DOWNLOADABLE CONFERENCE PROGRAM [WITH ZOOM LINKS]
About the Conference
This conference is organized by graduate students and independent scholars. We appreciate the financial support of the Turner Lecture Series and the DeRoy Lecture Series. For more information about the various pop culture student organizations at Wayne State, please visit kinoclub313.com and our social media accounts:
The Kino Club 313 website also features a blog where we post reviews, listicles, articles, and interviews written by undergraduate students, graduate students, independent scholars, and faculty from Wayne State and beyond. If you are interested in contributing to our blog, send an email to kinoclub313wsu@gmail.com – we’d love to publish your work!
About the Virtual Conference
This virtual conference will combine asynchronous content (posted before, during, and after the conference dates) and synchronous events held over Zoom. Asynchronous content will include blog posts and YouTube videos.
We encourage all presenters and attendees to read/watch, comment, like, and share these submissions, which will be available for one calendar year following the conference (and then will be archived). We are also hosting several synchronous events during the conference, including panels, workshops, roundtable discussions, and our Turner and DeRoy Keynote Discussions. Zoom Invitation links are available at s.wayne.edu/waynepop and in the Synchronous Event Schedule At-A-Glance (pages 4-6) of the conference program.
Conference Code of Conduct
The WaynePop Organizing Committee is committed to providing a harassment-free experience for all conference presenters and attendees. All conference-goers are required to follow the below guidelines when communicating with each other (before, during, and after the conference, in all of our virtual spaces):
- If a speaker/attendee indicates a preferred name, nickname, or pronouns, please use those
- Keep comments civil – any derogatory or harassing comments will be deleted and the commenter will be blocked from further participation
- In Zoom meetings, please keep your microphone muted and use the “raise hand” feature to indicate that you’d like to ask a question or make a comment
- Please keep questions and comments brief during synchronous events; moderators will do their best to ensure that everyone who would like to will have the opportunity to speak
- In the case of high attendance at a synchronous event, moderators may ask attendees to use the chat exclusively and read selected comments aloud
- Use the conference hashtag (#WaynePop2021) in social media comments and tweets to ensure that conference-related materials are easy to track and follow
Report violations of this code of conduct to conference organizers at waynepop@wayne.edu or via FB messenger, Twitter DM, or in the Zoom chat.
How to Participate
1) Visit s.wayne.edu/waynepop for links and updates
2) Like/Follow/Subscribe to our social media pages and blog:
Facebook Group: for announcements, important links, and conversations before, during, and after the conference
Twitter: for announcements, important links, and live-tweeting during synchronous conference events
Conference Website: for access to written and image-based conference presentations (e.g. blog posts)
YouTube: for access to audiovisual conference presentations (pre-recorded papers, workshops, and panels)
3) Read/Comment/Share our conference presentations – we are hosting videos and informal blog posts from pop culture scholars around the world! Conference submissions will be released on a staggered schedule starting Monday, 9/20. Submissions will remain available to read and comment on after the conference is over for one year.
4) Attend synchronous conference events Friday, 9/24, Saturday, 9/25, and Sunday 9/26. For a full schedule of synchronous events, see pages 7-14.
Synchronous event schedule-at-a-glance
| Friday, September 24, 2021 | 10:00 – 11:15 AM | Panel A: “Through a Processor, Darkly: Memory and Culture as Reshaped by The Digital” |
| 12:00 – 1:15 PM | Workshop: “Antiracist Pedagogy: Utilizing Popular Culture to Examine Issues of Inequity” | |
2:15 – 3:30 PM | Turner Lecture: In Conversation with Marita Sturken | |
| 4:00 – 5:15 PM | Panel B: Racial Disruptions of Dominant Narratives | |
| Saturday, September 25, 2021 | 10:00 – 11:15 AM | Turner Lecture: In Conversation with Benjamin Han |
| 12:00 – 1:15 PM | Brown Bag Lunch/Meet & Greet | |
| 2:00 – 3:15 PM | Turner Lecture: In Conversation with Julian Chambliss | |
| 4:00 – 5:15 PM | Panel C: Closing Gaps in Youth and Fan Cultures | |
| Sunday, September 26, 2021 | 10:00 – 11:15 AM | DeRoy Lecture:In Conversation with Dan Hassler-Forest |
| 12:00 – 1:15 PM | Roundtable Discussion: “The Proliferation of Racial Trauma in Popular Culture: A Narrative Analysis” | |
| 2:00 – 3:15 PM | Panel D: Leaping into Fantasy through Class Warfare | |
| 4:00 – 5:00 PM | Final Remarks and Continuing the Conversation |
NOTE: This virtual conference is FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. All times listed are Eastern Standard Time.
