The American Comparative Literature Association’s annual meeting will take place in Toronto on April 4-7, 2013. The overall conference theme is “Global Positioning Systems” . This CFP is for the panel “Remapping the Path of Narrative in the Age of the Internet: the Impact of Participatory Culture”.
Call for papers: Remapping the Path of Narrative in the Age of the Internet: the Impact of Participatory Culture
In these early years of the twenty-first century, it’s becoming clear that we are living in what Henry Jenkins calls a “participatory culture,” in which consumers of texts are becoming more and more engaged with the texts they are consuming. Producers of films and television shows create real, yet fictional websites for fans to visit and continue interacting with the stories outside of their regular viewing schedule. Authors engage with their fans on Facebook, Twitter, and their own blogs. Fans engage with the texts by creating their own texts (known as fanfiction) that continue or critique the source in a multitude of different ways, and in some cases even publish their own work to commercial acclaim (E.L. James). Is this development a brave new frontier, or a loss of the North Star that leads to the literary ship being lost at sea?
This panel is interested in mapping the ways in which this new literary context has influenced both the production and reception of texts. Papers addressing theoretical as well as practical effects of the rise of participatory culture will be considered.
Submissions are due by November 15, 2012.
Posted by request.