What, when & where
Seeking submissions for The American West of David Lynch’s Filmography and in Twin Peaks: Essays on Regional Identity, Narratives, and History. This book will be published with McFarland Books.
The films of David Lynch and transmedia series Twin Peaks with author Mark Frost have long held a reputation for innovation in film, television, and unconventional storytelling on screen and in novel. This collection will add a Western U.S. regional scope to that reputation of innovation and the study of each. This collection will explore themes of the Western genre and Western regionalism in Lynch’s oeuvre, such as Native American artistic and cultural representations in Twin Peaks and urban and rural identities in the use of Los Angeles in his L.A. Trilogy (Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, and Inland Empire); Las Vegas, New Mexico, and the Pacific Northwest in Twin Peaks; and Texas in both Twin Peaks and Wild at Heart. The West’s identity has always been partially a social construct since its earliest portrayals from Turner’s “safety valve” theory to literature and Hollywood portrayals. Lynch’s imagination as well as Frost’s, intentionally or otherwise, add to its contemporary identity.
Writers from all areas of study, with a common goal of representing the indigeneity, cultural, social, philosophical, and historical representations of the American West and Western genre in Lynch’s filmography, as well as the series and books of Twin Peaks, are invited to participate. The collection will be organized into four sections: Region and Identity; Western and Frontier Genre Motifs; Historical Contexts; and Cultural, Spiritual, and Folk Traditions.
The scope of the present call is broad. All topics on the American West and Western genre as they relate to Lynch’s Films and the Twin Peaks series, including the novels, will be considered. Possible topics include (non-comprehensive list):
Oil, Gold, and Western Conquest in Twin Peaks
Borderlands in the films of David Lynch
Western Liminality
Gender & Sexuality in the Western Genre
The Other in the West
Power Structures
American Western Mythologies
Ufology in the American West
Traditions of Coffee, Tobacco, and the Western
Orientalism, Postcolonialism, and the West
Desert Settings in Lost Highway and Twin Peaks
Western Law, the Cowboy, and the Sheriff
Forests of the West: Indigenous and Environmental History
Jack Parsons and Frontier Rocketry
Deadline & how to apply
Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be e-mailed to editors Rob E. King, Austin Allison, Christine Self, and Robert G. Weaver at lynchfilmandwest@gmail.com as Microsoft Word documents no later than November 1, 2019. Invitations for full papers will be sent by November 15, 2019. The deadline for first drafts (4,000 to 6,000 words) will be March 2, 2020.
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Photo credits: https://www.indiewire.com/2019/06/david-lynch-twin-peaks-return-fan-theory-bullshit-1202154491/