Streaming Documentary Drama
Call for chapters on documentary drama in the streaming media era for the edited collection True Stories: Docudrama from broadcasting to streaming media. This collection is a peer-reviewed book project with contract pending from Wayne State University Press and a final chapter due date of 15 December, 2025. Junior scholars are particularly encouraged to contribute.
In addition to the description below, more information is available from the editor: Joy Elizabeth Hayes, The University of Iowa (joy-hayes@uiowa.edu). Please submit a 100-200 word abstract by 23 June for consideration in the volume.
Description: True Stories: Docudrama from broadcasting to streaming media
The premise of this edited collection is that docudrama – drama "based on real events" – plays a larger role in global media practice than previously acknowledged and deserves closer study. Docudrama is a hybrid media format that combines documentary and representational modes of communication. It dramatizes real events while incorporating emotive music, invented dialogue, and fictional or composite characters to engage audiences. This book explores how research-based accounts of real events are adapted to commercially-successful fiction genres.
This call for chapters focuses on the era of streaming video in the 2010s-2020s – a time when the prevalence of docudrama gave the format a new degree of salience. Prominent docudramas include: Narcos (Netflix 2015-2017); Mindhunter (Netflix, 2017-2019); When They See Us (Netflix 2019); Chernobyl (HBO/Max 2019); Gentleman Jack (BBC/HBO 2019-2022); Dopesick (2021 Netflix) and Under the Banner of Heaven (Hulu/FX 2022). We seek scholarly contributions that examine docudrama production or particular series from any of a number of perspectives including: industry imperatives; audience engagement; historical context; and textual strategies and forms.