*CFP* PROPOSAL CHAPTERS, CRITICAL ESSAYS ON JAMES WAN

Critical essays are sought on the cinema of Malaysian/Australian director, screenwriter and producer James Wan. As 2018 marks Wan’s first incursion into superhero cinema with Aquaman, a film that reportedly is DC Films’ biggest worldwide grosser, critical attention on the director keeps intensifying. With huge critical and box office successes such as Saw (2004), a film that kickstarted a whole franchise, The Conjuring I and II (2013 and 2016), films that started a whole filmic universe, together with Death Sentence (2007), Insidious I and II (2010 and 2013), Furious 7 (2015) and Dead Silence (2007), it can be argued that we are facing a new Hollywood auteur with an identity of his own. Still, there is a striking lack of critical studies on the works of James Wan, even when he has been responsible of some of the most interesting blockbusters of the last few years.

Creating for the new millennium a form of film horror that relies more on atmosphere than in jump scares ― a kind of dread almost extinct at the big screen since the times of director Jacques Tourneur and producer Val Lewton― Wan has imposed a uniquely rich style and vision which does not reject the commercial and the genre formula but in fact embraces it. His efforts as producer follow this marked interest in genre, franchise and remake, both in film (Lights Out ―2016―; Annabelle: Creation ―2017―, The Curse of La Llorona ―2019­―) as in TV (MacGyver; Swamp Thing).

From Stygian (2000) to Aquaman, Wan has directed nine feature films and one episode for television, all in different genres, all of them provoking stylistic reflections on the medium, on genre and franchise cinema.

This anthology seeks previously unpublished essays that explore James Wan’s body of work. We welcome interdisciplinary approaches —­including philosophy, psychoanalysis, posthumanism, queer, contextual, etc. — that can illuminate the different aspects of the director’s work. Our purpose is this volume to address the entirety of his work.

Contributions could include – but are not limited to – the following topics:

• Old Hollywood and classicism/influence of Val Lewton’s cinema
• Film genres (horror, action, etc.)
• The James Wan’s universe.
• Hollywood masculinity
• His influence in no-Wan directed projects.
• Photography and cinematography
• Work on television
• Adaptation of real supernatural cases
• Uncanny dolls
• Superhero cinema
• Depiction of the family unit
• The haunting and the gothic
• The unconscious, dreams and nightmares
• Music and sound
• Philosophical, posthuman and psychoanalytic approaches

Feel free to contact the editors with any questions you may have about the project and please fell free to share this announcement with any colleague who may be interested in the volume.

Submit a 300-500 word abstract of your proposed chapter contribution, a brief CV and complete contact information to both Matthew Edwards and Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns by May, 2019.

It must be noted that acceptance of a proposed abstract does not guarantee the acceptance of the full chapter into the completed volume.

Please send a full abstract and full biography to fatherib@aol.com. All abstracts should be in Times Roman, pt 12. If invited to submit a full essay for the collection, a style guide will be sent to adhere to (all essays should use the MHRA referencing system).