Heralded by The Telegraph as a 'global phenomenon,' BBC's Sherlock is now one of the most commercially and critically successful television series of all time. The global recognition of Sherlock, combined with the recent discovery of Arthur Berthelet's 1916 silent film Sherlock Holmes starring William Gillette in his only screen appearance as the famous sleuth, makes it especially timely for film scholars, students, and audiences to reassess the cultural legacy of Holmes onscreen. Forthcoming work by Hills (2016) and Poore (2016) argue strongly for Holmes as a continuing source of scholarly interest, spurring us to look at Holmes' filmic lives.
This special issue of the Journal of Popular Film and Television will bring together original scholarship on Holmes adaptations. This collection will draw upon, and build on, recent work on Holmes' reception by Porter (2012), Vanacker and Wynne (2012), and Stein and Busse (2012), and on Holmes' early readers and viewers by Clarke (2014) and Werner (2014) by historicizing and by exploring manifestations of Holmes in films and on television. Holmes Onscreen (tentative title) will analyze the reasons behind Holmes' continuing fascination for viewers and examine their treatments of a wide range of social issues including race, gender, terrorism, and international relations. This special issue will expand upon the conversations that began in New Directions in Sherlock, a one-day symposium organized by Tom Ue and held at University College London. We encourage new historical, theoretical, analytical, and critical perspectives on Holmesian adaptations, both the canonical and the neglected, with a view of furthering scholarship both about the character and about his persistence in filmic imagination.

Sample topics:
Holmes and women
Holmes and men
Holmes and the world
Holmes and the form of detective writing
Holmes and fear
Holmes and doubt
Sherlock and Holmes
Holmes in black and white
Holmes and comedy
Holmes and the neo-Victorians
William Gillette and Holmes
Holmes and Raffles
Holmes in theatre and film
Holmes and the family film
Holmes' reception

Please note that papers that involve only literature/film and/or literature/television comparisons will not be considered. Please direct your queries and your 200-word working abstract, along with a one-paragraph biography, to Tom Ue at ue_tom@hotmail.com by 15 July, and feedback will be returned by 20 July. Completed papers of no more than 25 double-spaced and MLA-styled pages are due 15 November, whence they will be sent out for peer review.