CALL FOR PAPERS

ReFocus: The Films of Doris Wishman


Producer, distributor, and director Doris Wishman (1912-2002) was a pioneering woman in the film industry, leaving a body of work almost thirty films strong. She is, however, largely overlooked in film histories and archives, her significant oeuvre untapped by critical and cultural analysis. In large measure this is because Wishman worked in normatively neglected filmic paradigms: sexploitation and adult film. From Hideout in the Sun (1960) and Bad Girls Go To Hell (1965) to Double Agent 73 (1974), Let Me Die a Woman (1977), and Each Time I Kill (2007), Wishman’s films are complicated, ideological, and often troubling constructions of social performances of the contemporary human condition as manifest through desire, sex and sexuality, gender, class, and corporeality.

I am currently soliciting abstracts of approximately 250—300 words for essays to be included in a book-length anthology on Doris Wishman to appear in 2018. As the first anthology dedicated to a comprehensive study of Wishman’s career, this collection seeks to deepen our understanding of the filmmaker, her position in film histories and archival memory, and to problematize simplistic reductions of her work in sexploitation and adult film narratives as novelty. Essays may focus on individual films or on themes and topics that pervade her work.

Possible areas of inquiry could include, but are not limited to: the role of space and place in Wishman’s films; construction of bodies; Wishman as model of women’s production; labor in sexploitation and adult film narratives; assemblages of desire, sexuality, and gender; production histories of individual films or film styles (nudie cuties, roughies, etc.); Wishman’s work within the adult film community; analysis of her place in film histories and archival memory; Wishman as ideological filmmaker; your suggested topic.

Essays included in the refereed anthology will be of approximately 6,000 to 8,000 words, referenced in Chicago endnote style, American spelling and grammar.

The Films of Doris Wishman will be one of the scholarly editions to be published by the University of Edinburgh Press in their series of anthologies examining overlooked American film directors. Series editors are Robert Singer, Ph.D. and Gary D. Rhodes, Ph.D. Previous editions include The Films of Preston Sturges, The Films of Amy Heckerling, and The Films of Delmer Daves.

Please attach a curriculum vitae to your abstract and email all documents directly to the anthology’s editor by October 31, 2016:

Alicia Kozma, Ph.D.
Institute of Communications Research
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
wishmancollection@gmail.com