Call for Chapter Proposals – Atomic TV
Atomic TV, seeks to address the relationship between television and “atomic” history, culture, and technology from the 1940s to the present. The end of World War II ushered in not only the atomic age, but also the television age in the United States. Television, as the newly and rapidly ensconced national medium, could not help but become a platform for confronting the implications of nuclear development – both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. In fact, the very history of the medium is shaped by the influences of both military technology and the conditions of wartime development. As the threats of nuclear war intensified, and the only nation that had ever actually used a nuclear weapon found itself facing the conditions of a newly nuclear world, television served as one of the technologies used to confront the possibilities of nuclear technology – both its promises and its dangers. Over the span of eight decades, in the context of rapidly shifting industrial and cultural landscapes, television has continued to serve as a platform for confronting nuclear power, peril, and possibility. We propose an edited collection on this topic, comprised of chapters written by scholars in several different related sub-fields.
Chapters may examine how nuclear technology appears (or serves as a structuring absence) within television programming or investigate the incredibly intricate matrices of taste, politics, and economics at work behind the screen – including the direct influence of government agencies, military personnel, and defense contractor sponsors in framing the debate about atomic technology. We would also welcome essays that attend to audience reception, and not just institutional motives. For a full list of possible topics, see https://tinyurl.com/bheehrj5