CFP The Scientist in Popular Culture (expired)

My apologies for having missed posting this earlier. It is an intriguing approach to the legacy of Shelley's novel.


Edited Collection - The Scientist in Popular Culture
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/08/21/edited-collection-the-scientist-in-popular-culture

deadline for submissions: September 15, 2019

full name / name of organization: Rebecca Janicker, University of Portsmouth
contact email: rebecca.janicker@port.ac.uk


From news and documentaries to TV drama and major media franchises, science has become a firm fixture in contemporary media culture. Across these diverse formats, a fascination with the perceived capacity of science – whether in the guise of medicine, criminology, space science or engineering – to transform life in wonderful and fearful ways endures. The figure of the scientist is science made manifest and, though different variants have evolved over the centuries, the scientist has remained a constant presence in Western culture. The last hundred years or so has seen many developments in science and technology and popular culture has kept abreast of these, portraying scientists that respond to the shifting hopes and fears of eager audiences. Science fiction may work variously to celebrate or denigrate scientific values and activities and many horror fictions have explored the ramifications of dabbling in science and technology. Moreover, the recent flourishing of superhero narratives has meant a strong focus on such characters and scenarios. The imaginary feats and failures, as well as the cultural prominence, of scientists have attained ever-greater heights as a result. Science and scientists have also flourished in other genres, such as forensic drama, police procedurals and true crime narratives, found their way into children’s fictions, and into comedy.

Acknowledging the long and enduring history of fictional scientists, including adaptations and re-imaginings, this planned essay collection seeks to offer critical interrogations of recent portrayals of the scientist as well as fresh insights into long-established characters. Scientists have featured on the big screen from the early days of cinema and held their own on the small for decades, from network television staples and lavish HBO offerings to recent fare on streaming services like Netflix. With this tradition in mind, suggested case studies might include, though are not limited to, the following texts:

Films: Annihilation (2018); Back to the Future (1985); Contact (1997); Deep Blue Sea (1999); Despicable Me (2010); The Fly (1958), The Fly (1986); Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931); Frankenstein,etc (Universal), Curse of Frankenstein, etc (Hammer), I, Frankenstein (2014); Godzilla (1998), Godzilla (2014); Hollow Man (2000); Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989); I Am Legend (2007); The Invisible Man (1933); Island of Lost Souls (1932), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996); Jurassic Park (1993), etc; The Man with Two Brains (1983); The Martian (2015); MCU (Black Panther, Deadpool, The Hulk, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Venom,etc); Mimic (1997); The Nutty Professor (1996); The Omega Man (1971); Outbreak (1995); Piranha (1978); Re-Animator (1985); Splice (2009); World War Z (2013); Young Frankenstein (1974); 28 Days Later (2002), plus any prequels, sequels and other franchise entries.

TV: The Alienist; American Horror Story; The Big Bang Theory; Bones; Chernobyl; CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CSI: Miami, CSI: NY, CSI: Cyber; Dexter; Doctor Who; The Flash; Futurama; Game of Thrones; Hannibal; The O.A.; Penny Dreadful; Rick and Morty; Ripper Street; Sherlock; Silent Witness; The Strain; Stranger Things; Waking the Dead; The Walking Dead; Westworld, plus any spin-offs and other franchise entries.

Potential topics might include: issues of representation (e.g. age, childhood, gender, race, sexuality); genre (e.g. detective fiction, forensic drama, medical drama, police procedurals); Gothic and horror tropes; the role of the scientist in environmental catastrophes and outbreaks; national identity and history; science and ideology (e.g. philosophy, religion, scientism); science in partnership (e.g. business, Government, military, etc)



Advice for Contributors

Please send 250 word abstracts, along with a short bio, to Rebecca.Janicker@port.ac.uk by September 15, 2019. Abstracts should aim to clarify the intended scope and focus of the essay and include a provisional title. Queries are welcome at the same email address.



Publishers have been contacted about the project and abstracts will form part of the written proposal. The final essays will be scholarly and engaging and 7000–8000 words in total.



