Deadline for submissions: August 15, 2017
Full name/name of organization: David Palmer, President, The Arthur Miller Society
Contact email: dpalmer@maritime.edu

The Arthur Miller Society
Call for Proposals

A Palgrave Macmillan Anthology on Arthur Miller for the 21st Century

The Arthur Miller Society (http://arthurmillersociety.net/) has a preliminary commitment from Palgrave Macmillan to publish a 90,000-word anthology (roughly 15 articles of roughly 6000 words each) on Arthur Miller as part of their series American Literature Readings in the 21st Century, which is edited by Linda Wagner-Martin at the University of North Carolina. The series “publishes works by contemporary critics that help shape critical opinion regarding literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the United States.” Here is a link to the series’ description on the Palgrave website: http://www.palgrave.com/de/series/14765. Final commitment to the project from Palgrave will depend on peer review and approval of our proposal for the actual articles to be included in the anthology.

As a first step in launching this project, we are seeking proposals for 6000-word anthology articles. Each article proposal should be 100-200 words long and be accompanied by the contributor’s brief academic biography of no more than 100 words; both documents should be suitable for inclusion in the compilation of article proposals that will constitute the proposal for the anthology as a whole. Article proposals and biographies should be emailed to David Palmer, the current president of The Arthur Miller Society (dpalmer@maritime.edu), by August 15, 2017.

The final proposal for the entire anthology then will be compiled and submitted to the editors at Palgrave by September 15, 2017, for their peer review process.

In planning how to fit this project into your own work-flow, use the following dates as a rough preliminary guide: first drafts of articles completed by June 15, 2018; revised articles in response to editor’s comments completed by September 15, 2018.

In general, we are looking for articles on why Arthur Miller’s works and ideas remain relevant today and why they continue to resonate so well with contemporary audiences around the world.

We are seeking proposals on the following topics and any others you believe might be suitable for this volume:

  • Analyses of individual Miller plays or sets of plays
  • Discussions of Miller’s essays and interviews about theatre
  • Discussions of Miller as a public intellectual and political activist
  • Analyses of Miller’s plays in relation to those of other dramatists, both those who influenced Miller and those he may have influenced
  • Analyses of Miller as a short-story writer and novelist
  • Personal reminiscences of Miller that shed light on his relevance to contemporary drama and social issues
  • Miller as a moral commentator on American values and culture
  • Discussions of the ways Miller’s personal biography provides a background for his dramas and other works
  • Miller’s work and contemporary themes in American theatre, such as the role of women in Miller’s plays and stories, visions of the American dream, Miller and theatre of the absurd, or Miller and postmodernism
  • Changes in the style of performance of Miller’s plays from the 1940s to today
  • Miller’s work with set designers and directors in shaping productions of his plays

We hope that this volume will consider Miller’s work and ideas from a variety of perspectives and serve as a significant guide to ongoing engagement with his oeuvre: plays and articles that were born at specific past moments in American culture yet continue to address themes we all face going forward into the 21st century.

Thank you for considering this call for proposals.

David Palmer
President, The Arthur Miller Society
(http://arthurmillersociety.net/)
(dpalmer@maritime.edu)