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CFP: “Fanfiction in Medieval Studies: What Do We Mean When We Say ‘fanfiction’?”, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 11-14, 2017

July 20, 2016

Call for Papers
“Fanfiction in Medieval Studies: What Do We Mean When We Say ‘fanfiction’?”
52nd International Congress on Medieval Studies
Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 11-14, 2017

Organizer: Anna Wilson, anna.wilson@utoronto.ca
Deadline Sept 15

Over the past three decades, there has been increasing interest in both Fan Studies and Medieval Studies in the relationship between medieval literary culture and fan fiction (popular, ‘unofficial’, fan-generated creative writing that participates in a pre-existing fictional ‘universe’ and uses its characters). Many Fan Studies scholars have seen fanfiction as the heir to the premodern literary tradition in which authors adapt, rework, reinterpret or otherwise engages with a pre-existing literary work. Fan Studies scholars often refer to the Aeneid’s reworking of Homer, romances in the Alexander or Arthurian traditions, or specific works, such as Robert Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid, as ‘early fan fiction’. Fanfiction scholars have also claimed the medieval ‘active reader’, whose creativity spilled into glosses, commentaries and exegesis, as part of the history of fanfiction writers. Some medievalists have chafed at inaccurate representations of medieval literary culture by Fan Studies scholars, while many others have found that the analogy between the literary activity of fan communities and medieval literary cultures generates valuable and thought-provoking questions that have informed their own research or teaching.

At the first ever session on fanfiction in Medieval Studies at ICMS 2016, papers on such diverse subjects as marginal commentary on The Book of John Mandeville and Chinese fan subtitles of Disney’s Mulan showed the fertility of the idea of fanfiction for reframing the medieval reader, reading communities, affect, and modern medievalisms. However, panellists returned over and over to the question of how to use the term ‘fanfiction’ productively and accurately when discussing medieval practices and texts. Our 2017 proposed session, “What Do We Mean When We Say Fanfiction?” will invite papers that discuss medieval texts and practices with reflection on the following questions: what characterises fanfiction or fandom before the rise of the technologies – the printing press, the photocopier, the internet – without which it is impossible to imagine modern fandom? is it the intensity of readerly affect? the mere fact of rewriting or reinterpretation of a pre-existing text? resemblance to modern fanfiction tropes? the existence of a ‘virtual community’ of readers? How might using the term ‘fanfiction’ occlude or erase important details of the way medieval readers experienced texts? How might it bring to the fore elements previously neglected?

For further reading in Fan Studies, an up-to-date bibliography is maintained on Zotero, affiliated with the journal Transformative Works and Cultures. It can be found here: https://www.zotero.org/groups/11806.
Please submit abstracts of 300 words or less, and a Participation Information Form (available here: http://wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html#PIF) to Anna Wilson (anna.wilson@utoronto.ca).

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Call for Chapters: Jessica Jones edited collection

July 12, 2016

CALL FOR BOOK CHAPTERS ON JESSICA JONES

Netflix’s Original Series Jessica Jones, released December 2015, has received roaring critical acclaim and has established a monumental fan base. As both academics and fans of the series, we are intrigued by the amount of online and offline discussion that has arisen–especially among its many fans–on issues regarding gender and race politics, Netflix Original Series content, and feminism. Acknowledging and citing the series as a site of rich cultural content, we invite submissions for an edited collection based on Marvel’s Jessica Jones. In putting together this edited collection, our goal is to approach this from a variety of disciplinary lenses, touching upon media, fan, women, and gender studies.

Some questions we ask are: How does the representation of women’s bodies open up conversations of trauma and consent? Does Netflix original series content change the landscape of present and future television/small screen programming? How do fans engage with the series’ traumatic content?

Possible topics for submission include but are not limited to:

The political economy of Netflix productions and/or the Marvel Cinematic Universe as it relates to Jessica Jones
Politics of representation (gendered bodies, racialized bodies, rape, PTSD)
Representations of rape, assault, and gender-based violence
Consent culture
Feminism
Intersectionality
Audience reception and Jessica Jones fandom
Jessica Jones on social media

Submission Guidelines
Please submit in one (1) Word document (.doc/.docx) an abstract of approximately 200 words outlining your intended chapter. The abstract should clearly state a purpose or research question, methodology/theoretical framework, and (preliminary) results/conclusion. Please include a short (no longer than 100 words) biography of yourself and your contact information to: project.jessica.jones@gmail.com by August 1, 2016.

