This is a call for proposals for a special issue of the Critical Studies in Television journal entitled "Acting Up: Gender and Television Comedy" (planned publication date 2015). This issue is inspired by the range of work being done by established and emerging academics on television comedy – across formats such as sitcom, sketch shows and stand-up. Work by feminist academics, such as Patricia Mellencamp, Frances Gray and Kathleen Rowe, has established gender as key to understanding the politics of television comedy in the 1990s. In the last two decades work on sexuality, masculinity, celebrity and reception have built upon those foundations, establishing comedy as a complex and contradictory field of academic debate. This special issue seeks to expand the existing body of material on gender and television comedy by inviting papers on programmes and approaches that have remained untouched or underdeveloped by academic research to date.

Topic might include but are not limited to:

• Gender, comedy and the quality debate
• Audiences and women's comedy series
• Television comedians and feminist politics
• Masculinity and sitcoms
• Camp and the politics of gender
• Gay/Lesbian/Queer characters and actors
• Gender and comedy on non-UK/US television

This issue of Critical Studies in Television will be co-edited by James Leggott, Sharon Lockyer and Rosie White. The deadline for proposals is 1st September 2013. Please send proposals of 500 words to Rose White at rosemary.white@northumbria.ac.uk. The deadline for completed articles will be December 2014