CFP: Agatha Christie: Investigating the Queen of Crime

5-6 September 2019, Solent University, Southampton UK

The bestselling novelist of all time, Agatha Christie (1890-1976) is increasingly being recognised in scholarship and popular culture as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. In response to what Martin Edwards calls the ‘lazy critical cliché’ of branding Golden Age Detective Fiction as ‘cosy’, this conference will investigate the significance of the Queen of Crime and her writings within academia and popular culture. In line with previous Agatha Christie conferences, the 2019 conference will further establish and extend Christie Studies as an academic discipline, across and beyond the humanities. 

Responding to Christie’s ever-increasing popularity are the annual television adaptations such as 2018’s The ABC Murders, alongside a growing pool of continuation novels and fiction based around Christie’s life and work. Equally, we have academic texts in the new interdisciplinary field of Agatha Christie Studies, such as Agatha Christie Goes to War (2019). In short, as the centenary of her first novel approaches, Agatha Christie remains a phenomenon. All of this calls for an investigation into the Queen of Crime herself, her fictional works and her legacy. 

We invite 300-word proposals for 20 minute papers. Suggested topics include, but are certainly not limited to: 

• Examining Christie in the context of Golden Age crime fiction

• Analysing the meaning of ‘Queen of Crime’

• Screen adaptations

• The life and person of Agatha Christie 

• The role and influence of religion

• New theoretical perspectives on Christie as a writer of crime fiction

• Agatha Christie’s influence in popular culture

• Agatha Christie positioned against her modernist contemporaries

• Continuation novels and rewriting

• The influence of Christie on her crime writing contemporaries and beyond

• The Detection Club and its influence on the role, writing and significance of Christie

• The context, significance, and influence of war

• Intertextuality and metanarrative

• Reading, studying, and teaching Agatha Christie

• New directions in research and scholarship

In addition to traditional academic paper proposals, we welcome creative presentations and panel proposals.

Please send your 300 word proposal with a short biographical note to agathachristieconference@gmail.com no later than 31 March 2019. Please direct all queries and enquiries to the same address.