This Northeast Modern Language Association panel will examine the relationship between detective fiction and technology, broadly defined. Why do detective characters choose their technologies—notebooks, magnifying glasses, DNA analysis? How can we read detectives as figures in active response to emerging technologies? Does technology pose its own mysteries which require the negotiation of the detective figure, or is the detective himself or herself a technological development?

As these questions demonstrate, the panel broadly considers the social role of detective fictions, and therefore we hope to incorporate a range of historical and contemporary texts, geographic locations, and technologies, including but not limited to communications, forensics, medical, transport, and visual. Papers which apply technological methods to the study of detective texts are also welcome.

NeMLA 2015 takes place in Toronto, April 30-May 3, 2015.

Submit 300-word abstracts online at https://nemla.org/convention/2015/cfp.html#cfp15258 by September 30, 2014.