The Southwest/Texas Popular & American Culture Association will be hosting three speakers in Albuquerque as part of our annual conference February 13-16, 2013. We think each of these special events would be of interest to Albuquerque residents, and all three evening events are open to the public for a nominal admission fee ($5 advance tickets/$8 at the door, with proceeds donated to charity).

Wednesday, February 13, 8:00pm: Jane Espenson and Brad Bell
Espenson and Bell are the co-creators of Husbands (husbandstheseries.com), a situation-comedy webseries about marriage equality. Espenson is a veteran television writer/producer whose credits include Ellen, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, and Once Upon a Time, and Bell is an out, web-savvy writer/performer. The panel will be hosted by Dr. Anne Jamison (University of Utah), and Espenson and Bell will discuss their webseries and collaboration with Dr. Jamison on an outreach project aimed at LGBTQ homeless youth in Salt Lake City, Utah.


Thursday, February 14, 6:30pm: David Peterson

David Peterson is a professional language creator, best know for his work creating the Dothraki language for HBO's Game of Thrones. Peterson spoke at the Southwest/Texas Popular & American Culture Association Conference in 2012 about his work creating the Dothraki language. This year he will speak about his continued work on Game of Thrones in creating High Valyrian, his work creating multiple languages for the SyFy series Defiance (premiering April 2013), and his life as a language creator. Peterson is also the current president of the Language Creation Society (http://www.conlang.org), a non-profit dedicated to promoting the art and science of language creation. He holds BAs in English and Linguistics from the University of California Berkeley and an MA in Linguistics from the University of California San Diego. He has created over a dozen languages.

Friday, February 15, 6:30pm: Dr.Øyvind Vågnes

Dr. Vågnes (University of Bergen, Norway) is the recipient of the 2012 Peter C. Rollins Book Award for Zaprudered: The Kennedy Assassination Film in Visual Culture (Univ. of Texas Press, 2011). His presentation is titled “The Zapruder Film and the Life of Kennedy’s Death,” and in it he will explore the indelible afterimages of the film of Kennedy’s assassination in our collective imagination.

The 34th annual conference will be February 13-16, 2013. Daily Conference Passes are Available for $25 contact Ken Dvorak, PhD., (E: krdvorak@gmail.com) for additional information. The complete conference program is available for viewing at http://www.swtxpca.org

Media Interviews: If you would be interested in learning more about or interviewing any of these speakers, please contact our association Treasurer and local arrangements coordinator, Dr. Ken Dvoark at 281-455-3289 or krdvorak@gmail.com. I have also attached flyers that we are distributing to advertise the Wednesday and Thursday evening events.



Contact: Tamy Burnett, PhD
Public Relations Coordinator
Southwest/Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Association
swtxpca.org@gmail.com
www.swtxpca.org