Call for Chapters: The Mummy Edited Collection
Editors, Michele Brittany and Sean Woodard
Contact Email: mummybookproject@gmail.com
Abstract Deadline: December 15, 2023
Chapter Drafts Deadline: June 15, 2024
Essays sought for an edited collection focused on Universal Pictures’ The Mummy franchise.
While academic research has been focused on various releases of The Mummy (1932, 1959, 1999, and 2017), there has not been a singular scholarly text devoted to the film franchise.
We seek proposals for chapters that approach the subject matter with theoretical concepts that will appropriately meet the rigorous expectations of an academic work, but through a prose style that shall be accessible for both an academic audience and a general readership.
The purpose of this edited collection is to place The Mummy into a cultural and theoretical context, as well as critically analyze the franchise, its connections to other genre films, and its continued influence.
Topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Resurgent interest in Brendan Fraser/“Brenaissance”
- Stephen Sommers as an auteur
- Representation of Egypt in popular culture and early filmic representation
- Eastern mythology/culture/religion
- Exoticism of non-western cultures
- Post/De-colonialism
- Heroic representation
- Body horror
- Eco-horror/Ecocriticism
- Gender representation
- Toxic depictions in film
- Queer/LGBTQ+ representation
- Meme/GIF culture
- Psychoanalysis
- Generational nostalgia
- Element of music/film scoring
- Genre hybridity
- Film cycles/reboots/retcons (such as The Scorpion King, The Mummy animated series, Universal Classic Monsters, Hammer Studios, Dark Universe, etc.) and related adventure/archaeological-driven films (such as Ark of the Sun God, The Sphinx, The Librarian franchise, etc.)
Please send abstracts of 300 – 500 words with a working title and five (5) keywords, accompanied by a short third-person author bio (100 words max), to mummybookproject@gmail.com as a Word document. The collection is being considered by a leading academic press.
