Doctor Who and the Written Word
full name / name of organization:
Jason Barr
contact email:
[email protected]
As he flies through all of space and time in his TARDIS, the Doctor “all eleven incarnations of him” has long wrestled with issues of textuality, language, and linguistics. The Doctor has been surrounded by the nuances of language and literature, from the second, tenth, and eleventh Doctors frantically flipping through his 500-year diary to the seventh Doctor’s full embrace of the question mark as his calling card,
Of course, the show has spawned a wide series of novelizations, fanzines, magazines, comic books, and adaptations as well. As fans have sought to interact with Doctor Who, they, too, have created a world filled with the intersections of language, literature, and meaning.
Doctor Who and the Written Word, a forthcoming anthology, could be one of the first academic texts focused on Doctor Who.
Articles may focus thematically on the entire run of the show, on one Doctor, or a single episode.
Some potential topics include:
literary characters/representation
words as binding agents
Gallifreyean symbols and symbolism
physical texts as power sources
the Doctor as a literary source/inspiration
the “meaning” of the Doctor’s “name”
fan publications, especially during the “dry years” of 1989-1995 to 1997-2005
the Doctor Who Magazine and “professional” fandom
the Target novelizations deepening the backstory of Who
Doctor Who original novels
Although we realize that many academics new to Doctor Who may have background only in the “Who” era (launched in 2005), we prefer to craft a collection of essays that represents the entire fifty-year range of the show. Essays focusing on the Doctor’s adventures as played by Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, and Paul McGann are appreciated.
Articles should be from 4,000 to 7,500 words long.
This collection is already contracted by Scarecrow Press.
Formal proposals of no more than 500 words should be sent to [email protected] by May 25, 2013
from http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/50987