CFP for Special Issue of Studies In Crime Writing:

The True Crime Renaissance

Guest Editors:

Jean Murley, Associate Professor of English, Queensborough Community College. Author of The Rise of True Crime: 20th Century Murder and American Popular Culture(Praeger/ABC-Clio, 2008). JMurley@qcc.cuny.edu

David Schmid, Associate Professor of English, University at Buffalo. Author of Natural Born Celebrities: Serial Killers in American Culture (Chicago, 2005) and editor of Violence in American Popular Culture (2 vol.s, Praeger, 2015). schmid@buffalo.edu. 

True crime sits at the fascinating intersection of law, morality, and psychology, and at its best interrogates our notions of truth, narrative form, and experience. The genre of true crime is experiencing a renaissance at the moment and has been given a boost from emerging and new media forms: from such podcasts as Serial and My Favourite Murder to streaming series like Making a Murderer, The Jinx, and OJ: Made in America, the current popularity of true crime is immense and unprecedented. This issue is devoted to scholarly explorations of the reasons for this popularity and a deep analysis of the genre in its present and multiple forms. While scholars have done extensive work on the history, historiography, and evolution of true crime, our aim is to understand as much as possible about true crime in its present iterations, including why it is so appealing to audiences now, what cultural work it does, new areas of inquiry posed by the genre, and what ongoing questions it raises about the relationship between crime and culture.

We welcome submissions on any aspect of this phenomenon. Possible topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

True crime fandom

TC and gender (consumers and producers)

Transnational/international TC

Historical TC

Emerging topics/subjects of TC (including but not limited to race, wrongful conviction, and sociological/political subjects)

Terrorism and TC

Intersections of TC and crime fiction

TC and race

TC and new media—podcasts and streaming series 

TC and the criminal justice system

Changing focus of narratives—memoir and victim-centered perspectives

TC and victimology

TC and the High/Low divide

TC and forensic science/psychology

TC and feminism/misogyny/masculinity

TC and film (fiction, non-fiction, documentary, docu-drama)

Please send 300-word abstracts and a 1-page cv to the co-editors by June 30, 2019. First drafts of accepted essays will be due by September 30, 2019, and final drafts by January 31, 2020 for a 2020 publication date.