Well, there are a few things worse than giving a biker a pen to write with or an opportunity to talk in front of a sober crowd. Things such as, a beer while they are riding; road rash or a bug stuck in their eye. Seems that there is an opportunity for all us budding writers to “express ourself” about the motorcycling culture. The Popular Culture Association and American Culture Associations are holding a series of panels at the next annual meeting to be held March 19–22, 2008 in San Francisco, California at the San Francisco Marriott. Proposals for individual papers, presentations, and panel discussions are requested on motorcycling and its impact on American and other societies and cultures. Granted, the deadline has already passed, November 1, 2007, but i think it would be interesting to see how academia and the general population respond to the topic’s presented by motorcycling speakers. Hopefully someone with better writing skills, and more time to kill than i, will attend and give us a look-see into what happens. Suggested topics include:

* Riders’ narratives or descriptions of the ride
* The motorcycle as art, poetry, or agency
* Rituals, norms, customs, or influences in motorcycle culture
* The biker as subaltern
* Movies, films, or other images of motorcyclists
* Analyses of media, consumer capitalist, corporate, or other power structures in relation to motorcycling culture or popular myth
* Biographical analyses of noteworthy motorcyclists and their influence upon myth, culture, or cultural capital
* Racial, ethnic, gendered, class, or demographic aspects of motorcycling culture
* Other literary, anthropological, geographical, historical, sociological, or psychological perspectives of motorcycling culture or myth

You can contact the Area Chair listed below with a biographical statement and an abstract of 150 words. Basic information about the conference can be found at the PCA / ACA website: http://www.pcaaca.org/

Gary L. Kieffner
Department of History
University of Texas at El Paso
Telephone: 915.747.5875
E-mail: Kieffner@miners.utep.edu

My own personal ideas of topic’s would have been:

*The wearing and maintenance of leather chaps and jackets
*Beer/buffalo consumption and how it affects the local economy
*Why H-D lifelong riders have faces made of leather
*The phenomena of skinny men and large women in the motorcycling community
*Riding “hands free”…..fact or fiction?
*How too much alcohol makes most women look like Pamela Anderson
*You will fall, it’s just a matter of “when”
*Great women rider butts…urban legend?

It’s just a few, i’m sure there are others…so submit your own…..we’ll post them!
Source: MBI