Asynchronous Conference Presentations
Note: All conference submissions listed below will be presented asynchronously and available for viewing beginning on Monday, September 20th, 2021. Submissions will be available until September 2022, at which point they will be archived. Submissions here are listed in alphabetical order by the first listed author’s last name and categorized by submission type.
| Author | Affiliation | Title | Format |
| Cadwell, Shelby;Largent, Julia;Robbins, Margaret;Wagner-O’Daniel, Grace | Multiple | “Teaching through Disruption: A Pop Culture Pedagogy Roundtable” | Video |
| Edge,Thomas; Linares, Trinidad; Walton, Jim | Multiple | “Where Our Story Starts: Come From Away and A Wedding Party Looks Back” | Video |
| Fostar, Jonathan | Illinois State University | “Among the Tropicans of Tropico” | Video |
| Jordan, J. Scott; Di Minico, Elisabetta; Hintz, Vanessa; Trigg, Dylan | Illinois State University | “At the Ruins of Pop Culture: Trauma, Disruptions, Voids, and the Show-Me Power of Visual Narrative” | Video |
| Jordan, J. Scott; Carpenter, Stanford; Dandridge, Jr., Victor;Simmons, Alex; Wesselmann, Eric | Illinois State University | “Zombies, Blips, and the Apocalypse: Why Write Stories About Disruptions?” | Video |
| Tuinstra, Hunter | Wayne State University | “Apophenia and Alien Love: UFO Abduction Narratives as Technologies of the Self” | Video |
| Wathare, Jaya | University of Mumbai | “Mumbai’s Warli Revolt: Swadesi’s Song of Resistance” | Blog Post |
| Wesselmann, Eric | Illinois State University | “The Psychological Pleasure and Pain of Watching Virus Films During a Global Pandemic” | Video |
Full Schedule of Synchronous Events
Friday, September 24th
10:00 – 11:15 AM (EST)
Panel A: “Through a Processor, Darkly: Memory and Culture as Reshaped by The Digital”
Tyler Wertsch (Bowling Green State University), Moderator
“‘Protecting Our Very Way of Life From a Great Evil’: Synthetic Memory and Remediating the Cold War in Call of Duty: Black Ops and Cold War”
Leda Hayes (Bowling Green State University), “Telling Stories: Encoding Computer Heritage at Living Computers”
Haley Shipley (Bowling Green State University), “A Tale of Two Fronts: How Violence as a Verb Impacts and Contrasts WWI Histories in Video Games”
12:00 – 1:15 PM (EST)
Workshop: “Antiracist Pedagogy: Utilizing Popular Culture to Examine Issues of Inequity”
Vanessa Hintz (Alverno College), Facilitator
This workshop is designed for those engaged in teaching, learning, and/or administration in higher education institutions, with the goal of developing participants’ understandings of antiracism and systems of inequity within higher education. The workshop will be centered on three pillars: knowledge acquisition, increased self-awareness, and skill/strategy development. Concerning knowledge acquisition, a goal of this workshop is to improve participants’ knowledge concerning issues related to equity, diversity, and inclusion. The presenter will outline concepts and terminology associated with equity and equity-driven teaching practices. Popular culture media will be utilized to further emphasize points of salience. At the conclusion of the workshop, participants will be more knowledgeable of equity gaps within their classrooms, institutions, and surrounding communities, and be able to conceptualize working with unique populations of students, faculty, and administrators. This professional learning session will allow participants to explore biases and implicit beliefs concerning issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The workshop will facilitate self-exploration and awareness and development of an antiracist identity. Participants will work to develop strategies for effectively resolving interpersonal conflicts that arise as the result of oppression and privilege, as well as differing worldviews and perspectives. Ultimately, participants will gain ideas and strategies for cultivating environments in which students, faculty, and administrators feel safe to explore issues related to (in)equity and inclusivity. Utilizing relevant artifacts and narratives from popular culture, participants will work to develop processes for classroom management and engagement that promote multiculturalism and diversity, reaffirm interpersonal connection, and avoid exclusionary practices that disproportionally affect culturally diverse students. The workshop facilitator is a licensed clinical psychologist who utilizes expertise in human behavior to provide training and consultation focused on issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion. Popular culture media (i.e., movie clips, song excerpts, etc.) will be used to facilitate discussion, emphasize relevant points, as well as to elicit audience participation.
