CFP Neo-Victorian Criminalities, Detection, and Punishment

CFP Neo-Victorian Criminalities, Detection, 

and Punishment

University of Wolverhampton, 23rd-24th June 2025

Keynote speakers: Professor Claire Nally, Lee Jackson, and Nat Reeve

Organisers: Dr Helen Davies, University of Wolverhampton, and Dr Maria Isabel Romero-Ruiz, University of Malaga

The contemporary fascination with Victorian criminalities and the popularity of the detection genre within Neo-Victorianism necessitates close critical attention. In particular, neo-Victorian literary and visual representations of criminals, murderers, serial killers, etc. as well as of sleuths raises ethical issues connected with the avidity of audiences for sensation and drama.

The neo-Victorian city becomes the scenario both of petty crimes and dreadful killings that are shaped by current perceptions of the Victorians and our own cultural context. The city is the place where identities become changeable, and choices can have deadly consequences. In this context, the question of ethics comes to the fore as revealing the identity of criminals and victims and dealing with issues connected with the dark side of society can be questionable and exploitative, especially when discussing the Victorian past.

At the same time, we need to explore the intersection of crime and detective fiction in connection with gender, ethnicity, class and disability, together with the LGTBQI+ community; certain groups were more likely to be criminalised in the Victorian era, with a troubling legacy in terms of contemporary social and cultural attitudes. Therefore, establishing the boundaries between historical crime and fictional crime and identity politics in neo-Victorianism become essential in the representation of both criminals and victims as well as sleuths in popular genres such as crime fiction and detection.

This event will run over two days, with public engagement events on 24th featuring Lee Jackson and Nat Reeve.

We invite contributions that include but are not limited to the following topics in relation to Neo-Victorian representations of crime:

-Historical crime versus fictional crime

-Neo-Victorian sensationalism and detection

-The aesthetics and ethics of crime 

-Detection, crime and identity politics

-Gender and detection

-Crime and ethnicity

-Crime and class 

-Crime and Disability

-LBTBQI+ sleuth identities

-LBTBQI+ criminals and victims

-Neo-Victorian remediations of past crimes

Please send a c. 250 word abstract for 20 min papers and c. 100 word biography toneovictoriancrimes@gmail.com by 14th March 2025.

Call for Papers - Silent Echoes: Golden Age Crime Fiction and Trauma

 

Silent Echoes: Golden Age Crime Fiction and Trauma

FSU (Florida State University) London Study Centre, 

12–13 September 2025

The Golden Age of crime fiction, roughly associated with the interwar and immediate post-war period, has been commonly defined as a therapeutic and comforting form of literature. As Alison Light famously puts it, after the First World War, especially in Britain, detective writing became a ‘literature of convalescence’ (Forever England, 1991, 69). The conventions of Golden Age detective fiction – fair play, a closed circle of upper-class characters, isolated settings, ‘sacrificial’ bodies (Plain, Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction, 2000), and the final restoration of social and moral order – have been interpreted as mechanisms for containing, exorcising, and defusing the cultural anxieties emerging in the wake of war. 

However, the extent to which Golden Age crime fiction reflects, articulates, and reshapes the trauma shaping its consumption remains underexplored. While such a form of literature typically concludes with the apprehension of the criminal, the underlying trauma of profound cultural and individual disruption remains pervasive. War experience, as Wyatt Bonikowski writes, has a traumatic aspect: ‘there is something in the nature of modern war experience, both physical and psychical, that resists representation; it overwhelms the senses, disturbs memory, and leaves traces in the form of disruptive symptoms that persist years after the events have passed’ (Shell Shock and the Modernist Imagination, 2013, 3). Additionally, other traumas in the twentieth century – international, national, domestic, and personal – are inextricable from the pages of Golden Age crime novels, thematically, as backdrop, and ‘behind the scenes’ in writing and reception.

For this conference, we thus invite papers examining how, to what extent, and with what implications – textual, literary, sociocultural, political, medical, legal, and historical – the concept of trauma shaped crime writing between the 1910s and the 1950s. It aims to explore the influence of trauma on a variety of aspects (daily life, mental health, gender roles and relations, the environment, levels of violence, cultural memory, national identity, medical theory, and legal practice), examining how Golden Age crime fiction articulates the spatial, temporal, and psychic echoes of trauma.

Potential topics include but are certainly not limited to:

• Mental health
• Remembrance and convalescence
• Space and trauma
• Narrative structure and trauma
• Veterans and the military sphere
• Violence 
• Place and Setting
• Time and history
• Identity, the self, and community
• Gender roles, identities, and constructions
• Disability
• Ideas of ‘echoes’, ‘mirroring’ and ghostly presence as trauma 
• Language and articulation
• Crime, detection, and cultural memory
• Spiritualism and death
• Questions of genre
• Crime, detection, and national identity
• Colonialism and racism
• Crime and emotions
• Crime and insanity
• Psychoanalysis and the unconscious mind
• Medicine and detective narrative

Please submit a short abstract (up to 300 words) and brief biographical note for a 20-minute conference presentation to Directors of Golden Age Mysteries Ltd, Dr J C Bernthal (University of Suffolk), Dr Sarah Martin (Manchester Metropolitan University), Dr Stefano Serafini (Georgetown University, University of Padua) and Dr Mia Dormer: info@goldenagemysteries.co.uk no later than 5th May 2025. You may direct queries to the same address. Tickets to this event are non-refundable. 

