Call For Papers: A Critical Companion to Julie Taymor

Deadline (abstract): 31 August 2022

Deadline (full manuscript): 1 December 2022

An important note: This project was originally announced in recent years under a previous editor. This project is now underway with a new editor. Any authors who previously submitted chapters (proposals or completed) to this project should contact Matthew Hodge at rmhodge@peace.edu.

Considered as a true visionary, Julie Taymor is one of the of the most experimental and intellectually engaged film and theatrical directors working today. Her fusion of folklore, pop-culture, and classic literature has resulted in a series of fascinating and intellectually demanding works, both on stage and screen. From her beginnings with downtown not-for-profit theater through her Broadway successes and failures to her idiosyncratic career in Hollywood, Taymor has proven herself a notable and important artist.  

This collection will explore Taymor’s career, with an emphasis on her work in film, from Fool’s Fire (1992) to more renown productions such as Titus (1999), Frida (2002), The Tempest (2010) and the recent The Glorias (2020). As the first comprehensive scholarly volume on Taymor, covering her entire career in cinema, we are currently inviting the submission of 250-300 word abstracts for essays to be included in A Critical Companion to Julie Taymor set to be published in the Lexington Books series Critical Companions to Contemporary Directors, edited by Adam Barkman and Antonio Sanna (Lexington Books is an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield). The series (which already comprises volumes on Tim Burton, James Cameron, Robert Zemeckis, Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick and Terrence Malick) covers many directors whose works are highly renowned nowadays, offering interesting and illuminating interpretations of the various directors’ films that will be accessible to both scholars of the academic community and critically-minded fans of the directors’ works. Each volume combines discussions of a director’s oeuvre from a broad range of disciplines and methodologies, thus offering the reader a variegated and compelling picture of the directors’ works.

Possible topics for this volume include (but are not limited to):

- Thematic and Structural Analysis of one or more films

- Comparisons or connections between Taymor’s theatrical, operatic and cinematic work

- Taymor’s use of source materials and adaptation/transmedia strategies

- Gender, class, and sexuality

- Space and the filmic frame

- Creative dialogues between Taymor and other directors/designers/writers/artists

- Representations of childhood, parenting and ageing 

- Taymor and fairy tales 

- Taymor and the arts

- Gender and queer readings 

- Exploration of dreams and the subconscious  

- Alienation and misperception, conformity/nonconformity 

- Fear of the Other 

- Cultural studies and popular culture 

- Special effects and their evolution

- Music in Taymor's films / Julie Taymor and Elliot Goldenthal

- The meaning and significance of colors 

- Fan practice and fan communities 

- Technology and the Environment 

- Ethical and other philosophical issues

- The supernatural

- Irony and humour 

Essays included in the refereed anthology will be approximately 6,000-8,000 words, referenced in Chicago endnote style. Completed papers for the accepted abstracts should be submitted by 1 December 2022. Please send a CV, a biographical statement (about 100 words) and 200-300 words abstract to rmhodge@peace.edu by 31 August 2022.

Any questions can be sent to:

Matthew Hodge

Associate Professor

Music and Theatre

William Peace University

rmhodge@peace.edu