The Saw franchise of movies is the largest grossing horror franchise of all time. Over the course of seven movies (2003-10), the series has grossed, as of July 2010, $730m at the Box Office and more than $30m on DVD, earning an entry in the Guinness Book of Records. Nevertheless, despite its commercial success, the series has often received an unfavourable critical response, with critics dismissing it as gory ‘torture porn’ designed to titillate audiences with images of extreme violence.

In recent years, however, Saw has received a small amount of academic commentary that has situated the Saw franchise as an important cultural response to issues such as surveillance culture, American foreign policy and gender politics. Therefore, this proposed volume aims to contribute to and extend these debates. Chapter abstracts for an edited collection on the Saw franchise are invited that cover any aspect of the Saw franchise, such as:

* Saw and the notion of ‘torture porn’
* Saw and the horror genre
* Saw and its genre antecedents
* The ethics of Jigsaw and the Saw franchise
* Saw and issues of censorship
* Gender and Saw

and so on

Please send abstracts for proposed chapters to John Walliss (wallisj@hope.ac.uk) and James Aston (j.aston@hull.ac.uk). Closing date: October 31 2011.