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The Cultures of Popular Culture Biennial conference of the Royal Irish Academy Committee for Modern Languages, Literary and Cultural Studies  Queen’s University, Belfast, 13th - 14th December 2013Call for PapersPopular Culture has long been absent from the syllabus, eschewed by researchers and viewed condescendingly sometimes even by its most adept practitioners. It has come a long way to become the thriving academic discipline it is today. Just as the term Popular Culture describes the widest range of practices, Popular Culture Studies cover the most heterogeneous objects. While this very diversity makes it exciting as a research field, it presents a challenge in terms of methods and approaches. To promote scientific exchanges at international level, Popular Culture Studies need elements of comparability and theorization. The biennial conference of the Royal Irish Academy, hosted by the School of Modern Languages at Queen’s University Belfast, intends to offer a forum for discussion between academics, teaching and researching in the fields of Popular Cultures. It will consider the benefits of studying Popular Cultures in Modern Languages Studies and seek to map current areas of research. It presents a distinctive opportunity to discuss corpora and contrast approaches.Keynote Speaker :  Professor Diana Holmes (Leeds):  “The Way We Read Now: Popular and Middlebrow Fiction in Twenty-First Century Europe”.Topics for discussion include but are not restricted to:Translation      and interpretation of Popular CultureCultural      icons and cultural iconicityPopular      cultures as media culturesVisual and      digital culturesTeaching      Popular Cultures in their original languageCultural      categories, normativity, canonicityConsensualism,      sensationalism and mass appealGlobal      mainstream cultures and resistanceFetishism,      tosh and trashSelf-reflexivity      and parodyMass      educationSport      cultures and the bodyDemocratic      culture and satireFolk      culturesPapers (to be given in English) are welcome on topics relating to popular cultures in any area of Modern Languages Studies. Postgraduate research students are encouraged to submit proposals.Please send 200-word proposals by the 1st of October 2013 to the conference organisers:Dr Tori Holmes, Spanish and Portuguese Studies, QUB :  t.holmes@qub.ac.ukDr Dominique Jeannerod, French Studies, QUB :  d.jeannerod@qub.ac.ukDr Federico Pagello, Institute for Collaborative Research in the Humanities, QUB : f.pagello@gmail.comFor further information and updates about the conference please visit http://blogs.qub.ac.uk/popularculture/.