Nobrow: The History and Future of Popular Culture

CALL FOR PAPERS

Nobrow: The History and Future of Popular Culture

Traditional distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow are not sufficient to describe the cultural production of our times. We live—and have been living for a long time in the age of nobrow, which intertwines art and entertainment into a complex yet identifiable mode of cultural practice. Our increasingly global, digital, and culturally eclectic world is dominated by endless varieties of nobrow culture. Yet, with few exceptions, the historical nature, aesthetic complexity, and social interpretation of this cultural formation have largely escaped critical analysis.

Editors of a first-time collection on this subject, entitled Nobrow: The History and Future of Popular Culture, invite articles on all and any aspects of nobrow culture and art. Inherently transcultural and transnational, nobrow lends itself equally to historical and analytical approaches. We welcome scholars from all parts of the globe and from all disciplines, including, but not limited to literary studies, cultural studies, film studies, art history, aesthetics, communications, digital culture, history, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and others. We are particularly interested in theoretical and analytical articles on the phenomenon of nobrow illuminated by detailed and colourful case studies of this crossover phenomenon.

Chapter contributions will be approximately 7,000 words. To be considered, please send an abstract of 500 words along with a biographical note to both editors, Peter Swirski (swirskip@umsl.edu) and Tero Eljas Vanhanen (tero.vanhanen@helsinki.fi). The deadline for the abstract is 30 April, 2015.