Call for Chapters: ReFocus volume on Mary Harron

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ReFocus: The Films of Mary Harron

Edited by Kyle Barrett and Paula Blair
Edinburgh University Press
Series Editors: Gary D. Rhodes and Robert Singer

Canadian-born filmmaker and screenwriter Mary Harron has created a distinctive body of work over the past twenty years, largely working in the United States, examining feminism in I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) and The Notorious Bettie Page (2005), consumerist hyper-masculinity in American Psycho (2000) and teenage coming-of-age in The Moth Diaries (2011).  Harron has also directed episodes of network, cable and streaming television series, including Homicide: Life on the Street (1993-1999), Six Feet Under (2000-2005) and Constantine (2014-2015) as well as the television film Anna Nicole (2013).  This ReFocus volume seeks chapters that focus on Harron’s diverse career as an independent filmmaker and director-for-hire within television.

Harron emerged during the “Indiewood” boom in the 1990s and has often been overlooked in favor of filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh. Harron has also been accused of misogyny within her work, particularly in American Psycho, which she co-wrote with actress Guinevere Turner, a collaboration that would continue with The Notorious Bettie Page.  In examining such perceptions in relation to Harron’s growing and understudied feminist project, this book aims to unearth the significance of the subversive themes and practices that emerge throughout Harron’s understudied career, and to investigate her standing as a diverse and challenging filmmaker working in North America today.

We welcome a range of theoretical, philosophical, historical and industrial approaches to engaging with all aspects of Mary Harron’s work, including chapters concerning, but not limited to, the following;
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  • Harron’s place in the history of women in the film and television industries

  • Adaptation and authorship
  • Biopics
  • Harron’s treatment of gender, feminism and/or sexuality
  • The economics of the projects to which Harron is attached
  • Harron as screenwriter and/or collaborator
  • Performance and performativity in Harron’s films
  • Harron’s television work
  • An exclusive interview with Harron
  • Engagements with Harron’s recent or new projects (e.g. The Family)
  • Your suggested topic

We will accept expressions of interests and abstracts of up to 500 words accompanied by a 100-word bio, to be sent to Kyle.Barrett@uws.ac.uk and peablair@gmail.com by 30 July 2016. We will aim to announce successful proposals by mid-September. Full chapters of 5000-7000 words will be provisionally due by the end of December 2016.

 

Chapters should adhere to US English spellings and technical formatting, and endnote (Chicago) style citation.

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