About the Editor

Rebecca Janicker is a Senior Lecturer in Film and Media Studies at the University of Portsmouth, UK. She received her PhD from the University of Nottingham in 2014 and had her thesis published as The Literary Haunted House: Lovecraft, Matheson, King and the Horror in Between (McFarland, 2015). She is the editor of Reading ‘American Horror Story’: Essays on the Television Franchise (McFarland, 2017) and has published journal articles and book chapters on Gothic and horror in literature and comics, film and TV.



Last updated August 22, 2019

Young Frankenstein (1974)

Young Frankenstein (1974), from Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks, is simultaneously a brilliant homage to and send-up of the Universal Frankenstein films. It presents a continuation and recasting of the Frankenstein story that brings a descendant of Victor Frankenstein back to his ancestral home, where (as the musical adaption so matter-of-factly puts it) he joins the family business.

Frankenweenie (1984 and 2012)

Tim Burton's Frankenweenie begin as a short film (1984) and was later remade into a full-length feature (2012). It offers an interesting recasting of the Frankenstein story in its account of the love between a young boy and his pet.

Frankenstein Unbound (1990)

Frankenstein Unbound (1990), a rare science-fictional take on the story, is based on the acclaimed novel of the same name by Brian W. Aldiss. The film (and the novel before it) casts a time traveler from the future back to the year 1817. There he encounters both characters from Frankenstein as well as a young Mary Shelley.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994) offers an interesting adaptation of the novel. It is not a totally faithful retelling but does offer some insight into how such a production might be envisioned.

CFP Diagnosing History: Medicine in Television Costume Dramas (9/15/2018)

Here's an interesting idea:

Diagnosing History: Medicine in Television Costume Dramas
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/06/20/diagnosing-history-medicine-in-television-costume-dramas

deadline for submissions: September 15, 2018

full name / name of organization: Dr. Julie Anne Taddeo

contact email: taddeo@umd.edu


There has been a long relationship between television and medicine: some of the small screen’s most popular shows, on both sides of the Atlantic, have been medical in focus, from hospital-set dramas like ER to reality TV shows and docudramas like One Born Every Minute. This fascination with doctors, hospitals and bodies is also shared by period drama television, but scholarship has paid little attention to this intersection/relationship. Recent period dramas including The Knick, Mercy Street, and Charite, for example, use the hospital setting familiar from older shows like Bramwell, to address larger themes about the professionalization of medicine, medical innovations and failures, and the gender politics that surround the profession. Dramas like Call the Midwife document the progress of the NHS and female reproductive health while also engaging in contemporary debates about contraception, abortion, and disability. In addition, medical-driven narratives abound in almost every period drama on our screens today: war-induced mental and physical trauma in Peaky Blinders; Spanish ‘flu in The Village; gay conversion plotlines in A Place to Call Home; bodily and facial disfigurement in Home Fires; medical experimentation and monstrosity in Penny Dreadful and Frankenstein Chronicles; nursing as a vehicle of female emancipation in The Crimson Field and Morocco: Love in Times of War; and all of the above and many more in Downton Abbey, whose most famous plotlines are medical in nature.

This edited collection seeks to address this important area of period drama studies, and we are looking for proposals for essays on any of the above issues, or which may be interdisciplinary in approach and engage with the medical humanities, interrogating relationships between medicine and history, class, gender or race. Our collection aims to be international in scope, so submissions about period dramas from/situated in any country are welcome.


Please send a 500 word abstract and brief biography by Sept 15, 2018 to:

Julie Anne Taddeo: taddeo@umd.edu

James Leggott: james.leggott@northumbria.ac.uk

Katherine Byrne: kbyrne@ulster.ac.uk

A Shocking New Discovery?

A final post on ThinkGeek. The retailer has yet another item licensed from Universal Studios. This one is a pin designed to resemble some of the apparatus in the lab of Henry Frankenstein. (That's not a typo; remember Universal reverses the first names of Victor and Henry Clerval.) 

Ordering instructions and full details at: https://www.thinkgeek.com/product/jpkn/.