[Commlist] Call for papers: proposed edited collection Seen and Unseen Universities - Academia and Higher Learning in Popular Culture

Abstracts are invited in response to the call for papers below:

In the age of Netflix's /The Chair/, it hardly needs saying that film 
and televisual representations of education are powerful mediators of 
our understanding of academic culture and activity. While knowledge 
production within learned circles, and disciplinary ways of establishing 
credibility and truth, are experienced by millions within universities 
and other institutes of higher learning, it is the popular cultural 
representations of these that seem to carry more weight in public and 
policy discourse. Of late, these representations have portrayed sources 
of tension between academic, scientific knowledge and many other types 
of knowledge production; and central to these tensions is the cultural 
authority and representation of science and the academy.

This call for papers takes science fiction/fantasy film and television 
as its focal point, however contributions going wider than the /science 
fiction /genre are welcome. The collection treats science 
fiction/fantasy as creating an entry point and a space to explore how 
film and television mediate knowledge and education, from high school 
dramas (which themselves often overlap with science fiction as well as 
fantasy) to forensic or policing shows, which endorse a positive 
scientific worldview.

Chapters should focus on the cultural production of knowledge in the 
academy and as mediated or presented through film and television; a 
focus that also invites scrutiny of how the academy itself is viewed in 
popular culture (e.g. /The Chair/; Terry Pratchett's Unseen University; 
/Doctor Who/'s Time Lord Academy; the Ivy League world of /Legally 
Blonde/; or the Vulcan Science Academy of /Star Trek)/.

The collection is envisaged as comprising an introduction, twelve 
chapters of 6000 words each and a conclusion. We are in discussion with 
a UK publisher for this collection.

In addition to /The Chair/, /Star Trek/, the Unseen University, and 
/Doctor Who/, contributions on film and television traversing science 
fiction and fantasy as well as film and television mediating the 
representation of academia will be welcome.

*Proposals of 300 words* with a short author bionote (150 words) should 
be send to Marcus Harmes by April 5^th 2022 ((marcus.harmes /at/ usq.edu.au) 
<mailto:(marcus.harmes /at/ usq.edu.au)>)


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