We will contact you once we review all submissions (mid-September) at which time, we will provide further details for the final papers (Due December 15, 2016).

If you have any questions, you can contact us at project.jessica.jones@gmail.com.

Editors:

Priya Rehal, York & Ryerson Universities
Jessica Bay, York & Ryerson Universities
Mary Grace Lao, York & Ryerson Universities

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Transformative Works & Cultures journal, Special Issue CFP: Social TV Fandom and the Media Industries

June 21, 2016

Transformative Works & Cultures, Special Issue CFP: Social TV Fandom and the Media Industries

When Henry Jenkins calls the mid-2000s media landscape one of convergence culture, he describes the intersection of media industries, online social media, and television audiences. Using emerging multiplatform strategies producers can directly engage and immerse potential television audiences. Likewise, industry shaped hailing of fans creates fan-like audiences, but it does so within limits, reflecting industry concerns and agenda.

Nearly a decade later, both audiences and industry expect direct and continuous engagement between a series and its audience. Industry-instigated fandoms exist alongside and in conversation with fan-instigated community engagement. In particular, the rise of social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr have made multiplatforming both more efficient and more mainstream, meaning that now nearly every television show has an online presence that welcomes fan engagement. As this reality of “social television” matures, however, the connections it promises between producers, actors, and viewers are tested by each new platform, each controversial story development, and by the ever-present politics of power and identity that shape any and all interactions between industry and audience.

This special issue aims to put emerging research on social media platforms and ongoing work on online fan culture in conversation to consider the impact the proliferation of those platforms is having on our understanding of the consumption and negotiation of television in era of on-screen hashtags, cast livetweets, Periscope, and the new world of “Social TV.” Topics may include, but are not limited to:

* Case studies of industry/fan engagement for specific series or networks
* Discursive framings of Social TV fandom in trade/popular press
* Negotiations of good/bad fandom in industry discourse
* Industry-produced transmedia storytelling and emergent platforms
* Industry-affiliated fan activism through Social TV practices
* Social TV in a global/transnational industrial context
* Adoption of fan identities by industry professionals
* Linear vs. non-linear Social TV practices
* Industry cultivation of and management of Superfans

Submission guidelines

Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC, http://journal.transformativeworks.org/) is an international peer-reviewed online Gold Open Access publication of the nonprofit Organization for Transformative Works copyrighted under a Creative Commons License. TWC aims to provide a publishing outlet that welcomes fan-related topics and to promote dialogue between the academic community and the fan community. TWC accommodates academic articles of varying scope as well as other forms that embrace the technical possibilities of the Web and test the limits of the genre of academic writing.

Theory: Conceptual essays. Peer review, 6,000–8,000 words.
Praxis: Case study essays. Peer review, 5,000–7,000 words.
Symposium: Short commentary. Editorial review, 1,500–2,500 words.

Please visit TWC’s Web site (http://journal.transformativeworks.org/) for complete submission guidelines, or e-mail the TWC Editor (editor AT transformativeworks.org).

Contact—Contact guest editor Myles McNutt with any questions or inquiries at mmcnutt AT odu.edu.

Due date—March 1, 2017, for estimated March 2018 publication.

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CFP: Transitions 7, New Directions in Comics Studies, at Birkbeck College, London, Saturday November 19th 2016.

June 10, 2016

Transitions 7 at Birkbeck College, London, Saturday November 19th 2016.

Organised in collaboration with Comica- London International Comics Festival, Transitions at Birkbeck College is unique in offering a regular comics studies symposium and meeting point in London, a platform for emerging research at an event that is free of charge and open to all. Originally convened by PhD students in 2009, Transitions has become an annual fixture in the UK comics scholars’ calendar.

We are still especially supportive of postgraduate and early career presenters, but open to any new and ongoing research in our field. Our aim is to provide a platform for debate and a space from which further collaborations can emerge, to further strengthen our area of study and academic community, and to support connections between comics scholars working in diverse academic departments and contexts.

