CFP The Mouse’s Monsters at PCA (12/23/2021; PCA Virtual 4/13-16/2021)

The Mouse’s Monsters at PCA: Further Examples of Monsters and the Monstrous in the Worlds of Disney

Sponsored Session Proposed for the 2022 Virtual Conference of the Popular Culture Association

Sponsored by the Monsters & the Monstrous Area and the Disney Studies Areas of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association for PCA’s Disney Studies Special Topic Area.

Virtual event: 13-16 April 2022.

Proposals due by 21 January 2022 (UPDATED).

 

At its 2021 Virtual Conference, the Monsters & the Monstrous Area and the Disney Studies Areas of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association (a.k.a. NEPCA) organized three successful sessions on the theme of monsters and the monstrous in the fictional worlds of the Walt Disney Company.

We’d like to continue to build on those investigations this coming spring at the national meeting of the Popular Culture Association (a.k.a. PCA) and to also help support the PCA’s new Disney Studies Special Topic Area.

For this session, we’re most interested in proposals related to representations of monsters and the monstrous in the traditional Disney brand and in Pixar, but papers related to more recent properties and acquisitions (for example ABC, ABC Family/Freeform, Hulu, Lucasfilm, Marvel, the Muppets, Saban Entertainment, and Twentieth Century Fox) can be also be valid approaches. All submissions will also be considered for inclusion in a collection of essays based on the topic.

 

Potential topics might include the following:

• Adaptations of classic monster stories.
• Aliens.
• Animals as monsters.
• Attractions.
• Bad dreams.
• Communities of monsters.
• Constructs.
• Cryptids.
• Curses.
• Dinosaurs.
• Disguises.
• Disney as monstrous.
• Disney Villains.
• Gargoyles.
• Ghosts.
• Halloween.
• Halloween-themed productions.
• Haunted houses (and mansions)
• Horror-themed productions.
• Human “monsters”.
• Imaginary creatures.
• Legendary creatures.
• Magical creatures.
• Magic-users.
• Othered individuals.
• Reanimated dead.
• Shape-shifters.
• Technology and monsters.
• Undead/zombies.
• Underworld and other realms of the dead.
• Vampires.
• Weather-related monsters.
• Witchcraft/witches and wizards.

 

If you are interested in joining this session, please submit your information into PCA’s online system at https://pcaaca.org/conference/submitting-paper-proposal-pca-conference. You’ll need to create a profile and upload a biographical statement AND join the PCA for the coming year before the system will allow you to reach the proposal screen. Be sure to select “Disney Studies” as the area for your paper. Proposals should be about 250 words.

Please also send a copy of your proposal to the session organizers, so we can keep track of them: Michael A. Torregrossa (NEPCA’s Monsters & the Monstrous Area Chair) at popular.preternaturaliana@gmail.com and Priscilla Hobbs (NEPCA’s Disney Studies Area Chair) at p.hobbs-penn@snhu.edu.

Further details on PCA’s Disney Studies Special Topic Area can be found at https://pcaaca.org/area/disney-studies-special-topic-2022.

NEPCA’s Monsters & the Monstrous Area maintains a blog at https://popularpreternaturaliana.blogspot.com/.