cfp.english.upenn.edu

Between the Trailers: Critically Reading Trailer Park Boys

Deadline for abstracts extended to Mar 1/05
Visit the website: http://www.sfu.ca/~jbattis/tpb.htm

This edited collection will offer interdisciplinary readings of the
acclaimed Canadian series Trailer Park Boys. Long hailed as a Canadian
cult classic, TPB never received breakout American popularity, primarily
due to its setting within rural Nova Scotia as well as its unique
documentary style. Canadian networks like Showcase allowed TPB to air
without
censoring its frequent and highly inventive uses of profanity, as well
as
its reliance on narratives entangled with alcohol and drug use,
extortion,
and incarceration.

The show’s focus on a rural, low-income community is not entirely new:
other television offerings, such as Northern Exposure and North
of 60, have portrayed similar communities, choosing to focus on a
mixture of
economic reality and quirky character drama. But TPB remains unique in
that
it simultaneously parodies and critiques the social underpinnings of its
own
community. Through the frequently illegal misadventures of its central
protagonists, Ricky, Julian, and Bubbles, TPB enthusiastically parodies
an
impoverished Canadian community while offering powerful criticisms of
the legal,
educational, economic, and political forces that influence daily life
within
Sunnyvale Trailer Park.

Submissions should look seriously at the range of social forces that
affect these
characters’ lives, including the strategies they develop for negotiating
a world
whose political infrastructures are often pitted against them, and whose
liberal
humanist rhetorics seek to erase them as viable citizens. As a comedy
about
friendship, drugs, alcohol, and breaking the law, TPB is blazingly
funny. But as
a critical look at legislated poverty, legal intervention in poor
communities,
and strategies of daily survival within low-income neighborhoods often
rendered
invisible by public policy, it remains an equally important example of
cultural
analysis.

  Topics might include, but are not limited to:

   - inventive language use: Ricky’s neologisms, Bubbles’ songs and
   storytelling

   - drug and alcohol use

  - firearms and gun-related violence

  - healthcare, social programming, welfare

  - representations of legal superstructures like the RCMP, the Crown
  Council and
provincial/federal court system, the prison system

  - historical and geographical aspects of the trailer-park and other
  low-income
communities

  - filmic techniques, doxa and cinema vertite, the mockumentary
  "tradition"

  - the pejorative myths of "redneck" and "trailer trash" culture

  - female sexuality, pregnancy, and the sex trade

  - systems of housing and residency, power structures

  - queer theories, Randy and Jim Lahey, attitudes towards queerness and
  bdsm practice,
nontraditional romantic pairings

  - rap and hip-hop cultures, the figure of the white rapper, J-Roc

  - critical race theories, racial dynamics within the trailer park

  - family studies, motherhood, fatherhood, nontraditional families

  - friendship, male bonding, masculinity studies

Send abstracts (300-500 words) to jbattis_at_fastmail.fm The deadline for
abstracts has been
extended to Mar 1/05. I have preliminary interest from an academic
publisher.

Jes Battis / Dept of English, Simon Fraser University / Vancouver, BC /
jbattis_at_fastmail.fm

---/Jes Battis/Dept of English, SFU/8888 University Dr/Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6/phone: (604)291-5916/email: jbattis_at_fastmail.fm/homepage: http://www.sfu.ca/~jbattis ========================================================== From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List CFP_at_english.upenn.edu Full Information at http://cfp.english.upenn.edu or write Jennifer Higginbotham: higginbj_at_english.upenn.edu ==========================================================Received on Fri Dec 31 2004 - 15:34:28 EST