The conference is generously sponsored by FSU (Florida State University) and takes place at its London Study Centre on 12 and 13 September 2025. This project has also received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA) grant agreement no. 101105463.

Call for Papers:- The Mysterious Mrs Christie: Evidence, Elusion, Afterlives

 

The Mysterious Mrs Christie: 

Evidence, Elusion, Afterlives 

A 1.5-day international conference at the University of Exeter and Exeter Library 12-13 September 2023 

Keynote Speakers: Dr Mark Aldridge, Solent University and Prof. Michelle M. Kazmer, Florida State University 

2023 marks fifty years since the last novel Agatha Christie wrote, Postern of Fate, was published. By 1973, Christie was already established as the world’s bestselling novelist, and her popularity has only risen in subsequent years. In addition, a flame of scholarly interest has ignited and grown. The quintessential mystery writer, creator of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, is now also a legitimate figure in academic research. 

It is tempting to think that the there are no Agatha Christie mysteries left. Few writers have received such levels of popular scrutiny and her life and work have been approached from a range of angles. Millions of words have been written about this significant body of work. Recent or anticipated works such as Lucy Worsley’s Agatha Christie, Nina de Gramot’s The Christie Affair, and Mark Aldridge’s Agatha Christie’s Marple attest to the mainstream dissemination of detailed archival research and unconventional approaches. However, mysteries remain. As Worsley notes in her recent biography of Christie, she is ‘a very elusive woman’. 

For the seventh international Agatha Christie conference, we are seeking research and/or creative papers that consider underexplored aspects of Christie’s work, life, and legacies. These could be neglected topics/areas or reflections on critical conversations which could use a new perspective. 

Potential topics may include but are certainly not limited to: 

• Across and beyond genre 

• Afterlives and adaptations 

• Character studies 

• Christie and creative writing 

• Christie in an international context 

• Colonialism and racism 

• Continuations and tributes 

• Creative legacies 

• Ecology and the environment 

• Ethical considerations 

• Gender, sex, and sexuality 

• Gothic and the supernatural 

• Life writing and autobiography 

• Mary Westmacott 

• New theoretical frameworks 

• Place, space, and time 

• Plays and dramatisations 

• Religion and theology 

• Radio and the BBC 

• Short stories 

• Teaching and pedagogy 

  Please submit a short (up to 200 words) abstract for a 20-minute presentation and a brief biographical note to agathachristieconference@gmail.com no later than 1 May 2023. You may direct queries to the same address. 

  Please note that speakers will be expected to register for the conference at the 1.5-day rate of £115. 

  Conference organisers: Dr Mia Dormer, Dr J.C. Bernthal, Sarah Martin, and Dr Stefano Serafini. 

  
  

  
  

  
  

Call For Papers: Teaching Crime Fiction as Creative Writing: Call for Submissions

 

As crime fiction continues to dominate sales and its critical reception grows, it has become an increasingly important part of Creative Writing courses. At the same time, Creative Writing is going from strength to strength as an academic discipline, and a program of study in schools and other learning spaces.

Are you teaching crime, detective, or mystery fiction as a creative discipline? Have you expanded teaching it as a literary or sociological phenomenon to incorporate creative elements? Have you come from a creative background to incorporate the practice of writing crime and detective fiction? What has changed about your approach in recent years, and what changes do you anticipate?

Clues: A Journal of Detection is looking for 500-750 word contributions for a new regular feature for the journal, a forum on teaching. The topic will change each year. Accounts from all classroom spaces (college, high school, graduate school, prisons, etc.) and teachers at all stages of their careers are welcome. Student voices are also welcome!

Submissions are due February 1, 2023. For more information or to submit essays, please contact Jamie Bernthal- Hooker (j.bernthal-hooker@uos.ac.uk).

CfP: The Golden Age of Crime: A Reappraisal

 

The Golden Age of Crime: A Reappraisal

22^nd – 23^rd June 2022 at Bournemouth University

The Golden Age of crime fiction, roughly defined as puzzle-based mystery fiction produced between the First and Second World Wars, is enjoying a renaissance both in the literary marketplace and in scholarship. This conference intervenes in emerging academic debates to define and negotiate the boundaries of Golden Age scholarship.

As well as interrogating the staples of ‘Golden Age’ crime (the work of Agatha Christie and/or Ellery Queen, the puzzle format, comparisons to ‘the psychological turn’), this conference will look at under-explored elements of the publishing phenomenon. Joining us in this fascinating debate, keynotes will be given by Shedunnit creator Caroline Crampton, and Alistair Rolls of the University of Newcastle. This is a hybrid event, taking place both at Bournemouth University and online. Please note, at least one keynote will be online. Our second keynote subject to travel restrictions.

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers or panel presentations of one hour. Topics can include, but are by no means limited to, the following:

• Defining the parameters of Golden Age crime

• The Queens of Crime (Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, Josephine Tey, Gladys Mitchell)

• Significant male writers of the Golden Age (John Dickson Carr, Anthony Berkeley, Ellery Queen)

• Lesser-known Golden Age practitioners

• Collaborative and round robin novels

• Continuation novels

• The Detection Club

• Parody, pastiche, and postmodernism

• Psychology and psychoanalysis

• Meta-fiction and self- or inter-referentiality

• The language of crime fiction

• The Golden Age and social value

• Nostalgia and heritage

• Writing the past

• Gender, sexuality, and queerness

• Clues and coding

• Crime and the Gothic

• Magic and the supernatural

• Place, space, and psychogeography

• Reissues and rediscovery

• Archival finds and innovations

• The ‘Second Golden Age’

• The influence of Golden Age crime writers on subsequent and contemporary writers

• Interdisciplinary perspectives

• Teaching Golden Age crime fiction

We welcome academic and creative paper proposals. Please email your 200-word proposal and short biographical note to goldenageofcrime@gmail.com no later than 18^th April 2022. Comments and queries should be directed to the same address.

