Call For Papers For a Volume on the Female Detective In Television

From the mailbox, via @thomgiddens,

A CALL FOR PAPERS:

Because The Basic Human Form is Female: The female detective in Television. Edited by Anna Backman Rogers and Laura Nicholson.

For decades, the female detective has occupied space within a genre that is 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 for (female) spectators, globally. The female detective has succeeded in cultivating widespread audience attention and high ratings for multiple series across the world, underlining the popularity of, and desire for, the women-led, crime TV genre. It is curious then, that critical literature exploring this central figure’s contemporary, cultural significance is scarce. Given the abundance of on-screen material that has been produced throughout years of prime-time TV and (more recently) online streaming, it seems the female detective, in all her guises, has yet to be afforded the praise and exploration she deserves.

In response to this paucity of critical text, we are assembling the foundations of a special collection on the female detective in crime TV, in the format of a book to be edited by Anna Backman Rogers and Laura Nicholson. The proposal for this research comes just as we are witnessing a cultural ‘boom’ in detective shows featuring women as driving forces, across multiple media platforms. As such, the need for critical literature that explores the feminist realisations and potential of the female detective and her contemporary cultural importance, is timely.

We are calling for papers from scholars across disciplines, in order to shed light on the legacy of the female detective and the ways in which these powerful characters continue to inspire far-reaching audiences, while responding to the socio-political backdrop of their time.

We especially encourage papers from LGBTQ+, Feminist and BME scholars. We also seek contributions from a global perspective that bring to the fore series that we may be unaware of.

We hope to approach a major university publisher with this project after final decisions made by the editors on the collection.

Please send proposals of no more than 600 words to Laura Nicholson and Anna Backman Rogers before March 5^th, 2018 at the following e mail addresses.

Anna.backman.rogers@gu.se

lauracate.nicholson@gmail.com

Topics may include, but are by no means limited to:

1. The intersectional feminism(s) of the female detective
   
    

1. Queering the female detective
   
    

1. Fashion and the female detective
   
    

1. Regionally-specific depictions of the female detective
   
    

1. Post-recessionary representations of the female detective
   
    

1. The female detective in period TV drama
   
    

1. The generational politics of the female detective ‘revamp’
   
    

1. The female detective team
   
    

1. Cross-cultural imaginings of the female detective
   
    

1. Interpretations of the female detective across international remakes
   
    

• Female detective articulations of contemporary cultural flashpoints
  
   
• The portrayal of violence and the female detective.
  
   
  
   
  
  TV shows with leading female detectives include, but are not limited to:
  
   

1. Get Christie Love! (1974-1975, US)
   
    

1. Police Woman (1974-1978, US)
   
    

1. The Gentle Touch (1980-1984, UK)
   
    

1. Cagney & Lacey (1982-1988, US)
   
    

1. Miss Marple (1984-1992, UK), Agatha Christie’s Marple (2004-, UK)
   
    

1. Prime Suspect (1991-2006, UK)
   
    

1. Engrenages/Spiral (2005-, France)
   
    

1. Ashes to Ashes (2008-2010, UK)
   
    

1. Vera (2011-, UK)
   
    

1. Forbrydelsen (2007-2012, Denmark), The Killing (2011-2014, US)
   
    

1. Bron/Broen (2011-, Sweden/Denmark), The Tunnel (2013-, UK/France)
   
    

1. Scott and Bailey (2011-2016, UK)
   
    

1. The Bletchley Circle (2012-2014, UK)
   
    

1. Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012-, Australia)
   
    

1. The Fall (2013-2016, UK)
   
    

1. Top of the Lake (2013-, New Zealand/Australia/UK)
   
    

1. Happy Valley (2014-, UK)
   
    

1. Quantico (2015-, US)
   
    

1. Jessica Jones (2015-, US)
   
    

1. Agent Carter (2015-, US)
   
    

1. Deep Water (2016, Australia)
   
    

1. Frankie Drake Mysteries (2017-, Canada/UK)

Dr Anna Backman Rogers | Founding Editor/Editor-in-Chief
MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture

contact@maifeminism.com

Leading Female Detectives In Fiction

In the Guardian, Kristin Lepionka (The Last Place You Look) lists her choices for the top ten female detectives in fiction, including Tana French's Antoinette Conway and Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone. More here.

Two Books On Golden Age Detective Fiction

Two books of interest, which I learned about from the blog crossexamining crime

(now listed in the blogroll).

Megan Hoffman, Gender and Representation in British Golden Age Crime Fiction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Here is a description of the contents from the publisher's website.

This book provides an original and compelling analysis of the ways in which British women’s golden age crime narratives negotiate the conflicting social and cultural forces that influenced depictions of gender in popular culture in the 1920s until the late 1940s. The book explores a wide variety of texts produced both by writers who have been the focus of a relatively large amount of critical attention, such as Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham, but also those who have received comparatively little, such as Christianna Brand, Ngaio Marsh, Gladys Mitchell, Josephine Tey and Patricia Wentworth. Through its original readings, this book explores the ambivalent nature of modes of femininity depicted in golden age crime fiction, and shows that seemingly conservative resolutions are often attempts to provide a ‘modern-yet-safe’ solution to the conflicts raised in the texts.

Link to chapter one. 

Merja Makinen,  Agatha Christie: Investigating Femininity (Palgrave, 2006). Here is a description of the contents from the publisher's website.

Christie's books depict women as adventurous, independent figures who renegotiate sexual relationships along more equal lines. Women are also allowed to disrupt society and yet the texts refuse to see them as double deviant because of their femininity. This book demonstrates exactly how quietly innovatory Christie was in relation to gender.

Link to the Introduction. 

Women Detectives In Fact and Fiction: A New Book by Erika Janik

Erika Janik has published Pistols and Petticoats: 175 Years of Lady Detectives, in Fact and Fiction (Beacon Press, 2016). Here is a description of the contents from the publisher's website.

In 1910, Alice Wells took the oath to join the all-male Los Angeles Police Department. She wore no uniform, carried no weapon, and kept her badge stuffed in her pocketbook. She wasn’t the first or only policewoman, but she became the movement’s most visible voice. Police work from its very beginning was considered a male domain, far too dangerous and rough for a respectable woman to even contemplate doing, much less take on as a profession. A policewoman worked outside the home, walking dangerous city streets late at night to confront burglars, drunks, scam artists, and prostitutes. To solve crimes, she observed, collected evidence, and used reason and logic—traits typically associated with men. And most controversially of all, she had a purpose separate from her husband, children, and home. Women who donned the badge faced harassment and discrimination. It would take more than seventy years for women to enter the force as full-fledged officers. Yet within the covers of popular fiction, women not only wrote mysteries but also created female characters that handily solved crimes. Smart, independent, and courageous, these nineteenth- and early twentieth-century female sleuths (including a healthy number created by male writers) set the stage for Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski, Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta, and Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone, as well as TV detectives such as Prime Suspect’s Jane Tennison and Law and Order’s Olivia Benson. The authors were not amateurs dabbling in detection but professional writers who helped define the genre and competed with men, often to greater success. Pistols and Petticoats tells the story of women’s very early place in crime fiction and their public crusade to transform policing. Whether real or fictional, investigating women were nearly always at odds with society. Most women refused to let that stop them, paving the way to a modern professional life for women on the force and in popular culture.

More about Alice (Stebbins) Wells (1873-1957) here.