The Digital Cultures Collaboratory in the Center for 21st Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is a research group comprising graduate students, library staff, and faculty. Since 2017 this group has operated Serious Play, a channel on the Twitch live streaming network devoted to gameplay and reflective commentary. In April 2021, the Collaboratory will organize a Live Streaming Symposium that challenges participants to make live presentations using Twitch or a similar platform, involving simultaneous gameplay and reflective, critical, or instructional commentary. We are proposing a special issue of the Popular Culture Studies Journal (PCSJ) titled “Serious Play: Legitimizing Live Streaming as Popular Culture.” This issue will explore the live digital streaming of gameplay (analog or digital) as well as other forms of active performance. The articles and texts will consider the topics of live streaming, pedagogy and performance, virtual environments, and related subjects, and they will all read live streaming as a legitimate vehicle for popular culture. The issue will also showcase recorded video of some or all of the five to seven presentations from the Collaboratory’s digital symposium (to be held in October 2021) alongside articles by members of the Collaboratory that place this work in context of changes in the infrastructure and social organization of higher education. The issue would also include reviews of relevant media pieces, streams, performances, and books. We are interested in examples from leading streaming platforms like Twitch, and we interpret live streaming broadly and do not exclude other possibilities that consider live streaming as a legitimate avenue of popular culture. Potential subjects might include: * Ethnographies of live streaming * Live streaming and “the future of broadcasting” (as T.L. Taylor writes in Watch Me Play) * Forms of streaming practice * Intersections of other pop culture media and live streaming * Live streaming in response to global crises * Discussions of how live streaming can build, maintain, or hinder communities * Live streaming in education as pop culture and pedagogy * Reflections on streaming and online communities * Live streaming and the archive * Political economy of streaming platforms * Live streaming and e-sports * Let’s plays, YouTube, and popular culture * Interactions of social media and play While not required, we encourage submissions that include video or hybridize print with other media. This could be a supplementary video essay, live stream, game, image, podcast, or mod. We suggest that authors may want to consider something like the creative multimodal elements found in Metagaming by Stephanie Boluk and Patrick LeMieux. Articles should be scholarly, drawing on research and theory, but must also be accessible to the broadly educated, non-specialist audience of PCSJ. Please visit the following link for more information about the Collab, Serious Play, the journal issue, and how to submit an abstract: https://mpcaaca.org/the-popular-culture-studies-journal/special-issues/call-... [https://s0.wp.com/i/blank.jpg]<https://mpcaaca.org/the-popular-culture-studies-journal/special-issues/call-for-papers-serious-play/> Call for Papers: Serious Play – Midwest PCA/ACA<https://mpcaaca.org/the-popular-culture-studies-journal/special-issues/call-for-papers-serious-play/> The Midwest Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association is a regional branch of the Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association.MPCA/ACA usually holds its annual conference in a large Midwestern city in the United States. mpcaaca.org If you have any questions about the special issue, please contact Janelle Malagon (jmalagon@uwm.edu), Erik Jon Paul Kersting (kerstin2@uwm.edu), or Christopher J. Olson (olson429@uwm.edu). Thank you. Christopher John Olson PhD Student: Media, Cinema, and Digital Studies University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee Office: Curtin 392 Email: olson429@uwm.edu https://seemsobvioustome.wordpress.com/ http://thepopculturelens.podbean.com/ Reviews Editor, The Popular Culture Studies Journal<http://mpcaaca.org/the-popular-culture-studies-journal/> Author/Co-Author/Co-Editor Mental Health and Neurodiversity in Entertainment Media (Routledge, In process) The Greatest Cult Television Shows of All Time<https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538122556/The-Greatest-Cult-Television-Shows-of-All-Time> (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020) Convergent Wrestling<https://www.routledge.com/Convergent-Wrestling-Participatory-Culture-Transmedia-Storytelling-and/Reinhard-Olson/p/book/9780815377641> (Routledge, 2019) 100 Greatest Cult Films<https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442208223/100-Greatest-Cult-Films> (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018) Heroes, Heroines, and Everything in Between<https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498539579/Heroes-Heroines-and-Everything-in-Between-Challenging-Gender-and-Sexuality-Stereotypes-in-Children%27s-Entertainment-Media> (Lexington, 2017) Possessed Women, Haunted States<https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498519083/Possessed-Women-Haunted-States-Cultural-Tensions-in-Exorcism-Cinema> (Lexington, 2016) Making Sense of Cinema <https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/making-sense-of-cinema-9781501320217/> (Bloomsbury, 2016)