We welcome abstracts for 20 minute papers, or pre-constituted panels of three, on topics including, but not limited to:

— Comics, comix, graphic novels, manga, manhwa, bande dessinée    Superheroes, genre comics, religious comics, documentary comics, children’s comics

—  Politics of representation in comics, formal approaches, trauma and comics,      transgressive comics, propaganda and comics
— Readers and fandoms, creators, publishing histories, transnational approaches, comics  and the law, web-comics and comics exhibitions

Alongside traditional panel presentations we would like to trial the more interactive format of a 20-minute workshop, potentially as a way of data collection and/or feedback on research-in-progress. Please indicate your preference by stating PAPER or WORKSHOP following your abstract title.

Apply by email to  transitionssymposium@gmail.com.

Please attach your abstract of 250-300 words plus short biographical note (preferably as a Word document), indicating ‘abstract’ in the email subject line and your name in the file’s title.

The deadline for submissions is August 26th 2016.

With best wishes,

The Transition Team

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CFP: Geek Feminism (edited collection)

June 9, 2016

CFP: Geek Feminism (edited collection)

Geek girls exist. But it wasn’t until a packed San Diego Comi-Con panel in 2010 actually entitled “Geek Girls Exist” that the ramifications of this fact began to be realized. Women’s increased visibility in science and technology, pop culture fandoms, sci-fi and fantasy storytelling, gaming, and other geeky endeavors has brought to the foreground a resistance to acknowledging a geek culture that isn’t straight, white, and male. On one level, geek feminism emerged to combat this oppressive atmosphere determined to discourage and erase the participation of geeks whose identities deviated from that norm. But on every other level, that fight is just a footnote to the myriad ways in which geek feminism is a unique (and frequently joyful) manifestation of what happens when the radical and imaginative potentiality of 1980s scientific, creative, and communications technologies intersected with the identity-conscious third wave feminism that emerged in the 1990s. While several books exist that detail first-person experiences and offer collections of resources for geek girls, this anthology will be the first book-length collection of scholarship exploring the ways in which geek feminism is expressed and practiced.

Submissions should draw on current work in fan studies, critical race theory, queer theory, feminist theory, jurisprudence, media studies, and transnational studies. While part of the anthology will need to be focused on feminist critique of geek culture, we encourage submissions that focus on the generative and imaginative aspects of geek feminism.

Potential topics and areas of interest could include:

The history of geek feminism
Analysis of geek fictions and characters
Speculative justice: when fictions correct fact
How to spot a geek girl: identity formation and performance
Cyber vs. IRL geek feminist praxis: the convergence of imagined, online, and “real” spaces
Geek-tivism as a response to systemic oppressions
The creative, productive, joyful practices of geek feminism
The business of geekdom: examinations of the creation, marketing and crafting of geek artifacts and products
And, of course, miscellaneous weird stuff

Send 300-word abstracts and short bios to Amy Peloff at apeloff@gmail.com and Nancy White at ncwhite@uw.edu with subject line “CFP – Geek Feminism.” Since geek feminism is a relatively undefined term, we ask that each submission also include a brief attempt (c. 100-150 words) to define geek feminism within which to situate your proposed chapter. Our hope is to draw on the community of contributors to develop a definition of the term.

Abstracts should include title, author name, and institutional affiliation, as well as contact details. The editors will ask the authors of selected proposals to submit their final chapters no later than March 1, 2017.

Timeline
Abstracts by October 1, 2016
Decision by November 1, 2016
Papers by March 1, 2017

Editors
Dr. Amy Peloff, Independent Scholar
Dr. Nancy C. White, University of Washington

Contact Info:
Amy Peloff at apeloff@gmail.com and Nancy White at ncwhite@uw.edu

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CFP: Uses of Fantasy in Changing Media Landscape, October 20–21, 2016, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

June 9, 2016

Uses of Fantasy in Changing Media Landscape, October 20–21, 2016, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

In recent years, fantasy fiction has gained popularity in different mediums. For instance, in television fantastic or speculative themes are more visible than ever before, and – as television scholar J. P. Telotte has noted – they are even invading the so called reality television. The Uses of Fantasy seminar focuses on the uses and users of fantasy in contemporary culture and contemporary representation of fantasy in different cultural mediums. In other words, the seminar concentrates on the reception, representation and meaning of fantasy in a changing media landscape. The seminar is organised by the project Uses of Fantasy – The World Hobbit Project in Finland in cooperation with the University of Jyväskylä and The Research Centre for Contemporary Culture.

