The Apocalypse and Dystopias in Popular Culture

Center for Studies in Popular Culture (PoCuS) is organizing an international two-day symposium on the theme of “The Apocalypses and Dystopias in Popular Culture” with nine prominent international scholars as keynote speakers.

The purpose is to discuss how different media such as film, television, literature, video games, and media apps present, interact, and use dystopias and notions of the apocalypse in their media-specific narrative.

Everyone is welcome! No registration needed.

Programme

Day 1: 19 May

13.00-13.40 Susan Watkins, Leeds Beckett University, “Ageing, Apocalypse and Adaptation”
13.45-14.25 Adam Stock, York St John University, “Speculative Desert Terrains in Apocalyptic and Dystopian Fictions”
14.30-15.10 Rune Graulund, University of Southern Denmark, “We Are the Asteroid: Reading Armageddon and Don’t Look Up as Climate Emergency Allegories”
15.10-15.40 Coffee break
15.40-16.20 Stephen Joyce, Aarhus University, “Utopia amid the Ruins: The Beautiful Apocalypse in Contemporary Media”
16.25-17.05 James Newton, University of Kent, “Workers of the Wasteland: Working Class Anti-Heroes in 80s MadMaxploitation”

Day 2: 20 May

9.00-9.40 Malin Alkestrand, Linnaeus University, “Walking in the Shoes of a Killer: The Adolescent Killer Motif in YA Dystopian Texts as a Hyperbolic Approach to Power Differences between Adolescents and Adults”
9.45-10.25 Jaakko Seppälä, University of Helsinki, “Nordic Noir as Affective Mapping: Reimagining the Welfare States”
10.25-10.55 Coffee break
10.55-11.35 Rebecca Duncan, Linnaeus University, “Gothic in the Capitalocene: Perspectives from the African Continent”
11.35-12.15 Gustaf Johansson, Uppsala University, “Hiroshima Archive: Time-binding and Remembrance in the Digital Age”