*CFP* "THE WORKS OF SHONDA RHIMES", SCREEN STORYTELLING EDITED VOLUME

This edited volume on the works of Shonda Rhimes will be the first book in a new series to be published by Bloomsbury Academic. Seeking 250-word abstracts for previously unpublished essays on television series created by Rhimes. Final essays will be 3,000-3,500 words, written for an audience of student readers, and will be due in the Spring of 2022.

The Screen Storytelling series is designed for students, professors, and enthusiastic consumers of film, television, and new media who seek information about contemporary and historically significant screenwriters that is both accessible and critically rigorous. The intention with this new series is to bring much-deserved attention to screen and television writers who have developed noteworthy films and television series of significant aesthetic or cultural achievement, critical acclaim, or commercial success, and to offer close readings of the films and series from the perspective of story, screenwriting craft, audience reception, and cultural impact. Each volume will explore the works of a single screen storyteller. The series will place a strong focus on examining works by screenwriters often left out of classroom syllabi, including women, writers of color, LGBTQ writers, and international writers. (Note: The Works of Jane Anderson is slated as the second volume in the series.)

 

The Works of Shonda Rhimes

*CFP* "BEYOND PSYCHO: A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF JOSEPH STEFANO AND HORROR IN THE OUTER LIMITS", BOOK CHAPTER

We invite chapter proposals (300-500 words) for an edited volume of critical essays dealing with screenwriter Joseph Stefano and elements of horror in the 1960s television program The Outer Limits.

This edited collection, with articles from film scholars working in the fields of horror and science fiction, will examine not only Stefano’s post-Psycho accomplishments as a scriptwriter but also his importance as a producer, establishing his gothic vision as a consistent characteristic of the show. The Outer Limits, filmed in black and white, employs an expressionist cinematography uncharacteristic of other broadcasts at that time, emphasizing the gothic elements of the plots while suggesting a new category of horror noir and science fiction drama. The Outer Limits, as horror noir, employs visual elements and narrative conventions of the art-house foreign films and noir drama of the past to create an ambiance of horror while anticipating future challenges of a society confronting accelerated scientific and technological change.

Essays will be structured around Stefano’s ten filmed screenplays and two contributed story ideas, while each essay also may examine other episodes, as appropriate, to illustrate how Stefano’s horror noir themes, tropes, and characterizations pervade the entire series.

*CFP* "SERIALITY RESEARCH", SPECIAL ISSUE, JOURNAL FOR LITERARY AND INTERMEDIAL CROSSINGS

The Journal for Literary and Intermedial Crossings (JLIC) is an international, peer-reviewed open access journal. It publishes high-quality, innovative research engaging with literary and intermedial phenomena from various methodological angles and a wide range of disciplines including studies on literature, theatre, media and culture. The e-journal is supported by an international editorial board and aimed at an academic readership. JLIC offers an online publication platform to researchers from various fields engaging either directly or indirectly with the study of hybrid literary and/or intermedial phenomena. Seriality has become “an endemic feature of our twenty-first-century, hypermediated world” (Lindner 2014, ix) permeating contemporary literature, theatre, tv-series, feature films, narrative games, podcasts, YouTube channels, Instagram and other forms of storytelling social media.

Seriality is traditionally associated with repetition and variation. However, our interest seems to have shifted to the dynamic qualities of seriality. What strikes us and interests us today is not so much repetition but evolution, the development of (story) lines. As a result, the narrative aspects of seriality appear to grow in importance, which seems to go hand in hand with the rise of what is covered by the broad umbrella term ‘storytelling’ (sometimes ‘complex storytelling’, e.g. Mittell 2015). Although seriality is often explicitly linked to popular culture (e.g. Kelleter 2017), an increased interest in ‘seriality as a strategy’ can be observed in all kinds of art forms. Seriality also seems to be an important element in multi, cross and transmedial storytelling as serial narrative strategies spill from one media to another. To the idea of a Serial Shakespeare as “an infinite variety of appropriations in American TV drama” (Bronfen 2020) Ivo Van Hove and Internationaal Theater Amsterdam recently added not just their theatrical serial Romeinse Tragedies (2007, Roman Tragedies) in a carefully reworked online streaming version (2021) but also a ‘classic’ weekly -thus not bingeable- ten-episode tv-serial on Dutch television (2021).

