and MAPACA.net login information!
MAPACA 2025 Summer Virtual Symposium
Response call for papers - Eroticism in the age of censorship
In-person conference reminders
Our new look and MAPACA.net login information
You may notice that the newsletter and our website have a fresh look! Our site needed a major software upgrade, so over the past few months we've been working hard to rebuild it from the ground up, while also redesigning some key features of our conference-management system. Here’s some of what you can look forward to:
New page layouts, with more room for content and improved legibility and accessibility, to complement the June 2024 redesign of Response
A new proposal-submission workflow to better guide our aspiring presenters through the process
For area chairs, a new conference dashboard that focuses on what's important at any given time
We can now manage multiple conferences at once—the MAPACA Annual Conference and the Virtual Symposium—all from the same site! How fancy is that?
We'll highlight what's new and what's changed as new features become available in the coming weeks
Here’s information on how to log in to the new site when you visit:
If you've logged into mapaca.net in the past decade, log in using your email address and the password you used before, and they should still work
If you can't remember your password, you can always request a new one
If you haven't changed your password in a while, this is also a great opportunity to set a new one, and check one item off your spring-cleaning to-do list!
If you can't remember your login email address, please do not create a new account, and ask for our help
While we finish moving all our content to the new site you may occasionally find a broken link or something that doesn't look quite the way it should. If you do, or if you need information that you used to be able to find on the old site, let us know!
MAPACA 2025 Summer Virtual Symposium call for proposals
Proposals are welcome on all aspects of popular and American culture for inclusion in the 2025 Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association (MAPACA) Virtual Symposium, to be held on July 20, 2025. Single papers, panels, roundtables, and alternative formats are welcome. The online event is open internationally and we especially invite anyone unable to attend our in-person conference in November. Presenters are welcome to submit separate proposals for both this Summer Virtual Symposium and our in-person conference in November.
Proposals should take the form of 300-word abstracts, and may only be submitted to one appropriate area. For a list of areas and area chair contact information, visit our Areas Page. General questions can be directed to mapaca@mapaca.net. The deadline for submission is May 30, 2025.
MAPACA’s participants are college and university faculty, independent scholars and artists, and graduate and undergraduate students. MAPACA is an inclusive professional organization dedicated to the study of popular and American culture in all their multidisciplinary manifestations. It is a regional division of the Popular Culture and American Culture Association, which, in the words of Popular Culture Association founder Ray Browne, is a “multi-disciplinary association interested in new approaches to the expressions, mass media and all other phenomena of everyday life.”
For more information, about our Summer Virtual Symposium and to submit a proposal, please visit the Summer Virtual Symposium page. We will have more information regarding submissions to the November MAPACA 2025 Annual Conference very soon.
Response call for papers - Eroticism in the age of censorship
Globally, we are experiencing a moment of heightened anxiety surrounding work and discussions about sex, eroticism, bodies/pleasures, identity, and desire, among many other topics. Indeed, scholars and researchers focused on the erotic often grapple with the label and association of “dirty work,” described as “occupational tasks and jobs that were ‘physically, socially or morally’ tainted” (224). Coined by Everette Hughes (1962), this term has been applied to research on sex and sexuality, as well as other subjects that may provoke controversy. Louisa Allen (2019) utilized the term “dirty work” to address the frustrations involved in publishing images of penises in scholarship related to sex education. Feona Attwood (2010) engaged with the term to explore research in pornography and the representation of women. Janice Irvine has specifically contributed to discussions at the intersection of sexuality research and dirty work, highlighting how scholars and researchers have faced stigmatization, censorship, and even exclusion from researching based on prevailing cultural and academic attitudes (2014-2018). Samantha Keen (2021) expanded this dialogue, reflecting on the challenges of working as a “sexademic” while bringing attention to the lived realities of researching topics that warrant more scholarly focus and interest yet remain increasingly stigmatized and censored.
This special issue aims to gather articles that specifically address the conversations mentioned above. In a global cultural environment facing threats to post-secondary education and attacks on DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), Critical Race Theory, and Sex Education, what are the real-time implications for researchers in these areas of inquiry? Amid the looming threat of Project 2025 and increasingly vitriolic conservative mandates, particularly in the US, how are researchers engaged in the fields of gender, sexuality, eroticism, censorship, and identity navigating the fallout? What does the future hold for this work? How do researchers perceive themselves and their contributions? What fears, anxieties, and frustrations arise at the intersections of this challenging work?
Please send a 250-word abstract to Dr. Jessica Floyd (JFloyd1@umbc.edu) and Dr. Jonathan A. Allan (AllanJ@brandonu.ca). The deadline for abstracts will be June 1, 2025, final submissions will be due by January 1, 2026.
In-person conference reminders
The MAPACA 2025 Annual Conference will be held November 6-8 at the Sonesta Philadelphia Rittenhouse in Philadelphia, PA. More details will follow in the coming months. Mark the dates in your calendar today!
