[Commlist] CFP: ReFocus The Films of John Waters

John Waters’s career has been prolific: directing and writing over 17 
feature films and shorts over five decades, as well as writing a handful 
of books about filmmaking, popular culture and most recently, a novel. 
And yet, because of his outsider status, which he has maintained by 
staying rooted in his hometown of Baltimore, his creation of “trash 
cinema”, an ongoing fascination with the borders of sex and violence, 
and an emphasis on a do-it-yourself aesthetic and approach to 
art making and directing, his contributions to the American cinema as a 
director have been largely overlooked by established film academics. In 
addition, his work demands new analysis in light of the last decade of 
LGBTQ film analysis.

We are seeking abstracts of 250-500 words for essays to be included in a 
book-length anthology on John Waters to appear in 2024/2025. The 
intended scope of the work is to analyze Waters’s role as an independent 
filmmaker working from a queer point of view, positioning him in 
parallel, though not exactly within, the New Hollywood trajectory of the 
late 1960s and 1970s. It will argue for Waters’s significance as an 
auteur and a film provocateur whose contributions to queer culture 
played a major role in bringing marginalized people to the screen.

Possible areas of inquiry could include, but are not limited to:

  * Waters’s films as writer/director
  * Waters and film style
  * Waters and melodrama
  * Waters and cultural taboos
  * Waters and Baltimore
  * Waters and independent filmmaking
  * Waters and Shock Cinema
  * Waters and queer cinema
  * Waters and trans identities
  * Waters and Charles Manson
  * Waters and the 1950s
  * Waters and suburbia
  * Waters and art cinema
  * Waters in popular culture
  * Waters and frequent collaborators
  * Waters and authorship
  * Waters and Body Positivity
  * Waters and #MeToo.
  * Waters and do-it-yourself film making

    Areas outside of those listed here are also welcome


    Essays included in the refereed anthology will be of approximately
    5,000 to 8,000 words, referenced in/Chicago/endnote style.

    Completed Drafts will be due Mid 2024.

    /The Films of John Waters/will be one of the scholarly editions to
    be published by Edinburgh University Press in a new series of
    anthologies examining overlooked American film directors. Series
    editors are Robert Singer, Ph.D., Gary D. Rhodes, Ph.D., and Frances
    Smith, Ph.D. Volume editors previously published/ReFocus: The Films
    of Paul Schrader/(2020).

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/series-refocus-the-american-directors-series

<https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/series-refocus-the-american-directors-series>

    Edinburgh University Press Books

<https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/series-refocus-the-american-directors-series>
    Edinburgh University Press - the premier Scottish publisher of
    academic books, ebooks and journals
    edinburghuniversitypress.com


    Please attach a/curriculum vitae/to your abstract and email them
    directly to the anthology’s editors by October 31, 2023:

    Brian Brems
    Professor, English
    College of DuPage
    (bremsb /at/ cod.edu)


    Michelle E. Moore, PhD
    Professor, English
    College of DuPage
    (moorem /at/ cod.edu)


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