Organisers: Dr J.C. Bernthal (University of Suffolk), Sarah Martin (Bournemouth University), Dr Stefano Serafini (University of Warwick).

Cinematic Bond at 60: National and International Perspectives - Call For Papers

 

A History Research Group Symposium

Bournemouth University (Online), 4 March 2022

Keynote Speaker: Professor Andrew Spicer (University of the West of England)

In 1962 the first James Bond film, Dr No (Terence Young) was released. The film was a huge financial success for EON productions, catapulted Sean Connery to lifelong stardom and started a period of Bondmania that lasted for most of the 1960s. As a cultural icon and cultural phenomenon, James Bond and the Bond film have become a globally recognised brand.

The films have been widely analysed for their spectacle, their often problematic engagement with masculinity, gender relations and cultural appropriation as well as the ideological implications of how they engage with their backdrop of social and geopolitical change across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. 

With 2022 marking 60 years of the cinematic Bond and the latest instalment, No Time to Die (Cary Fukunaga), due (allegedly) for release in October 2021, critical reflections on this ongoing franchise are relevant and timely.

This one-day online symposium, hosted by the History Research Group at Bournemouth University, will offer delegates the opportunity to discuss and interrogate the Bond franchise across diverse concepts. We are especially keen for scholars from outside of the United Kingdom to bring international and transnational perspectives to the character of Bond and the films. Likely topics include but are not restricted to:

• Gender
• Class
• Race and ethnicity
• Imperialism and post-imperialism
• Colonialism and post-colonialism
• Cold War and/or Cold War I
• Stars and stardom
• Fashion/style/aesthetics
• Music and/or sound design
• Adaptation/adoption/appropriation
• Fans and fandom
• Audiences
• Reviews and reception
• Marketing and merchandise

Delegates will be invited to submit their papers for an intended edited collection to be published in the Routledge Studies of Espionage and Culture series.

We seek proposals for 20-minute papers, or for pre-constituted panels of three or four papers, that engage with any aspects of the above topic. 

Abstracts of no more than 300 words, along with a short biographical note, should be submitted for peer review to:

Dr Laura Crossley: lcrossley@bournemouth.ac.uk by 29^th October 2021.

Call for Papers: Investigating True Crime & the Media.

 

A conference hosted by Journalism@Newcastle and 

Ethical Space, the International Journal of Communication Ethics. 

23 June 2022 – Deadline for abstracts 29 October 2021

True crime has a long and popular history in journalism, literature, drama, radio, film and television – and now the podcast. A warning for fair women (1599), the anonymous dramatisation of the 1573 murder of London merchant George Sanders by his wife’s lover, was the curtain-raiser for many more playwrights to adapt true murder narratives in the decades and centuries that followed (Rohrer 2019). True crime podcasts today clock up tens of millions of downloads (Punnett 2018) and research suggests that the audience is overwhelmingly made up of women (Boling and Hull 2018). Perhaps because of this, it is often dismissed as ‘a genre of cheap paperbacks with little literary merit and highly sensational, pornographic content (Rowen 2017).

But such perspectives are challenged by research which identifies a focus on advocating for justice where the formal justice system has failed (Rowen 2017). True crime podcasts represent women in ways that ‘use the affordances of mass media to draw support from the public, effectively inviting the audience to perform as an alternate jury’ and engendering change in judicial processes (Pâquet 2020). The sub-genre of criminal biography uses the voice of the accused to challenge institutional truth-claims (Buozis 2017) and journalistic investigations repeatedly expose miscarriages of justice (Larke-Walsh 2021). Kelli Boling (2019) argues thattrue crime podcasts are impacting the criminal justice system in unprecedented ways and could challenge both criminal justice and media reform. But proponents also areaccused of complicity in the propagation and popularisation of narratives of female-directed violence and the visualisation of mutilated female bodies (Greer 2017). Erica Haugtvedt (2017) interrogates the range of ethical tensions which emerge when, for example, the conventions of fiction are applied to reportage, people become characters and factual narratives are developed as plots. And a focus on particular types of criminal activity address critical social issues of our day such as femicide (Mahadeen 2017); the persecution of racial (Oliver 2003) and LGBTQ+ communities (Polchin 2019); human trafficking (Gregoriou 2018) and crimes against the planet (Ruddell 2017). Case Punnett (2018) charts the theoretical landscape that we might draw on – but much of the topography remains to be mapped.

Journalism@Newcastle – the journalism department at Newcastle University, UK – and Ethical Space invite papers for a global conference: Investigating True Crime & The Media. Submissions are welcome which explore its rise in popularity in recent years, shifting perceptions and receptions, changing platforms, new understandings. To be held at Newcastle University and online, June 23, 2022. Authors are also invited to submit their papers to peer review to feature in a subsequent winter 2022 special double edition of Ethical Space. 

Submissions are open to researchers, PhD students, and practitioners working in the field, and parity of esteem will be afforded to both theoretically-driven and practice-related papers. 

