PopCRN (the Popular Culture Network) is back with a virtual symposium exploring the criminal in popular culture. To be held online on Thursday 2nd and Friday 3rd of May 2024.

Crime is one of the most popular genres across the popular culture spectrum. Celebrated detectives, true crime podcasts, police procedurals, the fashion of crime and deviancy, spy, war, political and corporate crimes in film, sport cheats, pickpockets and con artists, glamourous lawyers, innocent victims, and grumpy Judges are just some of the ways crime is represented in popular culture. This conference aims to examine the crime genre in popular culture.

Keynote Speaker

Associate Professor Jenny Wise

University of New England & ARC Fellow

We welcome papers from researchers across the academic spectrum and encourage papers from postgraduate researchers and early career researchers. Presenters will be given the opportunity to submit their presentations as articles to the inaugural edition of the International Journal of Popular Culture.

To whet your appetite, we have provided some topics below. We will also accept topics beyond this scope:

• The Crime Syndicate? That doesn't sound friendly ­– The criminal gang in popular culture
• You know my methods, Watson ­– The methodological gap between fictional and real detectives
• It is the brain, the little grey cells on which one must rely. One must seek the truth within--not without – Conceptualising crime fighting
• When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw – The social construction of crime
• I came from a real tough neighbourhood. Once a guy pulled a knife on me. I knew he wasn't a professional, the knife had butter on it. – The crime comedy caper
• Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime – The social drivers of criminal behaviours
• For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit – What is a crime in popular culture
• Some people steal to stay alive, and some steal to feel alive. Simple as that – Motivators of criminal behaviour
• The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic – the cerebral game of crime
• Behind every successful fortune there is a crime – The rehabilitation of wealth
• To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws – Imagining and creating crimes
• A lot of people have come out of nowhere and are running unbelievably, and I just don't think they're doing it without drugs – The criminality of the sports cheat
• Sharing music is not a crime. It shouldn't be. There should be a deeper meaning to making music than just selling downloads – When the legal and creative clash
• She's a Killer Queen, Gunpowder, gelatine, Dynamite with a laser beam, Guaranteed to blow your mind, Anytime – The celebration of female criminals
• Everybody in the whole cell block, Was dancin' to the Jailhouse Rock – Prison landscapes in popular culture
• Keep spendin' most our lives, livin' in the gangsta's paradise – Criminal realities as popular culture
• Yeah, I say, I shot the sheriff oh, Lord! (And they say it is a capital offense) – The hierarchy of crimes in popular culture
• I fought the law and the law won – The desire to see justice served in popular culture
• This is my courtroom and I can say what I want. When you become a judge, we will talk. – Power and the criminal justice system
• ‘The worst is so often true,’ murmured Miss Marple – Explorations of human nature
• The successful criminal brain is always superior. It has to be – The genius mastermind
• “The firemen said there were little fires everywhere,” Lexie said. “Multiple points of origin. Possible use of accelerant. Not an accident.” – Use of evidence in crime media
• He felt at once betrayed and betrayer, deceived and deceiver. He was a criminal forced into crime. – The criminal’s history in popular culture
• We are now far away from the country of tortures, dotted with wheels, gibbets, gallows, pillories; we are far, too, from that dream of the reformers, less than fifty years before – Our social dream of fair justice
• Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny – The lure of the dark side
• The classy gangster is a Hollywood invention – Mythologizing the criminal
• If it weren't for baseball, I'd be in either the penitentiary or the cemetery – Sports as redemption
• Every society has the criminals that it deserves – The sociology of crime and deviancy
• Nobody's a criminal to himself. I never play a criminal like a bad person– Acting and Breaking Bad
• From animal murder to human murder is only one step, and so is from animal cruelty to human cruelty – Crimes against animals

Please email abstracts (200 words) to popcrn@une.edu.au by 29th February 2024. Please include your name, affiliation, email address, title of paper, a short biography (100 words), orcid ID (where available) and google scholar link (if available). Registration is free.