CFP: [African-American] Down to "The Wire": Urban Decay and American Television (collection)

full name / name of organization: 
Tiffany Potter

Call For Papers - Edited Collection

Down to "The Wire": Urban Decay and American Television

Edited by Tiffany Potter and C.W. Marshall
(University of British Columbia)

Proposals are invited for an edited collection of original essays that
examine "The Wire," HBO's award-winning television series, which has just
concluded its fifth and final season. The volume will be published by
Continuum <http://www.continuumbooks.com>, which also published Cylons in
America (ed. Potter and Marshall), winner of the 2008 Popular Culture
Association/American Culture Association award for Best Edited
Collection.
 
The editors seek contributors who will examine "The Wire" from a variety
of critical, theoretical, and cultural perspectives. This collection will
be aimed at both academic readers and an educated general audience. We
seek essays that are both scholarly and engaging.

The complexity of "The Wire" as unforgiving political and social
commentary demands academic investigation. Because the show addresses so
many different social contexts, it is expected that this volume will
include chapters from several disciplines and methodologies, including
literary and cultural studies, political science, sociology, film and
media studies, law, psychology, criminology, and philosophy.

In addition to what we expect might include season-based examinations of
drug crime, blue-collar crime, social policy and practice, education, and
the media, as well as discussions of the nature of fictional
representations of aspects of American life, the following is a list of
topics that contributors might explore, though we invite proposals from
any disciplinary perspective on any aspect of the series and its
reception.

*intersections between representations of race, economy, and criminality
*issues of masculinity
*gender and sexuality in police and criminal cultures
*the family, childhood, parenting, and criminality
*re-imagining of the heroic beyond traditional narratives of America
*roles for women in urban America
*the technology of crime
*street speech and class-based communication
*cultures of addiction and treatment
*constructions of violence
*stress and trauma narratives
*education and class
*interest groups and issues of governance
*cable television and representing America
*issues of genre and narrative
*"The Wire" as television: direction, cinematography, music, casting,
etc.
*"The Wire," "The Corner," and "Homicide: Life on the Street"
*representations of Baltimore

Please send a 500-word abstract or completed essay (4,000-6,000 words),
plus a brief biographical statement (or c.v.), as e-mail attachments (in
Word or as a Rich Text File) to both of the editors:

Tiffany Potter (tpotter_at_interchange.ubc.ca)
C.W. Marshall (toph_at_interchange.ubc.ca)

Deadline for abstract submission: 9 June 2008.

If your proposal is chosen for consideration, you will have until October
2008 for final submission of your chapter.

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Received on Thu Apr 24 2008 - 18:56:33 EDT

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