CFP: Doctor Who and Philosophy (Extended Deadline: May 30)

Call for Abstracts (Updated Submission Deadline, May 30)

Doctor Who and Philosophy, Regenerated

Edited by Courtland Lewis and Paula Smithka

Abstracts are sought for potential contributions to a collection of philosophical essays examining Doctor Who. This collection will be published by Open Court Publishing as a volume in its successful Popular Culture and Philosophy Series (http://www.opencourtbooks.com/categories/pcp.htm).

Potential contributors are welcome to submit abstracts on any topic, but priority will be given to authors who wish to write on the following topics.  To ensure quality, author submissions will be provisionally accepted based on their abstract, but final acceptance will occur only after a completed draft of the chapter is submitted.

·      Free Will, Determinism, and Indeterminism: Could the Doctor Have Avoided Trenzalore?

·      Dalek Psychology: When Being Crazy is an Improvement

·      It’s a Mad, Mad Dalek World

·      Impure Dalek—Problems in Species Self-Identity and Insanity…

·      Self-Sacrifice, Dying, and Resurrection: Clara and Surviving the Doctor’s Life

·      Multiple Selves Across Time: How Impossible is the “Impossible” Girl?

·      Empathy for the Monster: When You Care More for “Monsters” than Humans

·      Why the Doctor Should Forget His Genocide or Should He?: Philosophy of Forgetting

·      The Virtue of Running and Hiding: Nonviolence in Doctor Who

·      When Self-Sacrifice Becomes Suicide: The Recurring Deaths of the Ponds

·      Is Doctor Who a Religion?/Religious Themes and Imagery in Doctor Who

·      Relationships in Doctor Who: Marriage, Polygamy, Bestiality, Lizardality, Alienality

·      Let’s Give Peace a Chance: Using the Veil of Ignorance to Achieve Peace

·      The Valueof Difference: We’re all “Almost People” Underneath

·      Wearing “Shimmers”: Lying and Deception in Doctor Who

·      Tolerance and Intolerance in Doctor Who

·      Beauty and the Sublime: Aesthetics In or Of Doctor Who

·      Beyond Time Travel: More Science in Doctor Who

Potential contributors are encouraged to write creative, fun, philosophical essays inspired by or about the Doctor Who series. Essays must be written in an accessible, jargon-free style for general, non-academic readers.  Topics that appeared in Doctor Who and Philosophy: Bigger on the Inside will not be accepted, unless there is overwhelming need to revisit a particular topic.  Potential contributors are also encouraged to examine other books in the Popular Culture and Philosophy Series while developing their ideas (for example, The Simpsons and Philosophy, Futurama and Philosophy, SpongeBob SquarePants and Philosophy, and of course, Doctor Who and Philosophy).

Contributor Guidelines:

• A brief abstract (200-500 words)
• Author’s/Co-authors’ CV(s)/resume(s)
• Submission deadline: May 30, 2014
• Abstracts and CVs/resumes must be submitted via e-mail to:[email protected]

Please post this CFA or forward to anyone writing or working in fields closely related to philosophy who might be interested in contributing.