The Work is Mysterious and Important: Critical Perspectives on Severance (Call for book chapter proposals)
Event: Call for book chapter proposals
The Work is Mysterious and Important:
Critical Perspectives on Severance
The critically acclaimed science fiction series Severance (produced by Ben Stiller and created by Dan Erickson, 2022-) explores the idea of surgically dividing a person’s memories between their work and private lives. It raises many thought-provoking questions, embedded in a rich environment of cultural references and equipped with a distinct visual style, nuanced storytelling, and outstanding performances of its cast. With its second season, it has become the most successful production by Apple TV+ so far and is widely discussed by critics and fans. A large part of the fascination for the series comes from the multitude of possible readings it elicits. Now that a third season of Severance has been confirmed, the possibilities of interpretation and the mere joy of speculation continue unabated.
With this collection of essays, the editors Vera Cuntz-Leng and Ruth Knepel aim to broaden this discourse to include academic voices from film, television, and media studies as well as art history, cultural studies, and fan studies. The editors invite proposals for essays of between 6.000-8.000 words on topics connected to the series including but not limited to:
- Work/life balance and work ethics
- Death, grief, and loss
- Memory, trauma, and nostalgia
- Psychoanalytical approaches
- Intermediality (e.g., fine arts)
- Complex TV and seriality
- Style (e.g., cinematography, set design, mise-en-scène, color, editing, special effects, music, sound design)
- Narratological approaches (e.g., time and timing, spatiality)
- Genre, fantastic realms, and world-building
- Philosophical concepts and ethics (e.g., choice and free will, Marxist and Kantian readings)
- Ethnicity and race
- Queer politics and feminist readings
- Body politics (e.g., pregnancy and motherhood, doubling and doubles)
- Eco-environmental criticism
- Technology, media, and communication (e.g., innie/outie-communication, AI)
- Casting, stardom, and marketing
- Online fan cultures (e.g., fan theories, fanfiction, memes)
The volume is contracted to Büchner and will be published in the Fantastic TV series.
Submission Guidelines:
Interested authors are invited to submit abstracts of no more than 500 words. Abstracts should be sent to cuntzlen@staff.uni-marburg.de and knepel@em.uni-frankfurt.de
Ensure that all abstracts are submitted in MS Word format, including the following information:
a) Author(s)
b) Affiliation
c) Email address
d) Title of proposal
e) Body of proposal (300-500 words excl. references)
f) Up to 10 keywords
g) Brief bio (150 words)
The deadline for proposal submissions is June 1st, 2025. Proposals accepted will be notified by June 15th, 2025. Additionally, please note that the expected submission of full chapters for accepted proposals is by the end of December 2025.
Vera Cuntz-Leng
