[Commlist] CfA for Book Chapters: Unseen Television: Privilege, Power, and the Archives

Category: Call for Abstracts

Name: Andrew J. Salvati, Ph.D. ((asalvati /at/ drew.edu) 
<mailto:(asalvati /at/ drew.edu)>)

Subject line: Call for Contributions to Edited Collection: "Unseen 
Television: Privilege, Power, and the Archives"

With Disney+, Apple TV+, and NBC's Peacock joining Netflix, Amazon 
Prime, HBO Go, Hulu, Crunchyroll, ESPN+, and CBS All Access, industry 
observers and tech writers have declared that we now live in an era of 
“peak streaming TV.” Yet, even as this surfeit of services promises easy 
access to immense archives of video content - both past and present - it 
is worth asking what gaps, fissures, and fractures might exist within 
these collections; for it is in examining what is purposely left out, 
left incomplete, or rendered inaccessible – in other words, what is 
“unseen” – that gives us insight into the institutional power dynamics 
and political-economic decision making that constitutes these archives 
as repositories of owned or licensed content, as bundles of commercial 
assets, and as systems of thought. As television continues to evolve 
from a mass medium to a personalized, highly mobile media form, and as 
streaming services promote their platforms as founts of endless content, 
issues of access, profit, representation, and curation become 
particularly salient.

Economically, Netflix’s novel cost-plus business model has upended the 
traditional deficit financing model favored by studios. This model 
allows Netflix to produce a more diverse library, yet a shallower depth 
for its more cost-prohibitive original series. Additionally, the unique 
production model has contributed to a recent wave of vertical (AT&T-Time 
Warner in 2018) and horizonal (Disney-Fox in 2019) integration, 
resulting in bundling, vaulting, or selective windowing. Furthermore, 
such integration typically results in a narrowing of creative diversity.

At the same time, a convergence of preemptive corporate PR, cancel 
culture, and genuine social education has led to the exclusion of 
material that bears the problematic assumptions of earlier ages. Disney, 
for example, chose to omit /Song of the South/ (1946) and to implement 
content warnings for other classic films on its Disney+ archive rather 
than re-editing the content, as Warner Bros. has done with its own 
problematic material. Elsewhere, episodes of popular and profitable 
syndicated television shows (/Community/, /30 Rock/, /It’s Always Sunny 
in Philadelphia/, /The Office/, /Scrubs/, and /The Golden Girls/) have 
been excluded from streaming services for similar reasons, while 
episodes previously omitted from DVD and on demand services 
(/Married…With Children/, /Family Guy/, /The X-Files/, /The Simpsons/, 
/The Boondocks/, and /Seinfeld/) have reappeared on streaming platforms.

We understand “unseen” content in four distinct ways: 1) issues of 
absence and presence relating to representation and identity, 2) 
political-economic formations and their impacts on the archive and  
archive access, 3) material that has been removed from the archive by 
the distributor as either a preemptive or reactive measure to audience 
voices, and 4) broad and varying levels of “user access” to streaming 
libraries.

This collection seeks to provide a space of inquiry into these issues 
regarding television, the archive, and institutional power. In search of 
an understanding what is present by revealing what is absent, the 
editors of this collection seek essays that explore and interrogate 
issues of television’s “unseen” from methodologically diverse perspectives.

Contributions to this volume might include (but are not limited to) 
explorations of

·Contemporary examples of character absence, building on strong legacy 
of LGBTQ+ scholarship

·Streaming series whose accessibility is lost when a streaming channel 
declares bankruptcy or sells licensing rights to network channels

·Impact of horizontal and vertical integration on the production, 
distribution, and discoverability of media content

·The production logic of television pilots

·Re/purposing content: windowing, versioning, discoverability (UX design)

·Licensing/creation models (cost-plus vs. deficit financing)

·Audience agency/curation of the archive

·Political economic decision making

·Getting lost in the pile of algorithmic logic within the archive

·Cancel culture and trigger warnings in streaming libraries

·Invisibility of historical archives

·The “reappearance” of previously excluded content

Submission Guidelines:

Please send an abstract of no more than 350 words, along with a brief 
bibliography (3-5 sources) demonstrating the proposed chapter’s 
theoretical foundations, and a short biography (75 words) by October 1, 
2020 to Andrew J. Salvati ((asalvati /at/ drew.edu) 
<mailto:(asalvati /at/ drew.edu)>), Jonathan M. Bullinger 
((bullinger /at/ geneseo.edu) <mailto:(bullinger /at/ geneseo.edu)>), and Steve 
Voorhees ((voorhees /at/ mccc.edu) <mailto:(voorhees /at/ mccc.edu)>).

Please include “Unseen Television Submission” in the subject header, and 
copy all three editors on initial submissions and any further 
correspondence.

Chapter Guidelines:

Once abstracts are collected, they will be proposed to the publisher, 
Intellect, for a collection to be include in their upcoming /Unmade Film 
& Television /series. After abstract acceptance from the publisher, 
authors will be asked to write chapters of 7,000 to 7,500 words 
including references by an agreed-upon date to be determined (depending 
on publisher’s timetable).


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