Life Ain’t Pretty in the Steampunk City: A Call for Abstracts

By way of addressing what we see as a gap in the edited collection that Rachel Bowser and I announced last year, we are soliciting abstracts for essays that consider in one way or another representations of the city in steampunk. The term “city” should be understood widely to signify large and small urban spaces and need not be limited to a particular geography or time period. As texts, essays could consider one or more of the following: literature (including YA lit), film, graphic novels, anime, as well as fandom and performance.

The essay will be part of an edited collection exploring steampunk in its literary, filmic, material and fan culture instantiations. The editors have met with multiple university presses who have expressed enthusiastic interest. Completed essays will be expected in early summer 2013.

Possible subjects could include the following:

• The role of crowds in steampunk
• Urban geographies in steampunk
• Steampunk and technologies of the city
• The dirty spaces of steampunk
• City as mechanization
• Steampunk and bureaucracy
• The difference between the cities and the countryside in steampunk

Email 250 word abstracts to Brian Croxall and Rachel Bowser, b [dot] croxall [at] gmail [dot] com and rachel [dot] bowser [at] gmail [dot] com, by February 15, 2013.