Screen Storytelling:
The Works of Emma Thompson
Edited by Julia Camara


This edited volume on the works of Emma Thompson is to be published by Bloomsbury Academic. Seeking 250-word abstracts for previously unpublished essays on films and television series written by Emma Thompson. Final essays will be 3,000-3,500 words, written for an audience of student readers, and will be due June 2027.

The SCREEN STORYTELLING series is designed for students, professors, and enthusiastic consumers of film, television, and new media who seek information about contemporary and historically significant screenwriters that is both accessible and critically rigorous. The intention with this series is to bring much-deserved attention to screen and television writers who have developed noteworthy films and television series of significant aesthetic or cultural achievement, critical acclaim, or commercial success, and to offer close readings of the films and series from the perspective of story, screenwriting craft, audience reception, and cultural impact. The series places a strong focus on examining works by screenwriters often left out of classroom syllabi, including women, writers of color, LGBTQ writers, and international writers.

The Works of Emma Thompson

Acclaimed actress, screenwriter and producer Emma Thompson is the only person in Academy Award history to have won an Oscar for Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Thompson’s film career spans over four decades where she has both portrayed and written a wide range of female characters that challenged conventional representations of women on screen. Thompson’s Academy Award-winning screenplay for Sense and Sensibility (1995), adapted from Jane Austen’s novel, established her as a writer capable of translating complex female characters and relationships for a contemporary film audience. Through her screenwriting, Thompson explores themes of love, marriage, family, social expectations, independence, and women’s agency, often balancing emotional depth with wit and humor. Her writing gives particular attention to the interior lives of women, allowing female characters to navigate societal pressures while maintaining their individuality and desires. Thompson’s screenwriting contributes to a broader cinematic representation of women that challenges the tendency to define them primarily through their relationships with men and instead emphasizes their autonomy, intelligence, and emotional complexity.

I welcome contributions from scholars of film, television, media studies, and popular culture, as well as working practitioners, including screen and television writers, filmmakers, and playwrights. Essays may explore individual works or may interrogate a single theme, question, or construct across multiple works.

Possible essay topics could include but are not limited to:

• Adaptation of literary works to the screen

• Women characters and representation

• Women’s reproductive health as depicted on Wit

• Adaptation of Jane Austen to the screen

• Exploring Nanny McPhee and contrasting with Mary Poppins

• Representation of women’s work / careers

• Television and film writing craft

• Recurring themes in Thompson’s films and series

• Acting and screenwriting as a complement to each other

• Viewer response / critics’ response

• Writing period pieces

• Representation of motherhood

• Analysis of the television series Thompson
  
  Please submit a 250-word abstract along with a 150-word biographical statement to Julia Camara at julia.camara-aldridge@keiseruniversity.edu by December 1st 2026. Please title the subject line of your email: Abstract – The Works of Emma Thompson.
  
  Please direct any questions or inquiries to this email address as well. I welcome submissions from scholars at all stages of their careers, as well as practicing and aspiring screen and television writing professionals. Feel free to contact me with any questions about the book or series, and please share this announcement with colleagues whose work aligns with the focus of this volume.
  
  For more information about the Screen Storytellers book series or to propose a volume for the series, please contact Series Editor Anna Weinstein at aweinst6@kennesaw.edu.
  
  Abstracts due by December 1st 2026