We particularly welcome submissions from diverse voices and nations and regions beyond Western perspectives. The aims of the conference and double issue are to explore current and emerging concepts, developments and potential future trajectories of true crime narratives and production from a global perspective. 

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Feminist perspectives (production, consumption, reception)

• Theorising the field 

• Queer theory and true crime

• True crime in Africa, Asia, South America and the Pacific 

• European perspectives and the Nordic Noir

• The rise of the true crime podcast and dedicated channels and platforms 

• Ethical tensions 

• Campaigning and investigative journalism

• Literary true crime – critical reception and unease 

• Media reporting

• Representations of victimhood

• The accused and control of the narrative 

• The writer’s mission

• Fictionalisation and negotiations of truth

• The commodification of fear

• Institutional failure and the quest for social justice

• True crime and a warming planet

• Commercial imperatives and the public interest

• The political economy of true crime
  
  Deadlines: 
  Please submit abstracts of 500 words plus a 50-word biography to Barbara.henderson@newcastle.ac.uk by Friday 29 October 2021. Authors will be notified of the outcome by 19 January 2022. PowerPoint presentations are acceptable for the conference on 23 June 2022, but full papers (5,000 words including references) for publication in Ethical Space Winter 2022 should be submitted by 31 August 2022.

  Works cited:

  Boling, K. S. and Hull, K. (2018) Undisclosed information –Serial is my favorite murder: Examining motivations in the true crime podcast audience, Journal of Radio & Audio Media, Vol. 25, No. 1 pp 92-108 

  • Boling, K. S. (2019) True crime podcasting: Journalism, justice or entertainment?, Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media, Vol. 17, No. 2 pp 161-178
    
    Buozis, M. (2017) Giving voice to the accused: Serial and the critical potential of true crime, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3 pp 254-270
    
    Greer, A. (2017) Murder, she spoke: The female voice’s ethics of evocation and spatialisation in the true crime podcast, Sound Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 pp 152-164
    
    Gregoriou, C. (2018) Representations of transnational human trafficking: Present-day news media, true crime, and fiction, Springer Nature
    
    Hauhgtvedt, E. (2017) The ethics of serialized true crime, McCracken, Ellen (ed.) The serial podcast and storytelling in the digital age, London, Taylor & Francis pp 7-24
    
    Larke-Walsh, G. S. (2021) Injustice narratives in a post-truth society: emotional discourses and social purpose in Southwest of Salem: The story of the San Antonio Four, Studies in Documentary Film, Vol. 15, No. 1 pp 89-104
    
    Mahadeen, E. (2017) ‘The martyr of dawn’: Femicide in Jordanian media, Crime, Media, Culture, Vol. 13, No. 1 pp 41-54
    
    Oliver, M. B. (2003) African American men as ‘criminal and dangerous’: Implications of media portrayals of crime on the ‘criminalization’ of African American men, Journal of African American Studies, Vol. 7 pp-18
    
    Pâquet, L. (2020) Seeking justice elsewhere: Informal and formal justice in the true crime podcasts Trace and The Teacher’s Pet, Crime, Media, Culture
    
    Polchin, J. (2019) Indecent advances: A hidden history of true crime and prejudice before Stonewall, London, Icon Books
    
    Punnett, I. C. (2018) Toward a theory of true crime narratives: A textual analysis, London, Routledge
    
    Rohrer, M. (2019) 'Lamentable and true': Remediations of true crime in domestic tragedies. Early Modern Literary Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3 pp 1-17. Available online at https://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/journal/index.php/emls/article/view/439/360
    
    Rowen, L. (2017) True crime as a literature of advocacy, Bellarmine University, Kentucky
    
    Ruddell, R. (2017) Oil, gas, and crime: The dark side of the boomtown, Springer

  
  

Scritture Migranti - Call for Papers

 

Narratives of Mobility: The Transnational and Transculutral Turn 

in European Crime Fiction

Edited by Maurizio Ascari, Silvia Baroni, Sara Casoli

This issue of Scritture migranti (15/2021) aims to investigate a phenomenon that is highly characteristic of contemporary crime fiction on a global level: the representation and thematization of multiculturalism, international mobility, and transcultural identities. Thanks to its transnational circulation and its aptitude to highlight social and political issues throughout the lens of the investigation, crime fiction offers a privileged perspective through which to observe the encounters and the conflicts associated with social and cultural mobility. Moreover, the critical reflections on the connections between social norms and otherness expressed in crime fiction encourage also to take into consideration the mobility of the genre itself in terms of genre-blending.

In particular, we aim at analysing authors and characters whose transnational and multicultural perspective epitomizes an alienating gaze questioning the social norms of hegemonic groups. Describing mobility across national borders and cultural contexts, these figures suggest alternative readings of the society in which they live, and thus reflect on notions such as “cultural identity”, “integration”, and “transnationality”.

On that standpoint, possible case studies include the works of “expatriate writers” (expat), who write their stories in a different language from that spoken by their characters and/or set their stories in a cultural background (that is, a country) where they currently live or have resided, but which is not their country, which is not the background where they belong by birth, language, culture, education and the like. Examples range from the Italian mysteries written by authors of British, American or German origin such as Magdalene Nabb, Donna Leon, Michael Dibdin, or Veit Heinechen, to those written by authors with a migratory background and a non-native cultural origin that have influenced their work, like Lakhdar Belaïd, Sascha Arango, Nadine Buranaseda, Tonino Benacquisto, Susanne Ayoub, Rosa Ribas, Vladimir Hernàndez and more.

