I am seeking proposals for chapters to complete an edited collection on literary, cinematic, and televisual treatments of Donald Trump, tentatively titled Trump Fiction:  Essays on Donald Trump in Literature, Film, and Television.

Contributors must have a PhD.  

Donald Trump was a public figure long before he became President of the United States, one who became familiar to American audiences through his appearances in a wide variety of media over a period of several decades.  While much has been made of Trump’s selling of himself to the American public in branded productions that identified him as their author or producer, ranging from books such as Trump:  The Art of the Deal to his reality-TV Apprentice franchise, less attention has been paid to the treatment of Trump in works by others.  

This collection will examine the treatment of Trump and his fictional analogues in literature, film, and television, examining both works that took up the subject of Trump before his successful presidential campaign as well as those written after he took office, including works that touch on Trump tangentially or metonymically in contexts appropriate to critical discussion of his presidency.  How can these works’ treatments of Trump anticipate, shape, reflect, and help us better understand the discourse that has surrounded his presidency?   

Proposals for chapters on any work of Trump fiction are welcome, especially on texts other than American Psycho.  I particularly welcome proposals for chapters on:

• Olivia Laing's Crudo
• Jeffrey Robinson's Trump Tower (originally promoted as a novel by Donald Trump)
• Salman Rushdie's The Golden House
• Andrew Shaffer's The Day of the Donald:  Trump Trumps America
• Gary Shteyngart's Lake Success
• poems on Trump, such as Cody Walker's The Trumpiad and many of the poems published in Amit Majmudar's Resistance, Rebellion, Life:  50 Poems Now and Michael Boughn & Kent Johnson's Resist Much/Obey Little:  Inaugural Poems to the Resistance

I encourage contributors interested in writing on texts other than these to contact me, to make sure your contribution would not overlap with a chapter already committed to this collection.

Please send inquiries and 500-word proposals, along with a CV, to Stephen Hock, shock@vwu.edu, by November 15, 2018.  Contributors will be notified by December 1, and completed chapters of 5,000 to 7,000 words will be due April 1, 2019.  Accepted chapters will be included in a manuscript submitted to an academic publisher that has expressed interest in publishing this collection.