2:15 – 3:30 PM (EST)
Turner Lecture: In Conversation with Marita Sturken
Trinidad Linares (Bowling Green State University), Discussant
Marita Sturken (NYU Steinhardt), Turner Keynote Speaker
Bio: Marita Sturken is Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. She is the author of Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering (1997), Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (with Lisa Cartwright, third edition 2018), and Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism From Oklahoma City to Ground Zero (2007). Her book Terrorism in American Memory: Memorials, Museums, and Architecture in the Post-9/11 Era will be published by New York University Press in January 2022.
4:00 – 5:15 PM (EST)
Panel B: “Racial Disruptions of Dominant Narratives”
Shelby Cadwell (Wayne State University), Moderator
Jack Whatley (Bangor University),
“The Orcs Fight the Elves: Allegories for the Interplay of Eastern Traditions and Their Effects”
Jeannine Ortega (Florida State University),
“Surviving Latina Spitfires and Queer Performance in West Side Story and the Impossible House of Beauties: How Rita Moreno and the House of Xtravaganza decenter Latina Assimilation”
Linda Levitt (Stephen F. Austin State University),
“Civil Rights, Black Lives Matter, and the Iconic Photographs of Popular Culture”
Saturday, September 25th
10:00 – 11:15 AM (EST)
Turner Lecture: In Conversation with Benjamin Han
Shelby Cadwell (Wayne State University), Discussant
Benjamin Han (Tulane University), Turner Keynote Speaker
Bio: Benjamin Han is a media historian and global media studies scholar whose work focuses on television studies, race and ethnicity, and the cultural intersections between East Asia and Latin America. He is the author of Beyond the Black and White TV: Asian and Latin American Spectacle in Cold War America (Rutgers University Press, 2020). He is currently working on a book that examines how Latin America is imagined in South Korean television.
12:00 – 1:15 PM (EST)
Brown Bag Lunch / Meet & Greet
Join the conference organizers and your fellow presenters and collaborators for a brown bag lunch! We’ll take this time to get to know each other, share our research interests, and network. All are welcome to attend!
2:00 – 3:15 PM (EST)
Turner Lecture: In Conversation with Julian Chambliss
Matt Linton (Wayne State University), Discussant
Julian Chambliss (Michigan State University), Turner Keynote Speaker
Bio: Julian C. Chambliss is Professor of English and the Val Berryman Curator of History at the MSU Museum at Michigan State University. He is a core participant in the MSU College of Arts & Letters’ Consortium for Critical Diversity in a Digital Age Research (CEDAR) and co-director for the Department of English Digital Humanities and Literary Cognition Lab (DHLC). His research interests focus on race, culture, and power in real and imagined spaces. His recent writings on comics have appeared in More Critical Approaches to Comics (2019) and The Ages of Black Panther (2020). His MSU Museum exhibition, Beyond the Black Panther: Visions of Afrofuturism in American Comics, is currently available as a physical and virtual experience. He is co-editor of Ages of Heroes, Eras of Men: Superheroes and the American Experience (2013), Assembling the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Essays on the Social, Cultural and Geopolitical Domain (2018), and Cities Imagined: The African Diaspora in Media and History (2018). His comics and digital humanities projects include The Graphic Possibilities OER, an open educational resource focused on comics, and Critical Fanscape, a student-centered critical making project focus on communities connected to comics in the United States. He serves as faculty lead for the Graphic Possibilities Research Workshop (GPRW) in the Department of English and Comics as Data North America (CaDNA) an ongoing collaborative project at Michigan State University that uses library catalog data to explore North American comic culture.
4:00 – 5:15 PM (EST)
Panel C: “Closing Gaps in Youth and Fan Cultures”
Courtney Bliss (Bowling Green State University), Moderator
“Finding the Good in the Global Pandemic: What we can learn from the #Ratatousical community”
Elaine Morton (York University),
“The Kids Aren’t Alright: An Examination of the Portrayal of Mental Health in Popular Culture Texts Directed at Young Adults”
Blue Profitt (University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee),
“Bass Guitars, Bed Sheets, and Broken Engagements: Beatlemania as Feminine Subjectivity in I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978)”
Sunday, September 26th
10:00 – 11:15 AM (EST)
DeRoy Lecture: In Conversation With Dan Hassler-Forest
Jacqueline P. Hudson (National Underground Railroad Freedom Center), Discussant
Dan Hassler-Forest (Utrecht University), DeRoy Keynote Speaker
Bio: Dan Hassler-Forest works as an Assistant Professor in the department of Media and Culture Studies, where he has taught courses on media industries, transmedia storytelling, critical theory, cultural analysis, and critical race theory. Dan has been a member of the Utrecht Young Academy, a bridge between young researchers from all Utrecht University faculties, since 2019.
