This is a call for chapter proposals on the late Morgan Spurlock's 30 Days reality TV series (2005-08) on the FX Channel for the FX Reader, an anthology of FX's best original TV series, which is under a two-volume book contract with Syracuse University Press.  In each 30 Days episode, Spurlock, or some other person or group of people, would spend 30 days immersing themselves in a particular lifestyle or environment with which they are not familiar, which include such topics as working for minimum wage, being in prison, a Christian living as a Muslim, and others. This chapter should also address Spurlock's admission of sexual misconduct and his resignation as a documentary filmmaker. This collection will serve as a valuable resource for TV scholars and educators on FX’s history and its most critically acclaimed, noteworthy series.  The chapter is expected to focus on each series’ creation and production history, its overall aesthetics and key performances, core themes, its association with genre conventions, and relevance to the FX Channel. Each chapter will be simply identified with the series' title and author(s).

Please send abstracts of 300-500 words identifying your chosen series accompanied by a short third person author bio (100 words max) to david.pierson@maine.edu as a Word document by February 28, 2025.  Final chapters should be 5000 words including references, and will be due on April 30, 2025.   For inquiries and questions on the availability of series, please feel free to contact David Pierson at david.pierson@maine.edu, or Brian Faucette at brfaucette@gmail.com.

Editor Bios:  

David Pierson, Ph.D.is a professor of media studies at the University of Southern Maine.  He has published an edited collection Breaking Bad: Critical Essays on the Contexts, Politics, Style, and Reception of the Television Series (https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498532327/Breaking-Bad-Critical-Essays-on-the-Contexts-Politics-Style-and-Reception-of-the-Television-Series), a monograph on The Fugitive TV series (https://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/fugitive), along with published chapters and journal articles on such TV series as Better Call Saul, Black Mirror, Breaking Bad, Combat, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Mad Men, Seinfeld and The Shield.  

Brian Faucette, Ph.D. teaches film and English composition courses at a two-year college.  His research focuses on the representation of American masculinities in contemporary and classical American film and television and American crime dramas in television. He is the author of Hawaii Five-O (2022) which is part of the Wayne State University TV Milestone series. He is the co-author of the book Cop Shows: A Critical History of Police Dramas on Television (2015). His most recent essay “It is Difficult to be a White Man in America: White Male Supremacy and the Alt-Right in HBO’s Watchmen” appears in the After Midnight: Analyzing the Post-Watchmen Sequels Ed. Drew Morton Univ. Press of Mississippi (2022). He has also contributed three new essays on Black Mirror, The Flash, and an Overview of Comic Book TV Shows for The Television Genre Book 4th edition (2023) edited by Glenn Creeber.