Digital Projections and Screened Identities in US American Culture

Virtual Conference | September 4–5, 2025

The virtual conference will focus on US American imaginaries related to digital and screened narratives that highlight the medial aspect of the screen as intermediary and/or work to construct identities. In an era when screens dominate and mediate virtually every aspect of our lives, the construction and performance of digital identities have become key to understand contemporary popular culture. This phenomenon has been reflected for example in the proliferation of found footage and desktop horror films that blur the lines between reality and fiction, using intermedial aesthetics that combine various media forms and referents that audiences promptly recognize. We wish to collect presentations that deal with the ways in which screens and digital interfaces influence, construct and disseminate identities, and that examine how these representations shape and reflect societal perceptions of the self, the other, and even Artificial Intelligence.

We accept proposals that look at texts across popular culture media, including film, graphic narratives, TV series, genre literature, music, games, social media, podcasts, and mocku/documentary.

Possible topics may be (but are not limited to):

• Found footage, desktop horror and screenlife films
• The media landscape as commentary on authenticity, surveillance and digital presence
• The inclusion and role of screens in popular culture texts
• The role of social media platforms in shaping narratives of identity
• Intermedial aesthetics in contemporary media
• Impact of AI on interpersonal relationships, storytelling and, identity construction
• The intersection of digital technologies, race, gender, sexuality and class
• The depiction of digital embodiment, virtuality and the post-human condition
• Streaming platforms as a medium with specific creative and aesthetic conditions
• Use of historical footage to create contemporary media texts
• Screens, devices, androids, and how the digital has been imagined and represented
• The blurring of truth and digital / AI-generated fake, reality and hyperreal objects and texts
• Well-grounded critical examinations of the role of AI-human interaction in relation to self-perception and projection
• Well-grounded critical examinations of the discursive / verbal / aural ways in which AI and LLM “voices” shape interaction through register, sycophancy, simulated epistemic authority

Deadline for submission: JULY 7, 2025

We accept abstract proposals for individual presentations (≈ 250 words) or full panels (≈ 250-word description of panel plus abstracts of all papers). Please, email your proposal to popmec.virtual@gmail.com as a single attachment (.doc, .docx, .odt) including name, affiliation (if any), and contact email.

You can find the call and updated details at https://www.popmec.com/virtual–2025/