He has published scholarly books and articles on science fiction, cultural studies, media theory, anti-capitalism and popular culture, and zombies, and also writes frequently for more popular platforms like The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He is currently writing two separate books on the work of Janelle Monáe and the intersections between race, gender, and sexual identity in capitalist media industries.
12:00 – 1:15 PM (EST)
Roundtable Discussion: “The Proliferation of Racial Trauma in Popular Culture: A Narrative Analysis”
Byron B. Craig (Illinois State University), Discussant
Vanessa Hintz (Alverno College), Discussant
J. Scott Jordan (Illinois State University), Discussant
Leandra Parris (College of William & Mary), Discussant
Roundtable Description:
The goal of this roundtable discussion is to examine the propagation of racism and racialized trauma in popular culture, to include discussion of the mechanisms by which these narratives influence audiences. More specifically, panelists will examine ways in which popular media can be constituted through a larger cultural trauma, while simultaneously constituting trauma. Often, stories centered on racial trauma quickly turn tragic and leave audiences devastated. The discussion will be contextualized by outlining contemporary understandings of race/racism in America, to include the influence of social movements (i.e., #BlackLivesMatter) on popular culture, media industries, and audience practices. In addition, panelists will outline considerations of the experience of racial trauma from a biopsychosocial lens, to include discussion of biological/neurological concerns, psychological considerations, as well as impact(s) on social and relational functioning. Popular narratives that give artistic voice to the lived experience of BIPOC folks will be highlighted.
In addition, panelists will discuss manifestations of racial trauma within the context of mental health and wellness, to include discussion of strategies for coping, as well as approaches to racial allyship. Depictions of allyship in popular culture will also be examined (i.e., the “white savior,” etc.). Panelists include professionals and scholars across various disciplines, to include a clinical psychologist and consultant, a rhetorician, a school psychologist, as well as a cognitive psychologist. Popular culture media (i.e., movie clips, song excerpts, etc.) will be used to facilitate discussion amongst panelists, as well as to elicit audience participation.
2:00 – 3:15 PM (EST)
Panel D: “Leaping into Fantasy through Class Warfare”
Matt Linton (Wayne State University), Moderator
Stephanie Austin (Independent Scholar),
“Morgan Jones as a Walker: Supporting Workers in an Apocalypse”
Jack Whatley (Bangor University),
“The Adventure Economy: Social Status in Times of Crisis Through the Lens of Fantasy”
4:00 – 5:00 PM (EST)
Final Remarks and Continuing the Conversation
Join conference organizers to discuss strategies for continuing the conversation about disruptions, gaps, transitions, and leaps beyond the borders of this conference. We’ll share strategies for staying connected with one another, and invite you to participate in our post-conference blog series.
Turner Lecture Series:
The Turner Lecture was introduced by the generous donation of the Turner family in memory of Dennis Turner, who was an Assistant Professor of Film in the Department of English from 1981 until his untimely death three years later. Dennis had a wide knowledge of film with special interests in French and German cinema, particularly in the work of Godard, Herzog, Fassbinder and Truffaut. He was the author of seven articles on film and was also working on a book on New German cinema and a screenplay at the time of his death. The Dennis Turner Lecture is given by a prominent film scholar or practitioner, to honor the memory of this extraordinary scholar and teacher.
DeRoy Lecture Series:
This yearly lecture series is coordinated by our endowed DeRoy Chair, Professor Steven Shaviro. Professor Shaviro arranges two to four DeRoy Lectures each term, inviting a variety of prominent scholars in literature, film, rhetoric, and critical/cultural theory to spend a day at Wayne State that includes a meeting with graduate students and a public lecture. Past DeRoy lecturers have included Patricia MacCormack (Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge), Ian Bogost (Georgia Institute of Technology), Heather Love (University of Pennsylvania), and Tom Gunning (University of Chicago).
Conference Organizers:
Shelby Cadwell, Matt Linton, Bernadette Kelly, Trinidad Linares, Courtney Bliss, Jan Blaschak, Sean O’Brien. With special thanks to faculty adviser Chera Kee.