We invite presentations and panels on the uses and users of fantasy as well as on the contemporary representations of fantasy on different mediums, such as literature, television, film, comics and graphic novels, games and new media. These may include but are not limited to:

Audience responses and the meanings of fantasy; affective attachments to fantasy; fantasy fandom and other participatory user practices
Adaptation and transmedia; representing fantasy via different mediums
The cultural meanings of fantasy; representations of cultural phenomena through fantasy; the politics of fantasy (e.g. in relation to gender, sexuality, ethnicity, age, class, disability etc.)
Fantasy and narration; fantastic characters; fantastic genres (science fiction, horror etc.)

Proposals for scholarly papers from any academic discipline that seek to examine, interrogate, and expand research related to any aspect of uses of fantasy, in any medium are welcome. Papers will be allowed a maximum presentation time of 20 minutes.

One of our keynote speakers will be Emeritus Professor Martin Barker, Aberystwyth University (Great Britain), who will give a lecture on The World Hobbit Project and also participate in the seminar.

Please submit a 500-word proposal describing the content of your proposed paper, and few words about yourself and your research (including your current affiliation) to hobbitprojectfinland(at)gmail.com. The deadline for the proposals is September 5, 2016.

If you have any questions about the seminar, please contact hobbitprojectfinland(at)gmail.com.

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CFP: Expanding Universes. Exploring Transmedial & Transfictional Ways of World-Building 23rd-25th September 2016, Kraków (Poland)

May 11, 2016

Expanding Universes. Exploring Transmedial & Transfictional Ways of World-Building
23rd-25th September 2016,
Kraków (Poland)

Thinking of storyworlds as representations that transcend media
not only expands the scope of narratology beyond its “native” territory of language-based narrative […] but also provides a much-needed center of convergence and point of comparison to media studies.
M.-L. Ryan & Jan Noël Thon

OVERVIEW
It is no doubt that with the dynamic evolution of fantastic narratives a world-centered model of storytelling has started to proliferate, changing the way one can interact with fictional representations of worlds in literature, movies, video games, comic books, any other media. A growing interest in media-conscious world-building, both amongst scholars and fans, clearly shows that the future of narrative and media studies lays not with monomedial, but transmedial studies—especially when no-one seems to question cross-overs, retellings, remediations, or any other narrative devices so common in contemporary storytelling. From Star Wars Expanded Universe/Legends top-down and bottom-up transfictional storytelling or transmedial campaign for The Hunger Games the movie to multimodal storytelling in Doug Dorst’s “S” or Bioshock: Infinite”—we all engage in a plethora of ways of world-making, and what transmedial narratology needs nowadays to do, is to analyze these storyworlds in their variety without imposing any paradigmatic world-building model for creators to follow. Consequently, organizers of the conference will welcome presentations or full panel proposals covering:

 key and emerging concepts in transmedia studies and transmedial narratology;
 theoretical discrepancies between transmediality, multimodality, and transfictionality;
 theory, history, and philosophy of world-building in literature and other media;
 top-down and bottom-up world-building and storytelling;
 ways of inhabiting fictional/virtual worlds: immersion, interactivity, and beyond;
 franchises and franchised universes: their expansion and narrative potential;
 fan & fandom studies with an emphasis on participatory authorship in shared universes, entertainment
supersystems, and more;
 means of narrative/economical control (i.e. canon, moderated/curated content, licencing etc.) in massive
world-building enterprises;
 psychological and philosophical contexts of world creation;
 case studies of transmediality, transfictionality, and world-building across media (MCU, Game of Thrones,
StarCitizen, Star Wars, DC Universe, and many more);

KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Confirmed conference keynote speaker is a prominent narrative theorist, Marie-Laure Ryan, author of the
most important books in possible worlds theory, hypertextuality, transmedia storytelling, transfictionality & multimodality,
immersion theory, and narrative studies, such as Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative
Theory (1991), Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media
(2001), Avatars of Story (2006), or (co-edited), Narrative Across Media: The Languages of Storytelling (2004)
and Storyworlds Across Media. Toward Media-Conscious Narratology (2015).

