CALL FOR PAPERS: Reading The Sopranos: Is This the End of Tony Soprano?

http://mtsu32.mtsu.edu:11072/Reading_Sopranos/

Edited by David Lavery, Middle Tennessee State University

The editor of an in-development collection of essays on the HBO drama The
Sopranos, commissioned for inclusion in I. B. Tauris' "Reading Contemporary
Television" series (edited by Janet McCabe and Kim Akass), seeks your
proposals.

Since its debut on HBO in 1999, The Sopranos has been one of the most talked
about series in the history of television. In 2002, the advent of the fourth
season of the show famously described by The New York Times as the most
important work of American popular culture in fifty years produced a number of
books (visit the website to find a bibliography), including my own This Thing
of Ours (Wallflower, Columbia U P). Since then, however, The Sopranos has
occasioned minimal critical/scholarly interest; only one book, Greene and
Vernezze's "Popular Culture and Philosophy" volume, has been published.

With David Chase's masterful series now about to come to an end (Season Six,
though not yet definitively scheduled, will almost certainly air sometime in
2006), the time is ripe to revisit The Sopranos, assessing the series as a
whole just prior to its final run—just as Akass and McCabe's Reading Sex and
the City did with another popular HBO series.

This collection will be aimed at an educated but not highly-specialized
audience. The essays chosen for the volume will be scholarly but not obscure,
knowledgeable but not erudite. They should demonstrate knowledge and awareness
of the already published scholarship on The Sopranos.

A suggestive but not exclusionary list of topics can be found on the book
website: http://mtsu32.mtsu.edu:11072/Reading_Sopranos/.

ASAP, but by no later than the end of May 2005, please send either your
completed essay or a 500-750 word account of the essay you would like to
contribute as an e-mail attachment (in Word or as a Rich Text File) to
david.lavery_at_gmail.com. Be sure to include with your proposal a brief bio of
yourself. If your essay is chosen for final consideration, you will have until
the end of the summer to complete it.

David Lavery is the author of over ninety published essays and reviews and
author/editor/co-editor of ten published or forthcoming books: Late for the
Sky: The Mentality of the Space Age (Southern Illinois U P, 1992), Full of
Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks (Wayne State U P, 1994), 'Deny All
Knowledge': Reading The X-Files (Syracuse U P, 1996), Fighting the Forces:
What's at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002),
Teleparody: Predicting/Preventing the TV Discourse of Tomorrow (Wallflower,
Columbia U P, 2002), This Thing of Ours: Investigating The Sopranos
(Wallflower, Columbia U P, 2002), Quirky Quality TV: Northern Exposure
(forthcoming from Manchester U P), Reading Deadwood: Realizing the Western and
Reading The Sopranos: Is This the End of Tony Soprano? (both forthcoming in
the Reading Contemporary Television Series, I. B. Tauris, 2006), and Master of
Its Domain: Revisiting Seinfeld, TV's Greatest Show (forthcoming from
Continuum). He is also co-editor of in-development books on Twin Peaks, My So
Called Life, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Lost, and Fake News

Dr. David Lavery
English Department
Middle Tennessee State University
Murfreesboro, TN 37132
615-898-5648; Fax: 615-898-5098
Homepage: http://www.mtsu.edu/~dlavery/
Editor: SLAYAGE: THE ONLINE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BUFFY STUDIES (slayage.tv); Co-Convener, The Slayage Conference on the Whedonverse: http://slayage.tv/SCW/

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Received on Wed Apr 20 2005 - 09:19:34 EDT