*CFP* "THE AMERICAN WEST OF DAVID LYNCH'S FILMOGRAPHY AND IN TWIN PEAKS: ESSAYS ON REGIONAL IDENTITY, NARRATIVES, AND HISTORY", CHAPTER BOOK

Seeking submissions for The American West of David Lynch’s Filmography and in Twin Peaks: Essays on Regional Identity, Narratives, and History. This book will be published with McFarland Books.

The films of David Lynch and transmedia series Twin Peaks with author Mark Frost have long held a reputation for innovation in film, television, and unconventional storytelling on screen and in novel. This collection will add a Western U.S. regional scope to that reputation of innovation and the study of each. This collection will explore themes of the Western genre and Western regionalism in Lynch’s oeuvre, such as Native American artistic and cultural representations in Twin Peaks and urban and rural identities in the use of Los Angeles in his L.A. Trilogy (Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, and Inland Empire); Las Vegas, New Mexico, and the Pacific Northwest in Twin Peaks; and Texas in both Twin Peaks and Wild at Heart. The West’s identity has always been partially a social construct since its earliest portrayals from Turner’s “safety valve” theory to literature and Hollywood portrayals. Lynch’s imagination as well as Frost’s, intentionally or otherwise, add to its contemporary identity.

Writers from all areas of study, with a common goal of representing the indigeneity, cultural, social, philosophical, and historical representations of the American West and Western genre in Lynch’s filmography, as well as the series and books of Twin Peaks, are invited to participate. The collection will be organized into four sections: Region and Identity; Western and Frontier Genre Motifs; Historical Contexts; and Cultural, Spiritual, and Folk Traditions.

The scope of the present call is broad. All topics on the American West and Western genre as they relate to Lynch’s Films and the Twin Peaks series, including the novels, will be considered. 

Possible topics include (non-comprehensive list):

• Oil, Gold, and Western Conquest in Twin Peaks 
• Borderlands in the films of David Lynch 
• Western Liminality 
• Gender & Sexuality in the Western Genre 
• The Other in the West 
• Power Structures 
• American Western Mythologies 
• Ufology in the American West 
• Traditions of Coffee, Tobacco, and the Western  
• Orientalism, Postcolonialism, and the West 
• Desert Settings in Lost Highway and Twin Peaks 
• Western Law, the Cowboy, and the Sheriff 
• Forests of the West: Indigenous and Environmental History 
• Jack Parsons and Frontier Rocketry

Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be e-mailed to editors Rob E. King, Austin Allison, Christine Self, and Robert G. Weaver at lynchfilmandwest@gmail.com as Microsoft Word documents no later than November 1, 2019. Invitations for full papers will be sent by November 15, 2019. The deadline for first drafts (4,000 to 6,000 words) will be March 2, 2020.