REGISTRATION, SUBMISSIONS & FEES
The conference language is English. To register for the conference, one should sent in editable format (.doc,
.docx.) 600-words abstracts featuring (1) the title of presentation, (2) a concise bio-note, (3) current affiliation,
and (4) all necessary contact information (official email address & phone number) at transmedialstudies@gmail.com
by June 30th
2016. Successful applicants will be notified within two weeks after the deadline.
Attendees are also encouraged to send us full panel proposals composed of (1) abstracts from a minimum
number of 4 delegates, (2) up to 600 words description of the pa-nel, (3) a suggested title of the panel and, most
importantly, (4) email addresses of all delegates included in the proposed panel.
The conference fee of 100€ will cover conference materials, catering and all other essentials, but does not
include accommodation.

MORE INFO
Further details regarding the venue, suggested accommodation and transportation will be continuously
updated at the website transmedialstudies.wordpress.com. Organisers do welcome all questions and requests
at transmedialstudies@gmail.com.
The conference will be followed by a peer-reviewed monograph, published by Facta Ficta Research Centre
and licenced under Creative Commons 4.0 as an ebook stored in a globally accessible repository (CeON Center
for Open Science) and / or in peer-reviewed special editions of renowned scholarly journals.
We look forward to seeing you in Kraków!

THE ORGANISING COMMITTEE
Ksenia Olkusz, PhD (Facta Ficta Research Centre in Kraków)
Piotr Kubiński, PhD (University of Warsaw)
Krzysztof M. Maj (Jagiellonian University, Facta Ficta Research Centre in Kraków) – project co-ordinator
Sven Dwulecki (Eberhard Karls University Tübingen)

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CFP: Academia and Humanities at Nine Worlds 2016

April 15, 2016

For the past three years, the Nine Worlds convention hosted an academic conference. We ran a combination of solely academic sessions, as well as placing academic speakers on panels and tracks in a more casual manner – details of last year’s sessions on the Academia and History tracks are still available on the Nine Worlds website. This year, we’re looking for content in a similar vein for the new Academia and Humanities content area, which has an even broader remit than previous years’ Academia track.

With that in mind, we’re inviting submissions for papers and suggested panels, as well as volunteers to talk on pre-organised panels. All areas of study surrounding ‘geek media’ are accepted – from video games to classic fantasy, and we welcome submissions from anyone who is a current student or has graduated with a degree in a field related to their topic. Talks will be ideally 20-30 minutes in length, and the standard panel time is 1 hour.

Nine Worlds will take place August 12th-14th 2016 at Novotel London West. Tickets are available for purchase, and they will grant you access to the whole convention – not just the academic content.

Suggested areas of submission include:

Video Games and their impact/role within wider culture
Board, Social and Role-playing Games
Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature
Diversity and representation in geek culture
‘Geek’ film and TV
Comics
Fanfiction
Research as a fannish practice
History and its relation to geek media/culture
Science and its relation to geek media/culture
Religion and philosophy and their relation to geek media/culture
Please ensure your paper/panel is suited to non-academics. Ideally, you may assume the audience has full knowledge of primary sources, but little secondary, so please take this into consideration. We intend to each session be accessible and understandable to those outside of the usual academic groups. In addition, please take note of our anti-harassment policy.

Please send a title, a 300 word abstract, your name and affiliation (the university you are currently at or most recently graduated from) to humanities-academia@nineworlds.co.uk.
The deadline for submissions is April 30th, 2016. This deadline is for abstracts/submissions to be a panellist only.

Registration will be completed through the purchase of a ticket to the convention as a whole. Accommodation should be booked separately by individual participants. All profits from the conference/convention will go to charity. Please do email if you have questions or concerns about finance, as we do have a limited budget available to assist those otherwise unable to attend.
Nine Worlds deliberately tries to promote parity of race, sexual orientation, genders and creeds as a part of its programming remit. We aim to follow this in our selection of panellists, and would also be interested in including papers or panels that address these issues. However, we are aware that some people do not want to discuss these as direct topics, and wish to be sensitive to this, so you will only be asked to speak on topics that you offer to.