Other possible case studies may emphasise the construction of transnational characters. Contemporary European crime fiction features more and more detectives living and operating in multicultural and/or transnational contexts, like Arne Dahl’s Op-Cop Group, Jacob Arjouni’s private detective Kemal Kayankaya and Deputy Commissioner Luca Who, created by Andrea Ciotti. By thematizing the transcultural contexts in which they live within the diegetic universe, these characters allow us to explore the stratified and multicultural fabric of European society.

This issue of Scritture migranti will welcome proposals exploring the ways in which contemporary European crime fiction writers (from 1989) and characters are recast in the role of cultural mediators from a variety of theoretical and critical perspectives, which may include, among others: narratological analyses focused on the aesthetic structure and thematic contents of the texts; studies on the transnational circulation and translation of crime novels; inquiries on the transmedia outputs of the crime narratives dealing with cultural and national mobility issues.

Topics may include (but are not limited to):

• The transnational circulation of the works of transcultural writers, in the more general frame of the production, distribution and reception of the crime genre across the European cultural market;

• The construction of an European identity and its borders in relation to the narrative space in which the criminal and investigative plots are set and to the mobility of the characters;

• How the construction of transcultural characters calls into question racial, cultural and social stereotypes in the representation of narrative as well as socio-cultural mobility in a national context;

• The critical and deconstructive potential of the crime genre in bringing out and highlight forms of collective repression connected to socio-cultural mobility and transnational contexts;

• The comparison between the definitions and the notions of “expatriate” and “migrant” in relation to specific crime fiction writers and works.

Founded in 2007, Scritture migranti is the first Italian peer-reviewed journal with a strong commitment in international research on Migrant literature.

Scritture migrant is an annual journal that publishes articles in English, French and Italian.

Proposals– title and abstract of 250 words, author’s affiliation and contact (email), personal information – will have to be sent by May 31, 2021 to redazione.scritturemigranti@unibo.it. Acceptance of the proposals will be notified by June 15, 2021.

Final papers of 6000-7000 words will be due no later than October 31, 2021, with publication anticipated in January 2022.

Contact email:

redazione.scritturemigranti@unibo.it

maurizio.ascari@unibo.it

sara.casoli2@unibo.it

silvia.baroni9@unibo.it

Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies - Call for Papers

 

 Giallo! The Long History of Italian Television Crime Drama

Special issue edited by Luca Barra (Università di Bologna) and Valentina Re (Link Campus, Rome)

 Most of the Italian television drama able to circulate internationally belongs to the multifaceted crime genre, both in some sparse examples from the past and in growing contemporary productions (from premium channels and digital platforms to public service and commercial broadcasters). However, for many decades, only a limited range of titles has been given scholarly attention, drawing a useful yet partial account of an otherwise dense and multi-layered history. Moreover, exceptions have often been studied far more than the most conventional crime series in the ‘giallo’ spectrum: most police procedurals are deemed too formulaic, or too popular, to be distinguished. Therefore, this special issue intends to overcome these limits by focusing on the historical evolution of the crime genre inside the development of Italian television, from the early stages to the latest mainstream and niche successes, and by highlighting the many crime titles that have become familiar to large Italian audiences.

 Through the Italian crime drama and its evolution over the decades, an original history of Italian television and media can be easily outlined, where ‘giallo’ would often mark changes of pace, innovations, successes and failures. Already in the first twenty years of the so-called paleo-television and monopoly period, crime drama was facilitating the Italian ‘sceneggiato’’s turn towards a medium-long seriality: the investigations of ‘tenente’ Sheridan (from 1959 to 1972, first with Giallo club. Invito al poliziesco and later with Ritorna il tenente Sheridan, Sheridan squadra omicidi and Le donne del tenente Sheridan) or Le inchieste del commissario Maigret (1964-1972), starring Gino Cervi; or Nero Wolfe (1969-1971). Further on, it was crime drama that marked the transition—even the lexical transition—from ‘sceneggiato’ to ‘fiction’, with the great success of La Piovra (1984-2001). It was crime television that punctuated the golden age of public service fiction in the late Nineties: Il maresciallo Rocca (1996-2008), Il Commissario Montalbano (1999-), La squadra (2000-2007) and the reassuring Don Matteo (2000-). It was crime drama that underlined the innovations of commercial networks: Distretto di polizia (2000- 2012), RIS. Delitti imperfetti (2005-2009) and Squadra antimafia. Palermo oggi (2009-2016). Once again, it was the crime genre that marked the arrival of premium original productions, first with Sky – Quo vadis, baby? (2008), Romanzo criminale. La serie (2008-2010) and Gomorra. La serie (2014-) – and later with Netflix – Suburra. La serie (2017-2020). Lastly, crime is one of the main battlegrounds for the return of Rai and Mediaset competition, innovating genres and aesthetics and establishing global partnerships, with titles like Non uccidere (2015-2018), Rocco Schiavone (2016-), La porta rossa (2016-), I bastardi di Pizzofalcone (2017-), Maltese (2017), Il Cacciatore (2018) and Il Processo (2019). In Italy, as in many other countries like the United States, the United Kingdom and Scandinavia, the entire nation is reflected in the history of its TV crime drama, mixing the reverberations of a changing society – which experiences new tensions and conflicts in terms of economic insecurity, political uncertainty, family and gender norms – with formal experiments and the shared imageries of a long-lasting, rich and always new genre.

