Editors of the thematic concept: Elżbieta Binczycka-Gacek, PhD, Justyna Tuszyńska, PhD
Deadline: 25/01/2024
Please send your articles to the following e-mail address: przeglad.kulturoznawczy[at]uj.edu.pl
The increasing visibility and audience expansion of queer narratives within global popular culture, including their burgeoning prominence in Poland, invites a scholarly examination. Alice Oseman's graphic novel "Heartstopper," which narrates the complex love story between two teenagers, has topped bestseller lists in Poland, surpassing works by prominent authors such as Olga Tokarczuk. Its Netflix adaptation achieved comparable success. In Poland's iteration of "Dancing with the Stars," a same-sex male couple participated—a first for the show—while an episode from the series adaptation of "The Last of Us," titled "Long, Long Time," focusing on a romance between two men, became iconic within hours of its release, emerging as a standalone cultural text.
The focus of academic inquiry in Poland has not neglected queer themes; however, it has predominantly orbited 'high culture,' where literary scholars, film critics, and cultural theorists frequently excavate non-heteronormative subtexts within the works of esteemed authors—a process akin to sublimation. What is conspicuously absent is a monographic perspective that not only scrutinizes queer narratives in popular literary and cinematic forms beyond canonical works but also juxtaposes these with representations in alternative media, such as comics, podcasts, games, and new media platforms.
In the forthcoming issue of "Przegląd Kulturoznawczy" (Cultural Studies Review), we seek to interrogate the intersections of queer narratives and popular culture. We pose several questions: What does the fusion of queer narratives with popular culture entail? Can we conceptualize this phenomenon as 'queer-pop' or 'pop-queer'? Does it represent a queering of popular culture or a popularization of queer culture? How does queerness manifest beyond the (global) center, and in what ways does locality express itself within this paradigm? We also inquire into the trajectories of reciprocal influence between queerness and popular culture, the migration of patterns and conventions, the emergence of traditions and canons, the current exploitation of queer culture's critical potential, and whether popular culture genres have become platforms for egalitarian narratives or, conversely, if queerness has been reduced to a mere tool or backdrop for revitalizing exhausted film, literary, or journalistic formats.
Our theoretical framework will be delineated through concepts such as Michel Foucault's modern apparatus of sexuality and popular memory, Pierre Bourdieu's habitus as the social nature of the individual, cultural capital and its reproduction, cultural identity as defined by Stuart Hall, low theory per McKenzie Wark and Jack (Judith) Halberstam, and vernacular narratives and practices.
We invite contributions that address the following research areas:
In crafting your submissions, please adhere to the following bibliographic style, consistent with humanities scholarship:
Szulc, Lukasz. "Transnational Homosexuals in Communist Poland: Cross-Border Flows in Gay and Lesbian Magazines." Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
Śmieja, Wojciech. "Homoseksualność i polska nowoczesność: Szkice o teorii, historii i literaturze." Wydawnictwo UŚ, 2015.
Doty, Alexander, and Brett Gove. "Queer representation in the Mass Media." In "Lesbian and Gay Studies: A Critical Introduction," edited by Sally Munt and Andy Medhurst, 84–98. Cassell, 1997.