Call for Papers: Historiographic Research in Screenwriting

The Journal of Screenwriting is calling for articles for a special issue on the historiography of screenwriting, to be published in November 2019.

The Journal wants to emphasize the importance of screenwriting history and historiographical research, covering the broad field from media archaeology to historical case studies to a crisis historiography that includes questions of format, copyrights, professionalization, and narrative structure.

In order to better understand the role of screenwriting in filmmaking as well as in academic research, it is our task to scrutinize the development of the craft, profession, and art: the discourses, the pedagogy, and the analysis of screenplays, script development and the work of specific screenwriters and their importance for the development of screenwriting.

Articles may include (but are not limited to) the following topics:

• Pre-screenplay documents in Early Cinema
  
• Screenwriting and Screenwriters in silent cinema
  
• The history of the format
  
• Screenwriting and historical modes of production
  
• Global histories and local case studies
  
• Historiography of manuals and screenwriting pedagogy
  
• Female Screenwriters (especially in the silent era)
  
• National and global tendencies – relations, influences, cultural transfers
  
• Censorship and screenwriting
  
• Development: analysis of script developments in historical case studies
  
• Screenplay as literature: published screenplays in the 1920s
  
• Autorenkino in Germany in the 1910s and 20s
  
• Eminent authors: case studies of established writers and their fate in the industry
  
• Screenwriting and the literary avant-garde
  
• Social history of screenwriters, working conditions, reputation, etc.
  
• Theoretical questions of authorship based on historical evidence (e.g. the case of the American Author’s Association AAA)
  

In the first instance, please email abstracts of up to 400 words and a short biography, no later than Wednesday 16 January 2019 to BOTH of the editors of this special issue:

• Claus Tieber, [log in to unmask]
  
• Steven Price, [log in to unmask]

The Journal of Screenwriting is an international peer-reviewed journal published three times p.a. by Intellect, and is abstracted and indexed by Thomson Reuters: ISI Web of Knowledge, MLA and FIAF. It explores the nature of writing for the screen image; this includes not only writing for film and television but also computer games and animation.

The journal highlights current academic and professional thinking about the screenplay and intends to promote, stimulate and bring together current research and contemporary debates around the screenplay whilst encouraging groundbreaking research in an international arena. The journal is discursive, critical, rigorous and engages with issues in a dynamic and developing field, linking academic theory to screenwriting practice.