 The editors encourage submissions that cover, but are not limited to, the following subjects and topics:

 1. The genre and its polymorphism. How has Italian TV, across its entire history, interpreted the many subgenres of ‘giallo’ (noir, police procedural, legal drama, detective story, crime, etc.)? How are these subgenres related to different periods, specific formats, channels and platforms?

 2. The familiar hybridizations with comedy and melodrama. What are the strategies to ‘balance’ the roughness of crime in the Italian tradition? How have these interacted with the crime genre?

 3. The less familiar hybridizations with other genres. How have popular genres like fantasy, the supernatural, gothic, science fiction and thriller impacted the ‘giallo’ traditions and innovations?

4. The geography of Italian crime. How have the places represented in the Italian ‘giallo’ changed in television history (center vs. peripheries; urban vs. rural stories)? How have locations affected the narrative developments, the production and the national and global circulation of these series?

 5. Literary adaptations and original productions. How has the frequent adaptation of literary investigators (i.e. Maigret, Nero Wolfe, Montalbano, etc.) influenced the narratives, characters, production and promotion strategies of Italian TV dramas? How do fully-original stories differ?

6. The Italian ‘giallo’ as a transmedial phenomenon. How have crime dramas hybridized languages, figures, characters and topics from different media, such as radio, comics and cinema?

7. Mainstream dramas and quality ‘giallo’. How has ‘quality’ or ‘complex’ TV impacted Italian crime by featuring ambiguous heroes and antiheroes, multiple storylines, unconventional locations and a sophisticated visual style? And what is the role of more traditional, mass-oriented crime?

8. From amateur to professional female investigators. How have crime dramas, from Laura Storm to Thou Shalt Not Kill’s Valeria Ferro, shown an increasingly strong interest in female detectives? How does this help us understand, question and renegotiate evolving gender and genre norms?

9. The reality and fiction of Italian ‘giallo’. How have Italian crime dramas reinterpreted or hinted at the news of ‘cronaca nera’, in a complex entanglement between unsolved cases and judiciary truths? In which ways has the recent explosion of serial true crime also impacted fictional series?

10. The international circulation of Italian crime. After the first success of La Piovra, in recent years more and more national productions have met with foreign acclaim. What are the elements that facilitate this international circulation, and what are the effects on narratives and productions?

11. Italian ‘giallo’ and the past: national history and national memory. How has the Italian ‘giallo’ tradition been proven capable of turning our gaze on the past and addressing unresolved social and political conflict? How do ‘gialli’ contribute to a shared national memory of mysteries and traumas?

12. Italian ‘giallo’ and the present: social tensions and moral dilemmas. From financial issues to terrorism, from immigration to the ties between politics, corruption and organized crime, how has the contemporary crime drama contributed to narrating conflict and fear in our societies?

The deadline for the submission of abstracts is 30 April. Interested contributors should send the following materials to the guest editors Luca Barra, Università di Bologna (luca.barraATunibo.it) and Valentina Re, Link Campus, Rome (v.reATunilink.it): a 500 word abstract in English of original and unpublished articles, outlining the topic, approach and theoretical bases with a relevant bibliography and filmography; and  a 200 word biographical note. The accepted proposals will be notified by 31 May; completed articles should be sent by 15 October for peer-review; authors will be notified of the results of the peer-review by 15 December 2021.

 

Call For Papers: Fictional Crimes/Factual Crimes. European crime fiction and media narratives of crime

 

The close relationship between crime fiction and authentic events is a crucial aspect of popular culture, in Europe as elsewhere. On the one hand, crime fiction has always drawn from news stories and social issues as a source of inspiration to deal with and reveal the most unspeakable practices or hidden aspects of our societies. On the other, news media have regularly borrowed the devices of fiction to increase their dramatic appeal: among the most notable examples are the serialization techniques adopted by the 19th century press to report police cases, the "true crime" programs of cable and satellite television and the multitude of articles or reports that make use of fictional intertexts. A number of recent studies have shown the importance of these exchanges, highlighting how the communicational dynamics of news media and the narrative structure of crime fiction have displayed strong reciprocal affinities since the advent of modern media culture, ever since the appearence of the 19th century literary genre of the urban mysteries and up to the contemporary ambitions of much crime fiction to occupy the space of journalistic investigation. Such exchanges, which can be found everywhere in the western world and beyond, also thanks to their broad international circulation, play a significant role in the ongoing homogenization of European imagination. 

Moreover, the relationship between media culture and crime narratives is not limited solely to the ways in which fiction borrows some of its plots from the news, or the news imitate the stylistic devices of fiction. Rather, it calls into play the discursive structures that underpin both the journalistic discourse and crime fiction (in all of its different varieties: mystery, investigation, revelation, sensationalism...). Such proximity suggests that the two domains share not only a common social (as well as political and psychological) sensibility to the world, but also similar hermeneutical and rhetorical strategies in their respective interpretations and reconstructions of reality. More generally, their complex interplay, far from being anecdotal, suggests the existence of a profound complementarity between discourse and imagination. Assuming the existence of a much closer relation between fictional and factual accounts of crime may help explain the parallel evolution undergone by the two domains during the transformation of the media ecosystem. In fact, each new medium has invented its original modes, both fictional and factual, of representing crime, reformulating earlier forms inherited from the past and adjusting them to its own logic and means of expression. 

