Call for Chapter Proposals – Atomic TV

Submission deadline: June 15th, 2026

This proposed edited collection, 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.

Despite the undeniable mutual influence between television and nuclear development, there is a notable shortage of book-length volumes exploring this particular relationship. Understanding not only the ways nuclear technology appears (or serves as a structuring absence) within television programming, but also 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 – is crucial to a broader understanding of how television has navigated the atomic era. Furthermore, expanded focus on audience reception, and not just institutional motives, would allow for greater understanding of audience desires regarding the way television might address some of their greatest atomic hopes and fears. As the volatility of our recent political landscape increasingly conjures up memories of Cold War tensions and global conflict – and as many recent pieces of media, including the television miniseries Chernobyl and theatrical film Oppenheimer, prompt us to historically reassess both the promises and dangers of a nuclear world – a project on the historical relationship between media and nuclear captivation (and the fascinating allures of overwhelming technologies more broadly) appears more and more relevant. Our project foregrounds television as a crucial medium for understanding the way nuclear technology has been constructed and imagined across multiple historical contexts. Investigating the long reach of Atomic TV – from broadcast to cable to streaming –  can demonstrate that the atomic era is not a closed chapter, but part of a continually evolving mediated landscape that structures our understandings of both the past and the future. 

We seek essays of approximately 5,000-7,000 words on Atomic TV, with potential topics including but not limited to:

  • Theorizing Atomic Television
  • TV’s visions of disaster (revisiting Mary Ann Doane’s “Information, Crisis, Catastrophe” or Patricia Mellencamp’s “TV Time and Catastrophe,” for example)
  • Conceptions of TV as a logistical medium (Conelrad, emergency alert systems, contingency planning for infrastructure, etc.)
  • Conceptions of TV as an orientation medium (the role of news and public affairs programming, documentaries, and nuclear test coverage as priming and preparation) 
  • The function of television style, aesthetics, and/or genre in constructing Atomic TV messaging
  • Contextualizing Atomic Television 
  • Cold War cultural history (including broader early-stage Cold War contexts of post-WWII economic conditions, the Red Scare, etc., leading toward late-stage Cold War contexts of Reagan-era policies, cultural politics, and geopolitical relations and beyond)
  • Intertwined histories of nuclear and television technologies
  • Atomic history and “useful television” (including histories of civil defense “preparedness” programming and military uses of television for both logistical and orientation purposes)
  • Television’s role in the unfolding of nuclear events (Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island), etc.
  • Global television histories – atomic TV outside the U.S. and Anglophone contexts
  • Representing Atomic Life on TV – Cold War Era
  • Atomic technology as representational object of both fascination and fear
  • The promises of atomic development as part of a project of societal and technological “progress,” “better living,” etc. 
  • Censorship and content management – how networks, sponsors, ad agencies, stations, governmental authorities, etc., have controlled the discussion of nuclear threat, nuclear war, nuclear energy, or broader nuclear technology
  • TV documentaries about atomic concerns (both nuclear war and nuclear energy)
  • Television coverage of nuclear tests 
  • Television “events” (e.g. The Day After, Threads, etc.)
  • Representing Atomic Life on TV – The 21st century.
  • Television’s retelling of history – how TV period pieces have remediated the atomic facets of the late WWII and Cold War eras (Chernobyl, The Americans, Stranger Things, The Wonder Years, Mad Men, Manhattan, etc.)
  • Television’s relationship to contemporary nuclear concerns as they relate to shifting geopolitics – envisioning “World War III”
  • Television’s relationship to 21st century nuclear energy policy, including environmental concerns, etc. 
  • And many other possibilities

To propose a chapter, please send the following to both Molly Schneider (mschneider@colum.edu) and Stacy Takacs (stacy.takacs@okstate.edu) by June 15th, 2026:


  • A written proposal (no more than 2 pages) explaining your essay topic and general approach as it relates to a collection on Atomic TV
  • A brief bio
  • A current CV

Please feel free to reach out to both of us with any questions.

Molly A. Schneider, PhD

Associate Professor, Columbia College Chicago 

mschneider@colum.edu

Stacy Takacs, PhD

Professor, Oklahoma State University 

stacy.takacs@okstate.edu