Via Thom Giddens @ThomGiddens:
CRIMINAL HERITAGE: CRIME,
FICTION, AND HISTORY
TUESDAY 5 SEPTEMBER 2017,
LEEDS BECKETT UNIVERSITY
CALL
FOR PAPERS
“The
simultaneous awareness of past and present evident in historical crime
fiction seems to offer a means of gaining a new perspective on the present
through the past.” – John Scaggs (2005: 134)
Confirmed
Keynote: Dr Heather Shore (Leeds Beckett
University)
Confirmed
Keynote: Frances Brody (Author)
As Michel
Foucault acknowledged, crime and its investigation are uniquely tied to their
social context: crime is a violation of the law, and ‘the law represents the
will of the sovereign.’ When crime is narratised in the form of history, or as
historical fiction, there is a fresh dynamic. The structures of the past and
the present will inform its presentation, and surrounding ethical concerns.
The past few years have seen an unprecedented rise in the production and
consumption of historical crime fiction and drama. However, it is not a new
phenomenon: from the revisionist histories of Edgar Allan Poe, through
Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time, and the contemporary success
of Frances Brody, Carola Dunn, and Kerry Greenwood, crime fiction has always
been concerned with the past. The continued success of period crime dramas on
the screen – from nostalgic detective narratives such as Foyle’s War to
the BBC’s Ripper Street and renewed interest in organised criminal gangs,
such as the Kray twins – is matched by a self-referential streak in crime
writing that interacts with its own generic traditions.
In addition,
historical true crime narratives – mined for dramatic potential and social
relevance – have come to the fore of Anglo-American culture. From the surprise
popularity of Kate Summerscale’s non-fiction novels exploring Victorian and
Edwardian crimes to the global success of such television productions as American
Crime Story and Making a Murderer, there is more interest now than
ever in historical crime as entertainment.
This
interdisciplinary conference aims to explore, analyse, and debate the
relationship between crime, narrative, and history. We invite proposals of 200
words for 20-minute papers relating to the conference theme. We welcome
proposals for traditional presentations and those which approach the theme in
an innovative way. Possible topics include but are not limited to
- Historical
crimes
- Nostalgia
- Crime
fiction as history
- The
figure of the detective
- The
figure of the criminal
- Gangs
and underworlds
- Morality
and deviance
- Gender,
sexuality and queerness
- Generic
tropes and development – e.g. the country house
- Haunted
crimes and revelations – anniversary events, cold cases, secrecy,
psychological trauma
- Time
travel
- Medieval
mysteries
- Sensation
fictions
- The
Newgate Calendar
- Neo-Victorianism
- The
roaring 1920s
- Pastiches,
parodies and rewritings
- Crime
and history on-screen
- Alternative
histories
- Non-fiction
novels
- National
heritage and heritage in law
- Publication
technologies and reading habits
Please send
abstracts and a brief biographical note to Fern Pullan and Dr Jamie Bernthal at
criminalheritage@gmail.com
by Friday 30 June 2017.
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