This is the early September MAPACA newsletter. Our next conference is November 10-13, 2021 and will be held online.
In This Newsletter, We Have:
Oct 1 Registration Deadline
Virtual Conference Rooms: Cimmeria!
New Area Spotlight: Asian and Asian-American Studies & Black Studies
Publisher’s Panel, with U of Kentucky Press and McFarland
Don’t forget to register for this year’s conference!
October 1 is the last day to register for this year’s conference! Don’t forget to go to mapaca.net today to register!
Welcome to Cimmeria!
For the 2021 MAPACA Conference, our virtual rooms will bear the names of famous sci-fi and fantasy worlds of authors who have made a firm imprint on American and popular culture. Up until the conference, we will be focusing on each world, the author, and their world’s impact.
Cimmeria (si-meria), Land of Darkness and Deep Night! Cimmeria - a gloomier land never was! Cimmeria features hills, darkly wooded, under skies nearly always gray, with winds moaning drearily down the valleys! This rugged land was the homeland of Conan the Barbarian, as created by Robert E. Howard and modeled on the North Sea area of Europe (Denmark and Scotland), though none of his original stories feature the space outside of a single poem. It is understood as a harsh and mountainous area, home to barbarian tribes, wolf packs, and little else.
Beyond Howard’s original stories between 1932 and 1936, other creators have set stories in the space. Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith set a few stories in Cimmeria in Marvel’s 1970s Conan comics, and John Milius opened his Conan the Barbarian (1982) in a wintery Cimmeria, though it a distant memory by the time the barbarian grows into Arnold Schwarzenegger. The most fully-fleshed out version of Cimmeria appeared in the short-lived syndicated series Conan the Adventurer (1997), which used the lush Puerto Vallarta, Mexico as its stand-in.
Cimmeria, historically referred to modern day Crimea, an ancient seafaring people of Thrace, featured as a Viking planet in the first season of Stargate SG-1, and is mentioned in Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler (1979).
Join us at MAPACA 2021, share our bounty and warm yourself by our campfire.
New Area Spotlight
We are pleased to announce that we will have four new areas at this year’s conference. We will introduce two in this newsletter and two in the next. Make sure to check out their panels at #MAPACA2021!
Asian and Asian American Studies
The Asian and Asian American Studies Area welcomes papers on all aspects of Asian and Asian American popular culture, including its production, consumption, and reception both locally and globally. We welcome both historical or contemporary approaches to the study of Asian and Asian American popular culture from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives, including anthropology, arts, comparative literature, cultural studies, education, economics, environmental sciences, ethnic studies, film studies, gender studies, history, philosophy, religion, sociology, or other disciplines related to Asian and Asian American popular culture.
For more information, please see https://mapaca.net/areas/asian-and-asian-american-studies
Black Studies
The Black Studies Studies area at MAPACA will provide a space for the critical examination of the human, cultural, social, political, economic, and historical factors that have created and shaped the African, African American and other African Diasporic experiences throughout the world. African, African-American, and Caribbean cultures, traditions, and values are crucial to an understanding of the vital importance of Africa as a major player in the global system in this age of global interdependence. The primary goal of the area is to understand the foundations of Black Studies as an interdisciplinary scholarly inquiry, and the diverse theoretical perspectives that characterize this academic field of study. It is our hope to articulate the acquisition of a solid knowledge base in the history, culture, and experiences of African people around the globe, as well as the contributions they have made to the development of world civilizations and popular culture.
For more information, please see: https://mapaca.net/areas/black-studies
Special Panel: Academic Publishing Q&A, featuring The University Press of Kentucky and McFarland
Please join us for our special roundtable Q&A about academic publishing. Do you have questions about how to write a great book proposal? Do you want to know more about how long it takes for your publication to go to press? Come ask academic publishing professionals from several publishers, including The University Press of Kentucky and McFarland! This special panel will be open to all registered participants at this year’s conference.
For more information about the panel, please see https://mapaca.net/conference/2021/academic-publishing-discussion-and-q.
For more information about The University Press of Kentucky, please see https://www.kentuckypress.com/.
For more information about McFarland, please see https://mcfarlandbooks.com/
Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association (MAPACA)
PO Box 1358, Lansdowne, PA 19050