Ages of The X-Men Collection CFP (6/1/12)

The Ages of The X-Men
Call for Papers Date: 2012-06-01
Date Submitted: 2012-04-04
Announcement ID: 193758

Please circulate and post widely

The editor of The Ages of The X-Men is seeking abstracts for essays which could be included in the upcoming collection to be published by McFarland & Co. This collection will be a companion volume to The Ages of Superman, which was recently published, and the upcoming collection The Ages of Wonder Woman. The essays should examine the relationships between X-Men comic books, or any of the spin-off titles in the X-Men family of comic books, and the period of American history when those comics were published. Analysis may demonstrate how the stories found in X-Men comic books (and the creators who produced the comics) embrace, reflect, or critique aspects of their contemporary culture.

Essays should focus on stories from the X-Men’s comic book adventures, not media adaptations of the character. Furthermore, essays should look at a single period of comic book history, rather than drawing comparisons between different publication eras. For example, an essay that analyzed X-Men comics from the Claremont/Byrne relaunch and contextualized them with what was happening in American society would be more likely to be accepted than an essay that contrasted Lee/Kirby X-Men comic books with the Whedon/Cassaday Astonishing X-Men comic books . The completed essays should be approximately 15 double-spaced pages.

Some possible topics for essays include, but are not limited to, the following:
The Cuban Missile Crisis, Nuclear Power, and The X-Men #1; The X-Men, The Feminist Movement, and Team Gender Dynamics; The Civil Rights Movement and the Mutant Metaphor; The Sentinel Trilogy and Government Oppression; The All-New, All-Different X-Men: (Partially) Diversifying the Franchise; The Proteus Saga and the Threat of Power in the Cold War; From Marvel Girl to Phoenix to Intergalactic Threat: The Progression and Regression of a Female Superhero; The Dark Phoenix Saga: The Corrupting Influence of Power After the Nixon Era; Days of the Future Past: Fearing the Future in the Vietnam Era; Dazzler and the Disco Era; The X-Tinction Agenda: Genosha as an Allegory for Apartheid; Marvel’s Legacy Virus and the AIDS Epidemic; Generation X and the Rising Generation of Mutants; All the Latino/a Mutants Have Criminal Backgrounds: 1990’s Cultural Stereotypes in Mainstream Comic Books; Grant Morrison’s New X-Men: The Mainstream Embracing Subcultures; 9/11 and Muslim Mutants; The Astonishing X-Men: Joss Whedon and John Cassaday’s Progressive Gender Portrayal; The House of M: Committing Genocide to Strengthen a Minority Metaphor?; X-Men: Schism and the Education Debate in America.

Any other topics will be considered for publication.

Abstracts (100-500 words) and CVs should be submitted by June 1, 2012
Please submit via email to Joseph Darowski, darowskij@byui.edu




Joseph J. Darowski
Brigham Young University Idaho
525 S. Center
Rigby Hall 122
Rexburg, ID 83460
Email: darowskij@byui.edu