*CFP* "REPRESENTACIONES SOCIALES, PÚBLICOS Y CONSUMO EN LA FICCIÓN TELEVISIVA", NUEVO NÚMERO (2022), REVISTA COMUNICACIÓN Y SOCIEDAD

Este número monográfico de Comunicación y Sociedad pretende el diálogo y la interacción entre expertos en la investigación sobre televisión, con el objeto de descubrir y analizar las claves de un proceso complejo que contempla la investigación académica sobre los públicos y las representaciones sociales de la ficción televisiva. En los últimos años la ficción televisiva ha experimentado algunos cambios sin precedentes. Ha obtenido una notable relevancia social y un progresivo ascenso cultural. Las series han pasado de ser ignoradas por la crítica y la academia a ocupar un lugar destacado en la sociedad gracias a una combinación de factores sociales, tecnológicos y económicos. Las plataformas que emiten estos contenidos son diversas, los dispositivos que empleamos para visionar han aumentado, cada vez es más sencillo acceder a contenidos variados y transnacionales y se ha democratizado la creación, producción y difusión de bienes culturales.

La aparición de las plataformas de video bajo demanda, el desarrollo de los canales de exhibición de pago y el cambio de estrategia de las televisiones de emisión en abierto han contribuido a extender este género audiovisual de forma masiva y fragmentada. Las razones se encuentran en la necesidad de rellenar horas de emisión y en la valoración positiva y el seguimiento que la audiencia ha concedido y aún concede a estos relatos. Si en el pasado el objetivo era convocar audiencias masivas, el propósito del presente es satisfacer un público de nicho, fragmentado y heterogéneo.

*CFP* "BEYOND THE WHITE HOUSE: THE FIRST LADY IN FILM, FICTION, AND CULTURE", EDITED COLLECTION

This edited collection seeks to explore the representation of the First Lady in a range of different texts and media. The collection aims to examine the President’s wife in a purely cultural context by investigating the ways in which she has been represented, embodied, characterised and commemorated in film, fiction, memoir, photography and portraiture, television, theatre, education, museum studies, fashion, and social media. Beyond the White House is an original work that makes use of cultural interpretation to reconfigure the figure of the First Lady as a culturally authoritative individual possessing the ability to sway, change, inspire, and manipulate public attention and opinion. Moving away from biographies and histories, this is the first volume of its kind to consider the representation of the First Lady figure through the prism of popular culture - and therefore consider her impact upon ‘cultural politics’ - and the first to regard her as a strategically important socio-cultural figure.

Removed from the patriarchal hierarchy of White House politics and expectations, the First Lady emerges as a force of her own; she subtly carves out cultural agency and gender identity despite her (in)visibility in the public eye. Simply by being the ‘First Lady of the United States’ she possesses what MaryAnne Borrelli has labelled the “performance of descriptive representation” (Women and the White House: 229). The relationship between the woman and the office is paramount; the existence of the title ‘First Lady’ permits popular culture to tolerate or reject not only political and cultural manoeuvring, but also issues of gender, race, self, location, fashion, identity, satire, memory, authority, and even pedagogy. The office of the First Lady is what the woman makes it, and Beyond the White House she has become a commanding cultural icon.

*CFP* "CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON HULU'S 'CASTLE ROCK'", HULU SERIES

The Hulu series Castle Rock (2018 – 2019) occupies a unique textual space that both builds upon and transcends traditional notions of adaptation in its approach to Stephen King’s canon, engaging with the significance of place, intersecting narratives, and multiple worlds. As stated in the opening credits, Castle Rock is ‘based on characters and settings by Stephen King’, but it uses those established elements to create something original, telling new stories, building on iconic characters and creating compelling tales for new ones, situated within one of King’s signature Maine towns. Through this positioning, Castle Rock is able to reimagine and expand upon King’s work, world, characters and interconnections, participating in acts of both adaptation and creation, reflecting on King’s influence on the larger landscapes of horror and popular culture.

