Call for Submissions: Power, Play, and Popular Culture in the Asia Pacific

This special issue invites abstracts from scholars, artists, and thinkers both within and beyond academia whose work explores the intersections of popular culture and Asia Pacific Studies.

We take a broad and interdisciplinary definition of popular culture and welcome all submissions that critically engage audiences around the following questions:

  • How is popular culture shaping (and is shaped by) people and regions in the Asia Pacific and beyond?
  • How have increased mobilities (through technology, language, migration, and access to media) enhanced or hindered our understanding of popular culture?
  • Whose voices are being amplified through popular culture, and whose voices are muted?
  • What new spaces for research, fandom, and/or inclusion are emerging?
  • How is popular culture being used as a vehicle for soft power or smart power? How do popular cultural forms circulate across borders, and what happens when they are translated, adapted, or reimagined in new contexts?

We welcome contributions engaging with popular culture in its many forms, including but not limited to film and television, music, literature, social media, gaming, fashion, sports, food, fandom, and digital culture.

We especially engage submissions from across the social sciences and humanities - sociology, anthropology, history, cultural studies, media studies, literature, and related fields - as well as comparative and interdisciplinary approaches to issues and topics in the Asia Pacific region.

We are looking for the following:

  • Full length Articles (9,000-12,000 words including abstract, footnotes, bibliography, and tables). Full length articles will go out for peer review.
  • Think pieces (3000-5000 words). These submissions discuss contemporary issues and events from established scholars in their field.
  • Book reviews (700-1200 words). We welcome book reviews on recent publications in all fields of the social sciences and the humanities that focus on the Asia Pacific region. Feel free to pitch a book review to the journal by sending an email to perspectives@usfca.edu. If selected, the journal will send a copy of the book to you at no charge. We prefer reviews of recently published books, especially books published within the last 3 years.
  • Photo essays (1250-2000 words and 10-15 high quality photos 300 PPI or higher).
  • Submissions must represent original work not already published or in the press. For more information about Asia Pacific Perspectives, please visit our website.

Submission & Timeline

To be considered, please submit a 300–350-word abstract and a short biographical note (approximately 100 words) to perspectives@usfca.edu by September 30, 2026.

Authors will be notified of abstract acceptance in late October 2026. Full manuscripts will be due March 1, 2027.

Submit a Paper

  • Review our Submission Guidelines below.
  • Go to our submission page. If you are not affiliated with USF you will need to make a free account with our repository to submit.
  • If you have any questions please email us at perspectives@usfca.edu.

For more information, please contact: Genevieve Leung, editor at perspectives@usfca.edu.

Submission Guidelines

    • Each article must include a thesis statement that clearly elucidates the significance of the article's findings to the field (not merely a summary of its contents).
    • Manuscripts submitted to Asia Pacific Perspectives (APP) should not have been published elsewhere in English and should not be under review for another publication.
    • Authors retain copyright of their work, and publication in APP does not preclude the author from publishing all or part of the manuscript elsewhere. Authors who publish with APP and wish to do so must get written permission from the editors of APP and identify the journal as the original publication in the new publication.
    • Full length articles (9,000-12,000 words including abstract, footnotes, bibliography, and tables). Articles will go out for peer review.
    • Think pieces (3,000-5,000 words)
    • Book reviews (700-1200 words)
    • Photo essays (1250-2000 words)
      • 10-15 high quality photos each with descriptive captions and complete credit/source information (as a single PDF)
      • Submissions will include a non-peer reviewed essay contextualizing the photographs in the text
      • A one-page description of the theme of the essay and the timeliness/importance of the images to scholars of Asia
      • A brief bio paragraph about the curator (approx 100 words) and complete contact information
    • The editor is responsible for the final selection of content published in APP and reserves the right to reject any material that is not appropriate for publication or that does not conform to the journal's guidelines.
    • The editor reserves the right to edit or to ask the author to edit manuscripts for style and length. However, manuscripts that require substantial editorial work to comply with the requirements will not be considered. All unpublished manuscripts are the property of APP and will not be returned to the authors.
    • The opinions expressed in articles and reviews do not reflect the opinions of the editors, the editorial board, or the University of San Francisco. Responsibility for opinions expressed and the accuracy of facts published in articles and reviews rests solely with the individual authors.
  • APP is a double-anonymous, peer reviewed journal. In order to protect the integrity of the peer review process, all authors' names and other identifying marks should be left off the manuscript.

