Call for Essays: Stranger Things: Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence

I am looking for proposals for chapters for a book on the Netflix series Stranger Things to be published by McFarland & Company. As the book title suggests, the overarching theme of the volume is how the series creates, evokes, uses and exploits the eighties, eighties culture and contemporary nostalgia for both. Successful proposals will link an aspect of Stranger Things with an eighties counterpart and explore how the series engages that aspect of Reagan-era culture.

What makes this project unique is that we will wait until season two premieres to finalize the essays, so that information on and analysis of the second season will be included in the book’s essays. The individual essays will be 5000-7000 words each, with each essay focused on a specific aspect of the series and its intersection with the eighties.

The Deadlines:

I will accept abstracts on a rolling basis up until April 30, 2017. Those whose abstracts are accepted will be sent the style guide and information regarding the preparation of manuscripts.

I plan to submit the manuscript 6-8 weeks after the premiere of season two of Stranger Things. The second season will premiere on Halloween, 2017.

Contributors must submit the first draft of their essays to me by the premiere of season two and then final draft by November 30. While this is a tight turnaround time, if the contributors have drafts in earlier that outline their theses and season one analyses, and then have four weeks to view and add in season two analyses, then we should be able to get the final manuscript to McFarland by late December.

Please note, no extensions can be given once the show premieres, so please only submit abstracts if you are certain you can adhere to this timetable. The deadline for manuscript submission is set, so the expectation is that final essays will be in by the above dates.

I already have essays on:

Synthwave music

Eighties Frankenstein films (Reanimator, Weird Science, etc.)

The monstrous feminine

Nuclear War / Cold War anxieties

Dungeons and Dragons and moral panics

I am looking for essays on any other topic relating to the volume’s theme.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

Eighties teen films and S.T.

The centrality of the school to S.T. and its antecedents

The relationships between S.T. and specific eighties texts

Winona Ryder as eighties echo in S.T.

Echoes of eighties Stephen King in S.T.

S.T. as echo of Reagan’s eighties

Echoes and uses of eighties visual culture

S.T. Fan studies and fandom

The influence of John Carpenter, Stephen Spielberg, Dan O’Bannon or other eighties filmmakers

Eighties pop music in S.T.

Please submit 200-500 word abstracts with a brief bio to: kwetmore@lmu.edu by April 30.

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