Agatha Christie: Crime, Culture, Celebrity

A one-day symposium at the University of Exeter, Monday 14 April 2014

 

Presented in collaboration with the Crime Studies Network. Confirmed keynote speakers:

• Professor Sarah Street, University of Bristol
• Dr Merja Makinen, Middlesex University

Author of over eighty mystery novels, Agatha Christie was the best-selling writer of the twentieth century. Her detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple are iconic and her play The Mousetrap is the longest-running in history.This one-day conference is the first in Britain to engage with Christie’s life, work, and popularity. An interdisciplinary event, Agatha Christie: Crime, Celebrity, Culture seeks to unite researchers across the humanities with an interest in this writer’s work, life, and her afterlife in TV, film, and, popular culture.

 

In addition to research presentations, the day will feature an exhibition of material from the archives in Exeter’s Special Collections and from the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum revealing the fascinating story of Agatha Christie’s relationships with publishers, fans, and film-makers.

 

The conference organisers invite proposals for twenty-minute papers. Possible themes include, but are by no means limited to:

• Film, television, theatre, or radio adaptations
• ‘Middlebrow’ perspectives on Christie
• Portrayals of Agatha Christie in films, TV, and fiction
• Christie in the twenty-first century
• Christie and feminism
• Gendered, sexed, and queer readings
• Genre and identity
• Translation

Please email an abstract of 250 words with a short biographical note to agathachristie@exeter.ac.uk, no later than Friday 29 November 2013. Please direct any queries to the same address.