e210. #PCAACA22: The Afterparty

For the last several weeks the hosts of VoxPopcast have been preparing for a conference. Well, that was this week! Last week you heard our conference workshop where we tried to help each other with our ideas. Next week., we’re going to bring you the papers themselves so you can see what we did. But…

e209. PCA2022 Conference Paper Workshop & Preview

This week we’re going to try something a little different on the show. We’ve been mentioning in the past few weeks that we several of the hosts and our most frequent guests are all gearing ups for our big annual pop culture academia conference, PCA. In the past, we’ve had shows where we presented our…

e207. The Voice of the Crowd is Close to Madness!

“Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.” The Latin quote (a letter from Alcuin of York to Charlemagne the Great) we named our show after roughly translates to “and those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the…

Call for Comments: Unintentional Group Synchrony and the Madness of Crowds

From Wayne: I’ve had several conversations with people about their experience in crowds at various events. For me this was primarily a function of my experience at concerts. I can verily easily just get caught up in the music and the moment, losing a certain amount of a sense of self and ‟becoming one with…

e205. Why Do We Love Batman?

If you’re a regular listener of this show then you no doubt are aware that the Batman was released in cinemas last week. At the current moment, it is in fact the number one movie at the box office worldwide. And of course, that was to be expected. Everyone knew that it would be a…

e204. Viral Grammar: Rhetoric, Semiotics, and Emoji

It’s the episode you’ve been waiting for! The one where we talk about The Emoji Movie! 😝 Ok… maybe not… well, a little, but for good reason. One aspect of popular culture we probably don’t think about very often is communication. Communication is the cornerstone of culture, on the internet or otherwise. In today’s world…

e202. To Kill a Mockingbird… and a Maus — Censorship & Book Banning

Every once in a while the world of weekly pop culture and the world of literary academia collide so totally that the world notices even outside of our show. Last week was one of those weeks. A school board in Tennessee voted to remove Maus, the critically acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize winning Holocaust memoir graphic novel,…

e201. The Romance Show: (Hannah wouldn’t let us call) Love In The Time Of COVID

Despite the fact that it is perennially one of the best selling genres in literature, Romance is often looked down upon. Part of this is simple misogyny; as a culture we look down upon things that are seen as “for women.” However, not only are romance novels dominant best sellers, romance as a concept essentially…

e200. Secret Origins Starring VoxPopcast: Special Anniversary Edition

It’s unbelievable, but somehow we’ve been doing this for 200 episodes! It’s time to celebrate. One today’s episode we look back on nearly four years of podcasting AND we discuss the secret origins of every host of the show and how we got into pop culture academia. PLUS, a two bonus secret origins of how…

Call for Comments: Breaking Down The Romance Genre

From Hannah: Way back on Episode 24, we talked about the concept of genre in general: Why is genre occasionally a dirty word? What are the rules a piece of fiction has to follow to be considered a member of a particular genre? How useful is this concept in understanding a work? So I want…