In this conference, we would like to examine the porosity of media discourses on crime, both fictional and factual, and their meanings in terms of cultural imagination, ideology and/or social discourse. We invite proposals from all fields of media studies--literature, press, radio, television, cinema, internet and social media--particularly in a European perspective. Emphasis should be placed on the contemporary period and the ways in which media contexts impact textual forms and formats. 

Proposals are welcome that interrogate the ambiguity between fiction and factual events: for example, case studies that analyze the ways in which fictional stereotypes, forms and styles are adapted into factual statements or, conversely, the ways in which true crimes are transformed into fictions. Investigations on cases that blur the boundaries between the fictional and the factual after a process of media adaptation or migration are also welcome as well as more theoretical, global, transversal or historical approaches. 

Possible topics include, but are by no means not limited to, the following: 

• The circulation of figures and stereotypes between the fictional and the factual within the same medium: contamination of forms, genres and modes of expression; borrowings, adaptations or appropriations. Examples: political fictions, true crime documentaries, fictionalised authentic events, journalistic and documentary productions using fiction. 
• The transmedia circulation of forms and content, and its effects in terms of reconfiguration or shift of meaning from the fictional to the factual, and vice versa: how does the process of intersemiotic translation affect the limits of representation, and how does the process of content reconfiguration occur within the different media ecosystems, according to their uses and the generic boundaries they prescribe between fictional and factual? Examples: journalistic investigations converted into TV series or film fictions, factual re-readings of works of fiction in social media. 
• The dissemination of the same figures and motifs through different media, and the ways in which their different occurrences cohere at the intersection of the fictional and the factual. Examples: the recurrence of criminal motifs across the media sphere, the emergence of phantasmatic criminal figures, standing halfway between fantasy and reality (the female cat burglar, the criminal network, the white slave trade, the Satanist ritual, etc.) 
• The cultural, social, political or, more broadly, ideological meanings produced by processes of contamination, circulation or homogenization between fictional and factual narratives. The role of fiction in structuring the ideologemes of contemporary culture; the use of mixed forms, such as political fictions, documentaries or counter-cultural productions to express either hegemonic or counter-hegemonic discourses. 
• Comparative approaches of cases from different European countries: comparison and constrast of different media ecosystems, legislations, specific linguistic characteristics or cultural practices; investigation of particular national case studies. 
• Analyses using digital tools that will be able to superimpose several corpora (factual and fictional, different countries, etc.) and bring out common lexical and generic registers, and patterns of transformations and appropriations according to genres, languages and countries. 
• The circulation of imaginative content and forms across the different European countries, according to its effects: homogenization vs relocation or appropriation, variations in the imports distribution of such different globalized forms as the true crime, the thriller, etc. 
• The historical dimension of this circulation, with respect to both the collective imagination and the media sphere: archaeology of crime representation across the media (pastiches, reuse of documents or archives), persistence of forms inherited from other media (e.g. the urban mystery, the melodrama, the whodunit.), resurgence of forgotten motifs (urban legends, expert discourses shaped by serial stereotypes, and so on). 

The conference is organized as part of the H2020 DETECt project (https://www.detect-project.eu) and the ANR Numapresse project (http://www.numapresse.org). 

The conference will be held at the Paris Nanterre University. 

Proposals should be sent before 31st March 2021, in English or French, to matthletourneux@gmail.com and marie-eve.therenty@univ-montp3.fr 

Call For Papers : - Crime Fiction, Global Mapping and Grand Narratives

 

American Comparative Literature Association Meeting 2021

Fully virtual, 8-11 April 2021

Are you interested in participating in our seminar?

Crime Fiction, Global Mapping and Grand Narratives

This seminar examines the capacities of long-form serial crime narratives – fiction, reportage, streaming TV drama, and film– to map and interrogate a range of complex sociopolitical problems on a global scale: environmental catastrophe, racialized police violence, urban breakdown, militarization and war, drug and human trafficking, refugee crises, corporate malfesance, the ongoing consequences of racism, homophobia, misogyny, and the inequalities of global capitalism. We welcome papers exploring these expansive, open-ended, ensemble forms and narratives. Why the grand scale and scope of these crime stories? To what degree do serial crime narratives or TV dramas help render visible, obscure or aestheticize transnational conflicts and disorders? How may their seriality also preclude endings that solve these seemingly intractable problems? How have other genres appropriated elements of crime narratives? We encourage contributions exploring the relationship between parts and the whole (‘synecdoche’), where characters and storylines in crime narratives might be implicated in “that vaster and properly unrepresentable totality which is the ensemble of society’s structures as a whole” (Jameson, 1992). Welcoming papers from many parts of the globe, we hope to build on the diverse discussions pursued at ACLA: Worlding Crime Fiction: From the National to the Global (ACLA 2017), Crime Fiction, Cosmopolitanism and Non-Violent Crime (2018), and Crime Fiction and Global Spaces (ACLA 2019).

The format supports 3-4 papers per session at an allotted time each day over two or three days. Everyone is expected to listen to everyone else’s contributions.

Link to ACLA listing here

The call for papers will run October 1^st through October 31^st. Please note that all seminar organizers will then need to accept or reject papers proposed to their seminars by November 9th. The ACLA selection committee will complete its review of all submitted seminars by November 24th, 2020 and will provide you with a response shortly after that date.

