53rd Annual Conference of the Austrian Association for American Studies

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, live- streaming 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.

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 authorshipConfirmed Keynote Speaker: Wyn Kelley (MIT Boston)

  Please send proposals for individual presentations (250-300 words) or pre- formed 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