The Works of Amy Sherman-Palladino

Edited by Patricia Prieto-Blanco (Lancaster University, UK) and Cristina Pérez Ordóñez (Universidad de Málaga, Spain)

Book Series: Screen Storytelling, Bloomsbury. Series Editor: Anna Weinstein

The Screen Storytellers series is designed for students, professors, and enthusiastic consumers of film, television, and new media who seek information about contemporary and historically significant screenwriters that is both accessible and critically rigorous. The intention with this series is to bring much-deserved attention to screen and television writers who have developed noteworthy films and television series of significant aesthetic or cultural achievement, critical acclaim, or commercial success, and to offer close readings of the films and series from the perspective of story, screenwriting craft, audience reception, and cultural impact. Volumes explores the works of a single screen storyteller. The series places a strong focus on works by screenwriters often left out of classroom syllabi, including women, writers of color, LGBTQ writers, and international writers.

The Works of Amy Sherman-Palladino will be the first volume to explore the fruitful albeit ever challenging career of Amy Sherman-Palladino from a screenwriting and production perspective. In doing so, The Works of Amy Sherman-Palladino aims to complement Ryan’s and Bushman’s 2019 volume “The Women of Amy Sherman Palladino”. Daughter of a comedian and a dancer, her writing is funny, fast, full of references to pop and high culture, and her characters always perform complicated verbal and spatial choreographies. This book will celebrate her particular and very popular style of writing, explore writing as a collaborative act (as ASP often writes with her husband), as well as considering how the rhythm of her dialogues is translated into visual strategies. Thus, while centring on her screenwriting career, The Works of Amy Sherman-Palladino also considers her as a director and producer.

In order to connect with the target audience of the book series Screen Storytellers, final essays will be 3.000 – 3.500 words (including references). The contributions will address the work of Amy Sherman-Palladino as mentioned above and below, as well as in other relevant ways we may have missed.

• Working in tandem: Amy and Daniel Sherman-Palladino
• The role of dialogue in character development in the work of ASP
• Fashion as a silent character in the work of ASP
• Sculpting tumultuous mother-daughter relationships: role of dialogue, body language, and fashion
• Transforming quick words into dynamic visuals: ASP as a director
• Directing for spontaneity while preserving the textual integrity of the script: director-performer relationships
• The writing of ASP at service of someone else's story: "Roseanne", "Can't Hurry Love", "Veronica's Closet"
• Writing women's stories with a limited budget: "Love and Marriage", "Gilmore Girls", "The Return of Jezebel James"
• Writing when sky is the limit: "Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life", "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel"
• The role of music in the writing and directing of ASP
• Mise en scene and charachter development in ASP
• The role of audiences in elevating the work of ASP to cult status
• Representation of women’s careers and life balance
• Representation of sorority
• Representation of (single) motherhood
• Representation of (rural) community life
• Treatment of gender and/or race in Amy Sherman Palladino’s work
• Treatment of sexuality in Amy Sherman Palladino’s work
• Recurring themes in Amy Sherman Palladino’s shows
• Viewer response / critics’ response
• Deep dives into individual series (pilots and/or individual episodes):

1. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017 – 2023)
2. Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life (2016)
3. Bunheads (2012-2013)
4. The Wyoming Story (2010)
5. The Return of Jezebel James (2008)
6. The Gilmore Girls (2000-2007)
7. Veronica’s Closet (1997-1998)
8. Love and Marriage (1996)

Please, send a long-abstract (250 words, plus references) along with a 150-word biographical statement to p.prieto-blanco@lancaster.ac.uk and cristinaperezordonez@uma.es by 20th of Novemver 2024. Please title the subject line of your email: Abstract – The Works of Amy Sherman Palladino. Direct any questions or inquiries to this email address as well. We welcome submissions from scholars at all stages of their careers, as well as practicing and aspiring screen and television writing professionals. Feel free to contact us with any questions about the book, and please share this announcement with colleagues whose work aligns with the focus of this volume.

We aim to inform potential authors of the outcome of their proposal in February 2025.

Abstracts (250 w.) due November 20th 2024.

For questions about the SCREEN STORYTELLERS book series, contact Anna Weinstein at aweinst6@kennesaw.edu. For more information, visit https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/discover/superpages/academic/screen-storyt... or see the link to the first book in the series, The Works of Shonda Rhimes: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/works-of-shonda-rhimes-9781501399701/.

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