53rd AAAS Conference 2026
Critical Media Analysis, Participatory Cultures, and New Textualities:
American Studies through a Digital Lens
November 5-7, 2026
University of Education Upper Austria (PH OÖ) &
Private University of Education of the Diocese of Linz (PHDL)
The rise of digital technologies and ongoing AI-development create new challenges for
American Studies, including the need for critical engagement with novel forms of textual
production, dissemination, and reception.
Critical media analysis, media education, and digital literacies form an integral part of our
new curricula. Through digital periodical research and digital archives, scholars recuperate
previously neglected voices, adding to a more inclusive and accessible representation of the
United States. Participatory cultures, adaptative revisioning, and transmedia storytelling not
only challenge but also expand literary and cultural canon formations. Post-cinema art, livestreaming poetry slams, educational podcasts, computer games, digital art, memes,
webcomics, poetry films, remixes, spin-offs, and fanart etc. invite us to study new forms of
cultural and literary expressions as a creative response to narratives in print culture. Through
digitally connected action, people mobilize online for social change and act as a vital
counterforce to traditional, hegemonic, techno-capitalist trajectories and knowledge
regimes.
Thus, we invite you to submit papers that explore American Studies through a digital lens,
examining the multisensory quality of multimodal works as well as their creative, historical,
social, political, and educational relationships to formative narratives and epistemologies.
We particularly welcome papers that analyze the representation of digital cultures and
technologies in U.S.-American popular culture, film, art, and literature, as well as papers that
interrogate the impact of the digital turn on American Studies itself.
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Possible areas for contributions may include but are not limited to
• literary classics and their multimodal media worlds, their adaptations and digital
transferences (e.g. fandoms, mashups, remixes, memes)
• digital narratives, poetry films, media art
• intermediality, transmediality, hypermediality
• artistic affordances and limitations in the digital creative space (e.g. participatory
cultures, digital collaborations; digital world building; live-streaming; gaming;
AI-generated literature and art)
• critical media analysis and media education in secondary and tertiary media
education (teaching material analysis; best practice examples for the classroom)
• digital archives, digital periodical research, digital erasure, digital heritage
• digital resources and historical research
• the representation of digital cultures and digital technologies in literature, art, and
popular culture
• accessibility, diversity, inclusion
• shifts in knowledge production, regulation, and dissemination (science and
technology; STE(A)M; design thinking)
• decolonizing epistemologies
• social media literacy (e.g. influencers, echo chambers, fake news)
• social activism and transmedia activism (e.g. black feminist pedagogy and digital
media literacy; alternative socialism, LGBTQIA+, human rights)
• digital postmodernism and new forms of authorship
• […]
Confirmed Keynote Speaker: Wyn Kelley (MIT Boston)
Please send proposals for individual presentations (250-300 words) or preformed panels (approx. 600 words) with a short bio note by April 30, 2026, to
the following email address: aaas@ph-ooe.at
We look forward to welcoming you in Linz!
Melissa Kennedy, Edith Kreutner, Martina Pfeiler