Symposium Textual Echoes: Fan Fiction and Sexualities to be held at the University of Umeå, Sweden, 11-13 February 2010.

Keynote speakers: Kristina Busse (University of South Alabama, USA) and Elizabeth Woledge, The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, UK.

The focus is on fan fiction published on the internet rather than in fanzines or in other printed forms. In an attempt to move away from the contemporary ethnographic stress on studies of fandoms, focus of papers should be on close reading analyses; how the texts can be approached as literary artefacts and what theoretical models can be applied. The symposium’s subtitle: “fan fiction and sexualities” further represents possible approaches, but is to be seen as non-excluding.

Suggested panels:

• Fan fiction and femininities
• Fan fiction and masculinities
• Fan fiction and queer readings
• Fan fiction and generic structures
• Fan fiction and discourse
• Fan fiction and tradition
• Fan fiction and language
• The importance of fan fiction today
• Suggestions for additional topics are welcome.

Proposal deadline: May 30, 2009.
Please send your abstract (no more than 200 words) to the project group Cyber Echoes at: textualechoes# gmail.com. Further information about Cyber Echoes and about the symposium can be found at our website: http://www.mos.umu.se/forskning/cyberekon (please note that information there will be continuously updated).

Source: genus@genus.gu.se