  • Article (9,000-12,000 words including abstract, footnotes, bibliography, and tables). Articles will go out for peer review.

    Abstract & Biographical Note

    Authors should submit a separate file containing:

    • An abstract (200 word maximum) and a list of up to six keywords suitable for indexing and abstracting purposes.
    • A biographical note (100 word maximum) as well as full contact details.

    Manuscript Layout & Organization

    • The title of the article should appear on the first page
    • All identifying marks (author's name, etc.) should be left off the manuscript
    • Microsoft Word or compatible format
    • Double-spaced, using 12-point type/font for body text
    • Sections and subsections should be clearly differentiated, preferably with visually distinct headings and subheadings
    • Tables, charts, or images should be included as separate files
    • Images must be 300 dpi resolution (or as high-resolution as possible)
    • Bibliographic references must appear as footnotes
    • Figures and tables:
      • Number consecutively in Arabic numerals
      • Include title where necessary
      • Submit on separate sheets attached at the end of the article, or as separate digital files in the appropriate format mentioned above.
      • They should be designed to fit into the page size and should be referred to in the text of the paper.
      • Mathematical equations must be typed on separate lines.
      • The author is responsible for ensuring that equations are presented in a form that is compatible with a standard desktop publishing program.
      • It is the responsibility of the author to obtain written permission for republication of previously published material, including figures and tables, from the author and publisher of the source publication.
    • Quotations should appear in double marks, with quotations that exceed 40 words indented in the text.
    • Notes should appear as footnotes.
    • All the works cited should be formatted according to the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition.

    Examples

    Book

    Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. New York: Penguin, 2006.

    Book Chapter

    Kelly, John D. “Seeing Red: Mao Fetishism, Pax Americana, and the Moral Economy of War.” In Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency, edited by John D. Kelly, Beatrice Jauregui, Sean T. Mitchell, and Jeremy Walton, 67–83. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.

    Journal

    Weinstein, Joshua I. “The Market in Plato’s Republic.” Classical Philology 104 (2009): 439–58.

    More Examples

    Chicago Manual of Style

    • Chinese: Pinyin
    • Japanese: Hepburn
    • Korean: McCune-Reischauer
    • Copyright to Asia Pacific Perspectives (referred to herein as "journal" or “APP”) is held by its publisher, the University of San Francisco. Copyright to individual articles appearing in the journal remains with the article's author(s), unless otherwise specified.
    • Except as otherwise provided, the University of San Francisco, and the individual article authors, grant permission for material in this publication to be copied for use by nonprofit educational institutions, and individual scholars and educators, for scholarly or instructional purposes only, provided that (1) copies are distributed at or below cost, (2) the author, the publisher, and the journal are identified on the copy, and (3) proper notice of the copyright appears on each copy.
    • For any other uses of the journal, or of individual articles, permission must be obtained from the University of San Francisco or the individual author(s), respectively.
    • Image copyrights are to be obtained and held solely by the authors. The University of San Francisco takes no responsibility for any copyright infringement.
    • Authors wishing to publish images with their article should request a copy of the journal’s image permission form from the editors as APP requires that authors provide documentation of all permissions for our files.
    • No image can be published without documentation of appropriate permission to publish it on the World Wide Web, unless that picture is already in the public domain.

Asia Pacific Perspectives

Genevieve Leung, Editor
2130 Fulton Street, KA 241
San Francisco, CA 94117