Thank you,
Claire Wilkinson & Tony Keen
Academia and Humanities Content Group Organizers

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CFP: Audiences and Adaptation: Literature/Film Quarterly Special Issue (Abstract Deadline May 1, 2016)

April 11, 2016

In his essay “Adaptation and New Media,” Michael Ryan Moore reflects on the status of adaptation studies in the digital age, stating that with new media “adaptation becomes a strategy of participation. Rather than develop wholly new works, audiences take ownership over existing media, adapting the stories, shows, and films that they most identify with.” In this special issue of LFQ, we seek to explore the role of audiences in adaptation and the manner in which adaptation is a participatory process. How do audiences make meaning out of adapted properties? What is the role of memory or nostalgia in adaptation? How might transmedia storytelling ask audiences to interact with texts in new and exciting ways? How does fan culture complicate existing models of author/encoder and spectator/decoder?

Adaptation studies have long asked useful and engaging questions concerning the textual and authorial dimensions of adaptation processes, but has not as readily addressed the role of audiences in this equation. Nor has the field engaged fully with the rich and innovative work done in reception studies. For this issue of LFQ, we seek to put adaptation studies and reception studies in conversation.

We welcome work that explores the complex relationship between adaptation and audiences from a variety of disciplinary, critical, and historical perspectives. Possible areas of inquiry may include, but are not limited to:

•Amateur, unauthorized, “sweded,” or fan–produced adaptations
•Cosplay, role-playing, and –Con festivals
•Fan love and cinephilia for adapted properties
•Fan hatred or rejection of adapted properties
•Franchises, multi-platform, and transmedia storytelling
•Scholar-fandom and autoethnography
•Adaptation as a mode of reception/fandom
•Remaking, rebooting, and the “reclaimed” text
•Stardom and adaptation
•Adaptation to/from video games and other participatory formats
•Oppositional reading or queering adaptation
•Fan or slash fiction; exploration or extension of storyworlds
•Adaptation and affect, emotion, or sensation
•Adaptation and nostalgia/memory
•Paratexts and/as adaptations
•Merchandising and collecting
•Advertising and marketing of adaptations
•Censorship, rating systems, test audiences, and boycotts
•Kickstarter and crowd-sourced film adaptations
•Exhibition practices and distribution of adaptations

Please submit a 500-800 word abstract in MLA style to litfilmquart@salisbury.edu by May 1, 2016. Your abstract should outline your working thesis and briefly sketch the theoretical framework(s) within which your essay will be situated. If accepted, full articles of 5,000 to 6,500 words must be submitted by October 3, 2016. The Special Issue will run in October 2017 as part of LFQ’s new online open access format.

Please email LFQ Assistant Editor Andrew Scahill at adscahill@salisbury.edu with any questions.

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CFP: Neo-peplum Films and Television 1990 to Present

April 9, 2016

Neo-peplum Films and Television 1990 to Present

Introduction
After the success of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator in 2000, the sword-and-sandal genre of films was officially resurrected and has not seen such a prolific output since its heyday in Italy in the late 1950s and 1960s. This second wave of peplum films – or more specifically “neo-peplum” to reflect this distinctive contemporary cycle – has achieved unprecedented critical and commercial success, with big screen films such as 300 to ambitiously realized small screen fare such as Spartacus and Rome. Marginal, critically panned and box office bombs such as Gods of Egypt still make an impact, contributing to the canon of films. With an upcoming remake of Ben-Hur on the horizon, films set in ancient Greek and Roman times, based on their mythologies or featuring gladiatorial combat or large centurion armies, are certainly in demand to theater-goers and Netflix binge watchers.
With such films enjoying popularity, it invites an academic gaze to unearth their cinematic importance beyond simple movie watching consumption. These films and television shows are definitely important: are they a reflection of our times? With our high tech lives, what is the fascination with depictions of the ancient world? With body and gender dialogue more open, what does this say about films that have a strong emphasis on the herculean male or Amazonian female?
This anthology is looking for essays that aim to explore this neo-peplum cycle of films that shares commonality to the original Italian films and Hollywood historic epics. The original peplum cycle of films began with Hercules in 1958, so it is appropriate to say the neo-peplum cycle begins anew with the Hercules character in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys of the 1990s. This anthology seeks to solidify the neo-peplum genre as a distinct term and re-appropriate it to specifically refer to sword-and-sandal films and television shows made after 1990 and evaluate these entries in a variety of interdisciplinary lenses and frameworks.

