Call for Book Proposal Chapters: “The Corporate Uncanny”

Edited Volume

Across media, representations of corporate workplaces have grown increasingly uncanny, speculating on and reflecting our era of platform capitalism and algorithmic management. Corporations no longer appear as mere economic structures but as systems that reorganize identity, perception, and control, blurring the boundaries between self and institution, worker and machine. This anthology reframes the workplace as a sociological unheimlich, where HR doublespeak, productivity metrics, and gamified systems render the familiar strange. As labor becomes increasingly abstract, surveilled, and automated, work begins to feel both hyper-rational and profoundly irrational.

This anthology situates the “corporate uncanny” at the intersection of various disciplines, examining how new media stage corporate power not only as structural domination but as affective and psychological condition. We invite contributions that explore how media negotiate the relationship between work, power, and subjectivity. We particularly welcome submissions from scholars whose perspectives have been historically marginalized, especially those engaging global, transnational, or non-Western experiences of digital labor and corporate power.

Approaches and Models: An Open Invitation

Each chapter will offer a focused, discipline-specific or interdisciplinary analysis of how corporate systems are represented, experienced, or critiqued in contemporary media. Contributors are encouraged to ground their arguments in specific media moments and structures. For example:

• Narrative structures in television and film (temporal loops, fragmented storytelling, recursive plotlines, bureaucratic absurdity).

• Cinematic and televisual techniques (editing, mise-en-scène, sound design, framing, repetition, spatial disorientation).

• Literary form and narrative voice (second-person address, unreliable narration, fragmentation, repetition, archival or bureaucratic textual forms).

• Video game mechanics and systems (task repetition, surveillance loops, scoring metrics, procedural constraints).

• Performance and embodiment (actor movement, gesture, vocal delivery, role-playing, audience participation, and workplace as “stage”).

• Spatial design across media (labyrinthine offices, liminal spaces, procedural environments, digital architectures).

• Interface and platform design (dashboards, menus, UX flows, algorithmic feeds, moderation systems).

• Language and discourse (corporate jargon, HR doublespeak, scripted dialogue, textual artifacts across media).

• Platform features and participatory systems (ratings, feedback loops, content moderation, user labor, community-driven storytelling).

These approaches should demonstrate how corporate power is not only represented but felt through interaction, constraint, repetition and/or alienation.

What We Are Looking For

Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:

• Corporate power and media representation.

• Platform labor and algorithmic control.

• Digital labor and affective experience.

• Bureaucracy, absurdity, and recursive systems.

• Horror, dark humor, and critique.

• Interface aesthetics and user experience as control mechanisms.

• AI-generated content and corporate aesthetics.

• Transnational and global perspectives on digital labor.

Structure and Organization

The volume will be organized into thematic subsections, which may include:

• Media and Labor (television, film, and narrative media).

• Games and Systems (video games, procedural rhetoric, interactivity).

• Platform Capitalism and Interfaces (apps, dashboards, algorithmic systems).

• Affect and Subjectivity (emotion, embodiment, dissociation).

• Global and Precarious Labor (outsourcing, gig work, invisible labor, “playbour”).

Submission Guidelines

Given the global scope of this anthology, we strongly encourage submissions from scholars working across diverse geographic, cultural, and disciplinary contexts.

• Abstracts should be no more than 300 words.

• Include a brief bio (300-400 words).

• Clearly indicate the media texts and specific mechanics, scenes, or systems that will serve as primary evidence.

• Submit proposals to: sswigart@ucsc.edu by 15 Dec 2026.

• Please include in the subject line: Corporate Uncanny CFP – [Your Name].

Editor Bio

Saramanda Swigart is a PhD student in Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research examines video games and digital media as systems that shape labor, affect, and subjectivity, with particular focus on the “corporate uncanny.” She holds an MA in English Literature (game studies) from San Francisco State University and an MFA from Columbia University, and she has been teaching literature, rhetoric, creative writing, and game studies for more than 15 years.