Matthew Schneider-Mayerson and Cameron-Leader Picone invite book reviews for a 2011 special edition of Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture, an open access, electronic, peer-reviewed journal devoted to publishing essays in cultural studies from emerging and established scholars worldwide. This theme of this issue is "Popular Fiction," and in addition to reviews of academic work that deal with the complicated questions of genre, gender, production, and consumption in and of popular fiction that we are interested in we welcome reviews of works of popular fiction (such as Charles Adai's Fifty-to-One). Please e-mail us at reconstructionpf@gmail.com by June 15th, 2011 with a proposal. The reviews will be approximately 500-1000 words. Examples of potential scholarly works to be reviewed are:

Encyclopedia of American Popular Fiction, Sarah Powell
Spies and Holy Wars: The Middle East in 20th-Century Crime Fiction, Reeva Spector Simon
Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King, Lisa Rogak
Alcohol in Popular Culture: An Encyclopedia, Rachel Black
Making the Detective Story American: Biggers, Van Dine and Hammett, J.K. Van Dover
Ball Tales: A Study of Baseball, Basketball and Football Fiction of the 1930′s through 1960′s, Michelle Nolan
Of Sex and Faerie: Further Essays on Genre Fiction, John Lennard
Sisters, Schoolgirls, and Sleuths : Girls' Series Books in America, Carolyn Carpan

For decades, the study of popular fiction in the United States has lagged behind its popularity and influence. Just as film and television have developed their own approaches that reflect the unique social, cultural, political, and industrial dimensions of each medium, so popular fiction should occupy its own critical space. As popular fiction has been underrepresented in studies of narrative generally and American literature more specifically, comparatively minor genres, such as African American "street fiction," engage with canons that have been systematically excluded from academic study. This issue of Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture offers a site for interrogation of the various aspects of popular fiction.