Potential Essay Topics
A list of possible (but not comprehensive) topics and themes that contributors could submit on:
Anti-Peplum – exploring change in tone from adventure and action to more dramatic and gritty stories
Portrayal of women from vamps and damsels in the original peplum cycle to Xena-inspired characters in the present cycle (Xena, The Arena)
General Masculinity/Femininity portrayal
Compare/contrast original Italian cycle with present cycle
Compare/contrast original stories/characters with remakes (Hercules remakes, Clash of Titans remake)
Close reading at source material and how neo-peplum films interpret them
Neo-peplums as allegory for present day politics
Peplums for young adults (Gods of Egypt)
Neo-peplums combining with other genres – such as sci-fi (John Carter) or disaster film (Pompeii)
Ancient worlds portrayed in “hyper-realistic” fashion
Mono-myth and neo-peplum characters
Auteur theory and neo-peplum directors (Timur Bekmambetov and The Arena)
Pastiche, parody, subversion (Hail, Caesar!, Meet the Spartans)
Representations of race, white-washing
Fans, fandom and fan cultures of neo-peplum series (Hercules, Xena, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson)
Shakespeare, tragedy (Titus)

Authors are encouraged to submit more than one abstract. If you have multiple great ideas for potential essay chapters, feel free to submit each one. I will assemble the most cohesive arrangement of essays that will provide the most well-rounded discussion of neo-peplum films.

Films and Television Series
Below is a list of potential films and television series post 1990 that could potentially fit into the neo-peplum formula. This list is by no means complete, but it is presented to give examples of the types of films/TV shows that fit within this genre and to inspire creative ideas for the films to write about. Not all neo-peplum films deal directly with ancient Greece or Rome, as some of the aesthetics and styles are being used for Egyptian, Viking and barbarian themed films as well. This list is only a guide; other films and TV shows that are neo-peplum-like will certainly be entertained for this book.
Films
300 (2007), 300: Rise of an Empire (2014), Agora (2009), Alexander (2004), The Arena (2001), Centurion (2010), Clash of the Titans (2010), The Eagle (2011), Gladiator (2000), Gods of Egypt (2016), Hail, Caesar! (2016), Hercules (1997), Hercules (2014), Immortals (2011), John Carter (2012), The Last Legion (2007), Meet the Spartans (2008), Pompeii (2014), Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (2010), The Scorpion King (2002) and its sequels, Titus (1999), Troy (2004), Wrath of the Titans (2012)
Television Series
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995-1999), Rome (2005-2007), Spartacus (2010–2013), Vikings (2013-present), Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001), Young Hercules (1998-1999)

Publication Timetable
Below follows a generous timetable at essay composition, editing and submitting:
June 30, 2016 – Deadline for abstract submissions
July 10, 2016 – Notification of acceptance, distribution of style guide
December 4, 2016 – Chapter drafts are due
April 29, 2017 – Chapter revisions due
May 31, 2017 – Submission of manuscript to the publisher
Drafts and revisions are strongly encouraged to be submitted before the deadlines. The essays will follow Chicago style citations. The style guide when disseminated will round out the essay specifications.

Abstract Submission Instructions
Please submit your abstract(s) of roughly 500 words along with your academic CV/resume and preliminary bibliography to the email address below before June 30th. Please use an appropriate subject line when submitting – have it contain the phrase “neo-peplum submission.” I will confirm each submission via email within 48 hours.
Essayists will receive a contributor’s copy of the book when it is published.

Nicholas Diak, editor
Email: vnvdiak@gmail.com
Website: http://www.neopeplumbook.com

Nicholas Diak is an independent pop culture scholar residing in southern California. He has a strong interest in neofolk and post-industrial music, exploitation cinema, Italian genre films and H.P. Lovecraft. He has contributed to the book James Bond and Popular Culture: Essays on the Influence of the Fictional Superspy (McFarland, 2014) and has an essay appearing in an upcoming anthology on space-horror films. He is a frequent presenter at the Southwest Popular/American Culture Conference, a contributor to the website Heathen Harvest and a member of the H.P. Lovecast Podcast. He is also an academic member of the Horror Writers Association and National Coalition of Independent Scholars.

#peplum #neo-peplum #spartacus #rome #300 #gladiator

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