We are seeking proposals that critically analyze Castle Rock from a range of theoretical perspectives, including but not limited to:

• Castle Rock as adaptation of King 
• Castle Rock’s connection to other adaptations of King’s work

*CFP* "LATIN AMERICAN TELEVISION FICTION IN TIMES OF CHANGE (2015-2021)", VOL. 7 Nº 2, SERIES: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TV SERIAL NARRATIVES

Television fiction constitutes one of the basic pillars of television consumption. The arrival of video-on-demand platforms and the ease of internet access, together with the development of pay channels and the evolution of free-to-air television, have turned television fiction into the biggest source of entertainment for the public and the main focus of attention for critics in recent years.

Both nationally and internationally, the production, broadcasting, distribution, and consumption of television fiction are undergoing processes of change that are triggering technological, sociological, and cultural transformations, while also opening the door to corporations in the telecommunications and computer sectors, which have now become predominant actors in this new media landscape.

In Latin America, the television industry operates in a heterogeneous context that nevertheless has certain common features throughout the region, such as the preeminence of free-to-air television, the interconnectivity of the media, and the adoption of technologies that are altering traditional logics. This complex new context stimulates innovation in the processes of production, distribution, and consumption of television fiction content.

*CFP* "GLOBAL TV IMAGES OF FEMALE MASCULINITY IN THE 2010S", VOL. 15., NO. 3., THE SPECIAL FORUM OF COMMUNICATION, CULTURE AND CRITIQUE

In the past decade, TV representations of female masculinity have proliferated and diversified worldwide. Notable examples include the white lesbian landowner Anne Lister in the historical drama Gentleman Jack (BBC/HBO, UK/USA, 2019-), the African American lesbian Denise in the web series Master of None (Netflix, USA, 2015-2017), the tomboyish participants of the girl group elimination shows Youth With You 2 (iQiyi, China, 2020) and Sisters Who Make Waves (Mango TV, China, 2020), the cross-dressing female protagonist raised as a boy in the drama Bromance (SETTV, Taiwan, 2015-2016), the butch lesbian beauty contest segment, “That’s My Tomboy,” in the Philippine daytime variety show It’s Showtime (ABS-CBN, Philippines, 2009-), and the Taiwanese-American K-pop girl band member, Amber Liu who has been famous for her gender-nonconforming persona and homosocial-natured group singing and dancing performances on Asian TV in the early 2010s. 

Along with this surge in masculine female TV culture, there has been a growing body of scholarship on media and public imaginaries of female masculinity in different geo-locales since the late 1990s. J. Jack Halberstam (1998) famously noted that “far from being an imitation of maleness,” female masculinity is one of many “alternative masculinities” that manifests a continuum of various masculine traits and identities embodied or enacted by cis-females, such as tomboyism and butchness, the definitions and calibration of which are often socioculturally and racially modelled (p. 1). Moreover, the culturally specific understandings and imaginaries of female masculinity have been important threads in world gender studies and global queering theory, as research by Helen Leung (2002), Audrey Yue (2008), Todd A. Henry (2020), and others has discussed.

*CFP* "TELEVISION HISTORIES IN DEVELOPMENT", TWO-DAY ACADEMIC CONFERENCE

Call for papers for a two-day academic conference hosted by the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision in Hilversum, the Netherlands on Thursday 30 September and Friday 1 October 2021, organised by Professor Huub Wijfjes and Dr Josette Wolthuis.

On 2 October 2021 we will celebrate 70 years of television in the Netherlands. While this is a milestone worth celebrating, it also offers an opportunity to look back at the medium’s rich international histories. Television has survived its many predicted deaths and adapted constantly to changing social, cultural and technological trends and demands. We now invite scholars to respond to the call for papers below and contribute to a two-day international conference to further existing debates and reflect on the academic study of television history so far.

This conference will offer opportunities to share ideas and exchange research on the medium’s international histories. Scholars of all backgrounds and disciplines are invited to think about the question what role and influence television has had over the last seventy years. The conference seeks to address how television has created its own media logic that has influenced other cultural practices like journalism, sport, politics, theatre and drama, entertainment, youth cultures and education. We invite papers based on academic, preferably historic research about these perspectives. During the conference, we will encourage discussion on the development of the academic discipline of Television Studies from the 1950s until now.

