CfP: CRAS special issue “New Television”. Deadline: Aug 01, 2019.

There is a gathering consensus that television began to undergo a marked transformation at the end of the twentieth century. Two decades into the twenty-first century, an ever-increasing number of cable and streaming series conjure the emergence of a world liquidated of normative authority, saturated with media-technological developments, and struggling to find its bearings in the fray. In New Television: The Aesthetics and Politics of a Genre, Martin Shuster refers to this still-unfolding genre as “new television” on account of both its relatively new narrative coordinates and its efforts to think through the bewildering contours of a rapidly changing world.

With all of this in mind, we are currently putting together a special issue of The Canadian Review of American Studies on the topic of “new television.” We are seeking essay-length explorations of this predominantly American genre’s uptake of recent political, technological, and cultural shifts as well as currents in cinematic and literary fiction. We are especially interested in analyses of one or several of the following series: The Sopranos, The Wire, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Mad Men, True Detective, House of Cards, Weeds, Veep, Transparent, and High Maintenance.