[Commlist] Call for Chapters in Edited Volume: Architectures of Deceit: Impostors and Con Artists in Contemporary Film and Media

Call for Edited Chapters:
*No Payment will be required from the authors*
**
*Architectures of Deceit: Impostors and Con Artists in Contemporary Film 
and Media*
**
The radical transformation of the welfare state and of the labor market 
has inaugurated the golden age of the impostor, a figure oscillating 
between subversion and conformity. The omnipresence of impostors, 
scammers, and con artists across a wide range of genres reveals the 
subtle ways in which neoliberal values of flexibility, adaptability, and 
self-reliance become manifest in the deep structure of cultural texts. 
We have always been drawn to stories about impostors, con artists, and 
scammers trying to game the system, because they are so relatable. In 
the words of Jessica Pressler, whose article in /New York Magazine/ was 
the inspiration for /Inventing Anna/ (2022), what’s satisfying about con 
artist stories is “that when somebody games the system, you see that 
there is a system.” The unprecedented number of con artists, grifters, 
hustlers and impostors in contemporary screen media, pursuing with 
deranged determination and cruel optimism ‘the good life’ (Lauren 
Berlant) straight down the line, where distinctions between reality and 
fantasy disappear, is symptomatic of the psychological pressures of 
producing and sustaining neoliberal subjects as self-entrepreneurs, 
utility-maximizing agents encouraged to both take risks /and/ rationally 
manage their human capital by acting solely upon cost/benefit calculations.
This volume explores the construction of the neoliberal 
subject-as-impostor and reflects on the critical potential of the figure 
of the impostor, as well as the limits of the critique of neoliberal 
subjectivity it invites. We invite essays on imposture in film and 
media, including impersonation, doubles, masquerade, identity fraud, con 
games, and performance. We are interested in contributions that approach 
this topic from a wide range of perspectives, including, but not limited 
to, genre, history, theory, psychology, politics, cultural studies, and 
star studies, to examine what imposture might reveal about authenticity, 
power, class, race, and spectatorship. Contributors might, for example, 
consider fiction films that employ the trope of the impostor to offer a 
meta-commentary on the role of mental structures in the formation of 
class imaginaries, docudramas exploring the phenomenology of trust and 
deception in cinema, scam documentaries that reflect larger cultural 
anxieties about trust and intimacy in a post-digital world, or AI-driven 
psychological thrillers that imagine what happens when the most intimate 
parts of ourselves are animated by the artificial intelligence of an 
impostor.
Ultimately, we are interested in what imposture might reveal about 
identity, class, race, gender, authenticity, affective labour, and the 
entrepreneurial self under late capitalism.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
·      Real-life fraudsters in fiction films, documentaries, and TV series
·      Algorithmic identity and platform cultures (deepfakes, 
catfishing, and other types of online deception)
·      The impostor as a vehicle for satire, farce, and social critique
·      Authorship and imposture –**fake memoirs, fabricated 
documentaries, media hoaxes etc.
·      Genre and the narrative economy of imposture
·      Surveillance, power, and institutional infiltration – how media 
texts represent impostors within systems of control (state, corporate, 
military)
·      Psychoanalysis and the figure of the impostor
·      Imposture and class, race, and gender
·      Reflexivity and the aesthetics of uncertainty - hybrid forms 
(mockumentary, essay film, docufiction) that foreground imposture as a 
formal strategy
Please send a 300-word proposal, a bibliography, and a 100-word bio to 
the editors: Temenuga Trifonova (_t.trifonova /at/ ucl.ac).uk_ 
<mailto:(t.trifonova /at/ ucl.ac.uk)> and Alice Bardan _abardan@msmu.edu_ 
<mailto:(abardan /at/ msmu.edu)>
*Timeline:*
Proposal submission deadline: *June 15, 2026*
Acceptance/rejection notices: *June 30, 2026*
Articles (7000 words, including notes and bibliography) submission 
deadline: *November 30, 2026*
Bloomsbury Academic and the University of Michigan Press have expressed 
an interest in this volume.
*Bibliography*
Adams, Glenn et al. “The Psychology of Neoliberalism and the 
Neoliberalism of Psychology.” /Journal of Social Issues/, 2019-03, 
Vol.75 (1), 189-216.
Batalla, Oriol. “Invisible Extinction: Fragility and Extinction of the 
Self in Neoliberal Societies,” /Annali di Ca’ Foscari: Serie Orientale/. 
Vol.59 (2023), 255-278.
Beattie, Peter. “The Road to Psychopathology: Neoliberalism and the 
Human Mind.” /Journal of Social Issues/, 2019-03. Vol.75 (1), 89-112.
Berlant, Lauren. /Cruel Optimism/. Duke UP, 2011.
Breeze, Maddie. “Imposter Syndrome as a Public Feeling.” /Feeling 
Academic in the Neoliberal University/, ed. Yvette Taylor and Kinneret 
Lahad. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
/Fake Identity? The Impostor Narrative in North American Culture/, ed. 
Caroline Rosenthal and Stefanie Schäfer. University of Chicago Press, 2014.
Foucault, Michel. /The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de 
France/, 1978-1979. Picador, 2010.
Francis, Marc. “Smoke and Mirrors: The Bio-Con Documentary in the Age of 
Trump.” /Film Quarterly/, Fall 2020, Vol. 74 (1), pp. 69-74.
Orgad, Shani and Rosalind Gill, /Confidence Culture/. Duke UP, 2022.
/The Impostor as Social Theory: Thinking with Gatecrashers, Cheats and 
Charlatans/, ed. Steve Woolgar, Else Vogel, David Moats, and 
Claes-Fredik Helgesson. Bristol UP, 2021
/The Impostor Phenomenon: Psychological Research, Theory and 
Intervention/, ed. Kevin Cokley. American Psychological Association, 2024.
Tzanelli R., Yar, M., and M. O’Brien. “Con Me If You Can’: Exploring 
Crime in the American Cinematic Imagination.” /Theoretical Criminology: 
An International Journal/, 9 (1). 97-117.

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