The Oxford Handbook of Shirley Jackson will offer scholars and university students at the graduate and undergraduate levels a comprehensive overview of the exciting critical conversations currently shedding new light on Jackson’s novels, short stories, and memoirs, and the literary and moving-image works they have inspired. From architecture to alterity, horror to humour, and pessimism to pedagogy, the forty-five essays in The Oxford Handbook to Shirley Jackson will form a comprehensive guide to Jackson’s role in literary history while highlighting her continued relevance—and, often, prescience—regarding timely considerations of issues concerning gender, sexuality, race, class, mental illness, and apocalyptic anxieties. With Jackson’s work gaining in prominence both within the academy and in popular culture, we believe this collection is poised to be of interest to a broad audience of scholars, pleasure readers, and fans of horror and the macabre.

The Editors of The Oxford Handbook of Shirley Jackson seek proposals for essays on or related to the following topics (Only one essay per topic can be accepted at this stage.):

• Dark Humour and Satire: Part of a section on “Forms and Concepts in Jackson,” his essay would be an analysis of Jackson’s use of humour and satire in her domestic works, her cartoons, and in its less-expected but often integral appearances in her more Gothic and horror-inflected fiction.

• Shirley Jackson's Library: Also part of a section on “Forms and Concepts in Jackson,” focusing on Jackson’s extensive reading, and the ways in which her work is suffused with allusiveness and intertextuality. What was Jackson reading, and what are the key influences Jackson drew from that reading in her work? This chapter could include discussion of influences outside the Anglophone tradition that Jackson would have read in translation.

• Autobiographical: Part of a section on “Life Writing in Jackson, this chapter would be a critical look at autobiographical elements in Jackson's fictional exploration of identity and women's experience in the late 1940s through the early 1960s.

• Children’s Literature: Part of a section on “Permutations of Genre” in Jackson, this chapter would be an exploration of the major themes of Jackson’s Literature for children—9 Magic Wishes, Famous Sally, and The Bad Children—in the larger context of her work.

• Jackson on Jackson: Part of a section on Jackson’s “Influence and Legacy,” this chapter would be an exploration of Jackson’s philosophy of composition through Jackson’s own reflections on style, method and tone in her marginalia (e.g., in the collections, Come Along with Me and Let Me Tell You) and her recently published letters.

• International Reception and Translations: Also part of a section on Jackson’s “Influence and Legacy,” this chapter would engage with Jackson’s reception in non-Anglophone countries, potentially including Italy, France, China, and Japan, with consideration of textual and paratextual decisions made by translators and publishers. In addition to translations, this chapter will consider Jackson’s influence on contemporary international works such as the Australian film Relic (2020), examine the extent to which her popular works (i.e. “The Lottery”) appear on international curriculums, and consider whether she is read with a different perspective in these contexts.

If you are interested in submitting a proposal, please first contact editors Emily Banks (EBanks@franklincollege.edu) and Kristopher Woofter (kwoofter@dawsoncollege.qc.ca) for the full prospectus and essential further information. Deadline for submission of proposals would be Monday, 19 February, 2024, with notifications of acceptance by the end of February.