*CFP* "STEVE MCQUEEN: 'I WANT THE BURDEN'", 14TH ANNUAL CONTEMPORARY DIRECTORS SYMPOSIUM

Steve McQueen: “I want the burden”

14th Annual Contemporary Directors Symposium

University of Sussex, online, Friday 24 Sept. 2021

 

Working across a range of formats, from video art and gallery installations to Hollywood to BBC1 with his recent Small Axe pentalogy, Steve McQueen’s prodigious output has been marked by formal ambition and political urgency, engaging most notably, but not exclusively, with black experience in racialised settings. This symposium interrogates his body of work, its political, aesthetic and institutional dimensions, and the interfaces between them.

Proposed papers are especially welcome on, but not limited to, the following topics:

*CFP* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION, FIAT/IFTA MEDIA STUDY GRANTS 2021

The Media Studies Commission of the International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT/IFTA) is dedicated to fostering collaboration between research and archive communities and mediating the growth of scholarly expertise that adds value to audiovisual archives by means of innovative research. To this purpose, the Media Studies Commission has set up the Media Studies Grant as a way to promote and ensure the valorization of academic knowledge for archival practice. It is a programme that offers support for research carried out at FIAT/IFTA member archives or is of direct relevance to one or more of our member archives. Priority is given to projects that are relevant for the history of member archive institutions, or promise innovative insights into (digital) media historiography or archival practice in general.

 

2021 Call for Projects

In 2021, FIAT/IFTA’s Media Studies Commission is looking to commission research that adds value to and helps us understand the role of audiovisual archives in a shifting, converging media environment.

*CFP* "LOS AÑOS 90 EN LA LITERATURA Y EL ARTE IBEROAMERICANOS", PRÓXIMO NÚMERO MONOGRÁFICO, REVISTA [SIC]

La revista [sic] invita a participar en su próximo número monográfico `Los años 90 en la literatura y el arte iberoamericanos´, coordinado por Álvaro Lema Mosca. El plazo para el envío de propuesta se cierra el 20 de marzo de 2021.

Se reciben artículos de investigación vinculados a esta periodización y sus principales características.

Ejes temáticos:

• La literatura de los 90: ruptura, transición, identidad.
• Los 90 entre la posmodernidad, el neoliberalismo y la revolución tecnológica en el campo de la cultura: estudios culturales, el problema de la identidad nacional, la crítica.
• Relacionamientos entre la movida contracultural postdictadura (segunda mitad de los 80) y principios de los 90.
• La novela negra, el thriller, el policial, lo fantástico, el realismo sucio, la ciencia ficción en los 90.
• La novela histórica de los 90: continuidad, ruptura, revisión.

*CFP* "FIRST THOUGHTS ON LOVECRAFT COUNTRY", SPECIAL ISSUE, STUDIES IN THE FANTASTIC JOURNAL

HBO’s recent series Lovecraft Country takes up the monsters of H. P. Lovecraft’s universe, but flips the script to make the heroes an African-American cast battling various demons in the Jim Crow era. Arguably, the show aimed at a re-appropriation or détournement of the pulp legend’s troubling racism, but critics seem divided on the show’s success. In Dr. Kinitra Brooks’s writings on the series for The Root, she situated it as “a part of the contemporary arts movement that media professor John Jennings coined as ‘Racecraftian,’ inspired by Karen and Barbara Fields in their 2014 book, Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life.” Therein, racecraft is defined as a practice: racism produces the illusion of race, and Jennings adopted the term (thinking specifically of its homology with Lovecraft’s name) to signify horror narratives that engage with critical race studies for the purpose of dismantling constructions of race. As an adaptation of Lovecraft’s universe, the HBO series would seem to be speaking back to the pulp legend. 