Any informal questions or enquiries to: Patrick Deer (pd46@nyu.edu) or Andrew Pepper (a.pepper@qub.ac.uk)

CALL FOR PAPERS: The Female Detective on TV

MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture (maifeminism.com) invites academic authors with expertise in television studies and other related disciplines to contribute to our upcoming special issue on female detectives on TV. 

For decades now, the female detective has occupied space within a genre that has been all-too-often reserved for the celebratory storylines of self-sacrificial men. She has served to break down sexist barriers placed before women within professional and personal frameworks, acting as an on-screen surrogate and inspiration for (female) spectators. The popularity of female-led TV crime drama across the world points to her success in captivating widespread audience attention. 

The topic of women in TV crime drama has inspired a range of significant feminist scholarship (see for example, Pinedo 2019; Coulthard, Horeck, Klinger, McHugh 2018; Greer 2017; Buonanno 2017; Moorti and Cuklanz 2017; Steenberg 2017, 2012; Jermyn 2017; Weissman (2016; 2010; 2007); McCabe 2015; Turnbull 2014; Brunsdon 2013; D’Acci 1994). This work has examined female-led TV crime drama from a variety of angles, including transnational cultural exchanges and currencies, serial form and narrative, gender, class, sexual and racial politics, and postfeminist identities and logics. 

Certain series such as The Killing (Denmark 2007-2012, US 2011-2014), The Bridge (Sweden 2011-2018, US 2013-2014), The Fall (UK 2013-2016), and Top of the Lake (NZ/Australia 2013/2017), have been singled out for how their female protagonists (Sarah Lund/Sarah Linden; Saga Noren; Stella Gibson, and Robin Griffin) resonate with viewers across transnational borders. Meanwhile, on primetime episodic US TV crime drama, Mariska Hargitay’s 21-year stint as Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (US 1999-present) – the longest running live-action TV series in American history – has turned her into a ‘touchstone figure’ (Moorti and Cuklanz 2017). Hargitay’s real-life activism, and her dedication to fighting sexual violence against women, has attained important cultural recognition, as Law & Order: SVU itself has received renewed critical consideration in the wake of the #MeToo movement. 

Notably, though, the female detectives mentioned in the above paragraph are overwhelmingly white. What shifts occur in the genre when a non-white female actor helms the main role as detective? What new possibilities, for example, are opened up by the emergence of black female legal investigators and detectives on network series such as ABC’s How to Get Away with Murder (US 2014-2019) and online TV series such as Netflix’s Seven Seconds (US 2018)? And to what extent is TV crime drama able to meaningfully engage with issues of intersectionality and the precariousness of social justice in twenty-first century society? 

This special issue seeks to build on the existing body of feminist writing on women in TV crime drama, through a further investigation of the figure of the female detective at this critical juncture for feminist television studies.  What new feminist visions of the female detective have emerged with changes in industrial practices and the growth of online streaming and niche television? How does the female detective of streaming TV compare to the images of the female detective found in the middlebrow crime dramas of linear TV? In an era of networked media in which popular feminism and popular misogyny (Banet-Weiser 2018) are more intertwined than ever before, what notions of empowerment are articulated through the figure of the female detective? To what extent does the female detective enable an exploration of central issues regarding female subjectivity and political resistance against systemic forms of violence? 

We hope to open further debate on the subject of the female detective in all her guises. Staying true to MAI spirit, we are seeking papers written from intersectional and multivalent feminist perspectives. We hope this issue not only examines the figures and representations of women crime investigators on the screen, but also situates their work in related social, cultural and political contexts.  

Our definition of the female detective is broad and inclusive. She can, but doesn't have to be a private eye or a police professional, just as long as she pursues social justice or truth. 

While analyses of current and recent examples seem to be an obvious priority as far as contribution to the field knowledge of visual culture analysis, we also welcome papers on female detectives from the past. 

In particular, we would like to encourage authors to consider submitting articles on the following titles: 

Seven Seconds How to Get Away with Murder Marcella Spiral Unbelievable  Killing Eve Safe  Top of the Lake  The Fall The Bridge  Veronica Mars Southland Fargo Prime Suspect  La Mante  Castle

The Killing Broadchurch Lucifer Elementary  The Wire The Closer  Happy Valley  Jessica Jones Absentia Tatort  The Bletchley Circle Collateral Suspects Witnesses Loch Ness Cagney and Lacey

We recognise that there are many more titles of interests, and the list could run quite long. If you wish to propose a paper on any other TV title, please get in touch with the editors to discuss your suggestion: contact@maifeminism.com

We plan to publish this issue in the first half of 2021. 

The editorial team includes: 

Tanya Horeck (Anglia Ruskin University, UK)

Jessica Ford (University of Newcastle, Australia)

Anna Backman Rogers (University of Gothenburg, Sweden)

Anna Misiak (Falmouth University, UK)

300-word Abstracts due: 30 May 2020

4000-6000 word Full Papers due: 1 December 2020

Please consult the MAI submission guidelines before submitting: https://maifeminism.com/submissions/

Please send your abstracts and forward responses to this call to contact@maifeminism.com    

Dr Anna Misiak 
MA Film & Television Course Leader

School of Film and TV
Falmouth University
United Kingdom
Tel: 0132637057
https://www.falmouth.ac.uk/content/dr-anna-misiak

http://womenundercommunism.com/author/

@AnnaMisiakFal

Founding Editor/Editor-in-Chief

MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture

https://maifeminism.com/

@MAI_JOURNAL