Mike Flanagan has emerged over the past fifteen years as one of the most prolific and recognizable horror creators in film and television, working across low-budget independent cinema, studio-backed films, and prestige limited series. Yet despite his prominence, versatility, and authorial trademarks, especially his collaborations with recurring actors and other artistic partners, he has received little sustained scholarly attention. Flanagan’s career thus exposes gaps in the literature that Serial Killer will fill, such as the devaluation of horror in comparison to other media genres, the limits of traditional auteurist approaches in the streaming era, and enduring tendencies to treat adaptation as inferior to originally scripted projects. We seek contributions for this edited collection that examine Flanagan’s output in relation to these and other core concepts in film and media studies, including issues of authorship, genre, reception, and media convergence. Accordingly, our anthology will primarily focus on how Flanagan’s authorial identity has been constructed, reworked, and at times diminished in various industrial contexts as well as with critics and audiences.

Building on our previous anthology, Prestige Television: Cultural and Artistic V alue in Twenty-First-Century America (Rutgers University Press, 2023), which explored the elevation of television’s reputation in the digital age, this edited volume uses Flanagan as a case study to chart how similar circumstances have shaped his career. Our collective analysis of Flanagan’s works will reveal how authorship functions across film and television amid growing media convergence. This emphasis will highlight how questions of medium specificity, artistic value, genre, and adaptation, among others, underscore cultural and industrial hierarchies.

Topics for contributor essays on Flanagan might include, but are not limited to:

-Media authorship and auteur branding in the streaming era

-Adaptation’s reputation and role as a mode of artistic expression

-The cultural status and critical reception of horror

-Performance, collaboration, and repertory casting

-Industrial contexts, from low-budget indies to franchise filmmaking and prestige limited series

-Fandom and the creation of the Flanaverse

-The relationship between film and television in a time of increasing media convergence

-Thematic concerns, such as religion, addiction, grief, and patriarchy and systemic oppression

-Stylistic and generic tendencies, including narrative complexity, cerebral horror, and melodrama

Submission guidelines:

Please submit a roughly 500-word proposal that clearly articulates the central argument, specific Flanagan project(s) under study, and theoretical approach, along with a brief biographical statement (under 100 words), to coeditors Amanda Keeler at amanda.keeler@marquette.edu and Seth Friedman at sethfriedman@depauw.edu by June 22, 2026. We are also happy to answer any email questions about potential contributions before the deadline. Notifications of acceptance or rejection will be sent shortly thereafter. Completed essays of approximately 6,000-words from accepted authors will be due around July 1, 2027.