ReFocus: The Films of Wes Craven
It can be argued that the late Wes Craven reinvented the modern American horror film on three different occasions and across three different decades with his trendsetting The Last House on the Left (1972), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and Scream (1996). The director, who once told Robin Wood that he wanted “to make films that engaged directly and progressively with social issues” has a body of work that is rich in recurring concerns and provocative imagery as well as mediative of both technological and socio-political change. From his earliest, most controversial work in the 1970s, which includes the recently rediscovered hardcore text The Fireworks Woman (1975), through to the postmodern experimentation of New Nightmare (1994) and his more accessible mainstream outings, such as Red Eye (2005), Craven’s oeuvre is also stylistically and thematically adventurous, changeable and even unpredictable. For this edited collection, the first of its kind on the director’s work, I am particularly interested in gaining chapter proposals on some of Craven’s lesser-studied texts, with a wider discussion of how these projects link to his more famous and groundbreaking efforts such as The Last House on the Left (1972), The Hills Have Eyes (1977), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and Scream (1996). Nonetheless, I am also eager to obtain new approaches to these canonical motion pictures so that this publication can stand as a unique and provocative collection.
Suggestions for chapter submissions might include:
● Analysis of individual films (including made-for-television projects)
● Gender representation
● Representation of organised religion
● Dream logic
● Class and family conflict
● Body-horror
● Abjection
● Postmodernism
● Sexuality
● Colonialism and postcolonialism
● Craven’s wider influence on horror cinema
● Craven as an auteur within horror cinema
● Your suggested topic
Please send your 250-350 word proposal and a 100-word bio or complete CV to Calum Waddell at cwaddell@lincoln.ac.ukby Friday 30th October (perfect timing for your Halloween!). Final chapters will be expected to be of a minimum of 5,000 words and a maximum of 10,000, in English, and referenced in Chicago endnote style with American spelling and formatting. Final chapters will be expected towards the end of the year. Our volume will be published by the University of Edinburgh Press in the ReFocus series on American film directors. Series editors are Robert Singer, Gary D. Rhodes and Frances Smith.
Calum Waddell, PhD
Lincoln School of Film and Media
University of Lincoln
cwaddell@lincoln.ac.uk