Studies in the Fantastic, a journal founded by Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi, seeks submissions for a special issue on any aspect of the show, but we are especially interested in essays that delve into this debate, the works of H.P. Lovecraft, Lovecraft Country,and the Racecraftian turn. Acknowledging that the series is new and that many conferences this year are cancelled due to the pandemic, we are accepting shorter essays (3500-6000 words) driven by scene analyses for this collection that seeks to gather together scholars’ “First Thoughts on Lovecraft Country.” Submissions for this special issue should be received by June 1, 2021. Send to the editor at fantastic@ut.edu

*CFP* "SCREENING IMMIGRATION IN NORDIC TELEVISION", PANEL, THE NARRATIVE AND VIOLENCE WINTER SYMPOSIUM

The Narrative and Violence 2021 Winter Symposium, "Narrating Violence: Making Race, Making Difference" invites abstracts for 20-minute papers for the panel: “Screening Immigration in Nordic Television”. This panel seeks to explore how immigrant-themed narratives are constructed in contemporary Nordic television. There has been a growing interest in the transnational direction of Nordic screen culture, owing much to the international success of Nordic noir and its saturation in the international markets. In particular, shows like Forbrydelsen The Killing (2007-2012) and Broen Bron The Bridge (2011- 2018) have helped to foster the region’s now formidable reputation for incisive, political and, above all, ‘quality’ drama.

Over the last two decades, an abundance of Nordic narratives featuring subjects like ‘ethnic Otherness’, immigration and the politics of multiculturalism have emerged. Many examples have gained a cultural foothold with support from a range of international broadcasters like the BBC, through to industry giants like Netflix, reinforcing the reach and cultural relevance of these shows. Offerings such as recent Danish drama DNA (2019- ), Iceland's Ófærð Trapped (2015 -) and Swedish thriller Blå ögon Blue Eyes (2014-2015) appear, on the surface, to be explicitly concerned with contemporary immigrant politics.

*CFP* "VICTORIAN INCLUSION AND EXCLUSION", VICTORIAN POPULAR FICTION ASSOCIATION'S 13TH ANNUAL VIRTUAL CONFERENCE

Victorian Popular Fiction Association’s 13th Annual Virtual Conference

“Victorian Inclusion and Exclusion”

14th – 16th July, 2021

University of Greenwich

Hosted online with MS Teams

 

The Victorian Popular Fiction Association is dedicated to fostering interest in understudied popular writers, literary genres and other cultural forms, and to facilitating the production of publishable research and academic collaborations amongst scholars of the popular.

*CFP* "HANDMAIDS' AND AUNT'S TALES: LEARNING FROM ATWOOD ABOUT RESISTING GILEADS FICTIONAL AND REAL", EDITED COLLECTION

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale has become in recent years increasingly prescient, as large swaths of our world have become ever more like Gilead, the dystopia it depicts in the body of the novel, and increasingly aspirational, as we pine for the opportunity to mirror Gilead’s downfall, as acknowledged in its “Historical Notes.” Bruce Miller’s provocative television adaptation, having visualized in its first season Gilead’s establishment and early years, has moved since to flesh out the early years leading to its demise. Atwood’s long-awaited sequel, The Testaments, which appeared less than a month after season three’s finale, offers us now an overall blueprint. As we await season four, to appear sometime next year, and a promised adaptation of The Testaments eventually, we do well to wonder what in Atwood’s and Miller’s developing narrative may help us to save ourselves from various slippery slopes to various real-life Gileads. 

“There are no sure-fire formulas” in resisting “totalitarianisms,” that is, Atwood reminds us, in The Testaments’ acknowledgements, “since very little in history is inevitable.” In the absence of silver bullets, that is, we take up whatever arms are at our disposal, however intangible they may be. Among these are the literary and visual arts, popular culture generally, on the assumption that however much they may be designed to please and entertain, their design cannot help but reflect the culture in which they are created, purport to serve. In this spirit, each chapter of the book will explore a broadly or specifically philosophical, political, or social lesson gleaned from the fictional resistance to Gilead that is at the core of Atwood and Miller’s developing narrative, with an eye to its actual or potential role in resisting real-life Gileads, now and in the future.

