Image: Screenshot from Twin Peaks, Season 3, Episode 8, 2017.
Issue 15 Call for Papers
DEADLINE: THURSDAY, JANUARY 31, 2019
Special Issue: Twin Peaks: Season Three
Guest Editors: Matt Miller and Matthew Lau
This special issue of NANO will explore the significance of the recently released third season of the seminal television show, Twin Peaks. Controversial from the outset and divisive to fans and critics alike, the new Twin Peaks (2017) is emerging as perhaps even more radical and important than the original series (1990-1991). The original Twin Peaks is often considered the first cult television show that spawned intensive fan followings in the emergent world of the web, and the immense catalogue of paratexts and influences the series has inspired since has never been fully tabulated. As a central work of American surrealism, a universe of oddities continues to find Twin Peaks’s orbit.
It is challenging even to define the latest Twin Peaks season. Creator David Lynch has referred to it as an 18-part feature film, and it has been presented on the big screen as a film at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and other venues. While Twin Peaks has always played with the tricks and tropes of genre television, especially detective fiction and soap operas, it has also pushed beyond the conventional limits of television and transgressed and exploded expectations. Season three of Twin Peaks is amorphous both in terms of its media formations and its constantly shifting tableaux of symbols and themes. It is an origin myth and tale of apocalypse, a profound questioning of the nature of good and evil, a veritable dictionary of post-modernity, a slow-moving narrative painting, a testament to the strength of a single woman, a series of elegies for actors and actresses who died between seasons two and three, a retelling of Homer’s The Odyssey, a cosmic dream, and a forum for music videos. Co-writer Mark Frost has extended its world back to ancient Sumerian mythology, but season three of Twin Peaks also tracks the pulse of the moment with major statements on the current opioid crisis and the puzzling reversal of the FBI as an institution being looked to for salvation by a significant portion of the American left.
This issue welcomes multimodal essays up to 4,000 words (excluding works cited) exploring topics relating to season three of Twin Peaks, including but not limited to the following:
- Twin Peaks as genre fiction (for example, science fiction, detective fiction, horror, and soap operas)
- Examinations of use of artistic devices such as symbolism, allegory, and parallelism
- Media transformations and adaptions of season three
- Twin Peaks fandom in all its forms
- Use of music in Twin Peaks (its score, Roadhouse musical interludes, and atmospheric effects)
- Authority in Twin Peaks, including the role of Lynch’s refusals.
- Twin Peaks and its literary and media paratexts (especially The Final Dossier)
- Reception of season three of Twin Peaks by the television and film industry
- Explorations of intertextuality in Twin Peaks, season three (with film, painting, music, etc.)
- Explorations of gender and feminist critique
- Examinations of the hero’s journey and critique of heroism
- Religious vision and its disguises in season three
- Philosophical implications of Twin Peaks, season three
- The origins of Twin Peaks in Lynch’s other works, including not only his films but his drawings, paintings, writings, short films, and other proto-works
Please direct questions to the special issue editors: Matt Miller, Yeshiva University [matt.w.miller@gmail.com] and Matthew Lau, Queensborough Community College (The City University of New York) [mlau@qcc.cuny.edu].
NANO is a multimodal journal. Therefore, we encourage submissions that include images, sound, video, data sets, or digital tools in support of a written argument. The multimodal components of the essay must be owned or licensed by the author, come from the public domain, or fall within reasonable fair use (see Stanford University Libraries’ Copyright & Fair Use site, and the U.S. Copyright Office’s Fair Use site, for more information). NANO’s Copyright and Permissions information is on the top left of this page.
For questions about video, audio, or image usage, please contact NANO: editornano@citytech.cuny.edu.
NANO uses modified 8th Edition MLA (Modern Language Association) formatting and style. See: https://nanocrit.com/Submissions/Submission-Guidelines
Please use the Submission Form on https://www.nanocrit.com/Submissions (button on top left of page)
Keywords and abstract: Each author is asked to submit 5 keywords and a 150-word abstract to accompany their submission.
Deadlines concerning the special issue to be published in NANO:
- Submission deadline: January 31, 2019
- Publication: spring/summer 2019
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
*Image: Screenshot from Twin Peaks, Season 3, Episode 8, 2017.
