Urban Culture Area, Mid-Atlantic Popular Culture/American Culture Association, Niagara Falls, ON, Canada, October 30th-November 1st, 2008.

Small neighborhood cafes and stores are closing down, giving way to new condo buildings and chain stores; favorite parks dwindle in size, giving way to various markets and corporate businesses…Pedestrians smile to the tunes coming from their i-pods but not to each other…What is becoming of our cities? What is becoming of us, the residents of these cities? This year, the Urban Culture area of MAPACA aims to understand the production, negotiation, and loss of public space in the metropolitan city, in light of current conditions such as the proliferation of technology, the effects of natural disaster, gentrification, and globalization. Presentations about unique, ordinary, temporary, and permanent public places are welcome as are presentations about the formation, sustenance, and disappearance of public self, itself a function of public place, in the context of the city. We seek historical or ethnographic studies of public sites and events, poetic accounts of personal geographies through cities, and explorations of highly orchestrated or surprisingly improvised events in designated areas in the city. If interested in participating in a workshop on “writing the urban,” in addition to presenting a paper, please, indicate so.

Please, send your 1-page paper abstracts and 1-paragraph recent bios as virus-free, Word attachments to Blagovesta Momchedjikova, bmm202@nyu.edu, by July 10th, 2008. This year, the Mid-Atlantic Popular Culture/American Culture Association meets in Niagara Falls, ON, Canada, October 30th to November 1st, 2008.