*CFP* "PERHAPS YOU MAY BE ABLE TO HELP SOLVE A MYSTERY", CRITICAL ESSAYS COLLECTION

Created by John Cosgrove and Terry Dunn Meurer, Unsolved Mysteries is an iconic American true-crime documentary series that has—since its initial broadcast as seven standalone specials in 1987—aired in more than thirty-five countries. For nine seasons on NBC (1988-1997), two seasons on CBS (1997-1999), and an additional stint on Lifetime (2001-2002), the show included a variety of segments, such as “Lost Loves” (in which individuals sought to reunite with someone from their past), “Murder” (usually committed by an unknown perpetrator), “Wanted” (known individuals responsible for a crime), “Missing,” and “Legend” (paranormal activity). Following the show’s cancellation, more than one hundred and fifty old episodes were repackaged, edited, and broadcast on Spike TV (2008-2010). 

As a result, Unsolved Mysteries is one of the longest-running programs in television history. Utilizing interviews and reenactments, the show was the first to encourage viewers to help solve a mystery by submitting credible information through a telecenter hotline and, once production of new episodes ceased, a post office box. Owing to the persistence of its creators and the fascination and passion exhibited by its fans,the show’s YouTube page began featuring cases submitted by the public in 2017. Throughout its run, the show has featured more than 1,000 cases; hundreds of these have been cracked at least partially based on viewer tips.

*CFP* "CARTOON NETWORK'S ADVENTURE TIME", CRITICAL ESSAYS COLLECTION

In 2010, Cartoon Network debuted a new animated series called Adventure Time, and within just a few short years, the show had become both a pop culture phenomenon and a critical darling; perhaps this reception is best exemplified by the words of the George Foster Peabody Awards Board of Jurors, which praised the show for “subtly teach[ing] lessons about growing up, accepting responsibility, and becoming who you’re meant to be.” But despite this admiration, not many works of scholarship have looked at the show through a critical lens. This proposed anthology thus seeks to fill a hole in the literature by giving the series the critical attention it deserves.

Chapters in this collection will focus on Adventure Time, with a critical emphasis on the profounder messages inherent to the series. Authors may choose to analyze the portrayal of certain characters, the show’s myriad story arcs, or even individual episodes. Chapters should function as critical readings or close analyses that employ a particular theory or theoretical lens (e.g., critical feminism, queer theory, psychoanalysis, Marxism) to elucidate the show’s deeper meaning(s).

*CFP* "MODALITIES OF FANTASY: RECONFIGURING TIME AND SPACE", SPECIAL ISSUE, THE LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES JOURNAL

Domain of the Fantastic is the ground for physical, biological, and metaphysical riddles about the architecture of perceived natural order of ‘life’ which re-organizes readers’ world to forge novel experiences of reality. Immediacy of the domain of Fantasy becomes relevant as a radical Other of our pandemic-hit reality—which is forcing us to make sense of the present world and devise new meanings—by introducing alternate perspectives on human condition that edge on becoming the normative. The production and reception of Fantasy narratives, as the Other, is driven by an immersive lure of fateful quest of an individual to redeem a crumbling community. 

Its built-in pluralistic vision—at social, cultural, historical, and bodily levels—catalyses its form against all fixed definites, and makes its relevance increasingly comprehensible in tackling the grim dystopic truths of our times as well as shaping our utopian desires. Both the generation of the fantasy narratives and the means of their operations determine the relations which are formed between an individual and his socio-economic and political conditions. Being theorized as political, fantasy narratives channelize the strategies of resistance and revolution, subversion and repression through their characteristic ‘unreal’ representations. The contextual placing of these unreal themes within fantasy texts, in the form of allegories, as such become the index of its functioning within the established ideological frameworks.

 

*CFP* "JOURNEYS: MEMORY AND MIGRATION", ASSOCIATION OF ADAPTATION STUDIES CONFERENCE 2021

Association of Adaptation Studies Conference

Journeys: Memory and Migration

10th-11st June 2021

Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh UK

 

For the 2021 edition of the Association of Adaptation Studies conference, we are seeking proposals on the topic of Journeys: Memory and Migration. We welcome all variations and interpretations of these terms, as they apply to the contents of papers, as well adaptation as a mode and methodology. We are particularly keen that the 2021 conference should reflect and contribute to the increasingly diverse range of methods, perspectives, texts and mediated and cultural forms evident in global and local cultures, and in academic and artistic practices.

 

Please find below a list of suggested areas for the submission of abstracts, though, as always, this is non-exhaustive: