DETECTING [SERIAL] KILLING
14-16 NOVEMBER 2024
Interdisciplinary online conference

Our 2022 Framing (Serial) Killing: Changing Narratives conference demonstrated that the turns in the (serial) killing narratives, including the decline of the celebrity-like status the perpetrators enjoyed in the 1980s and 1990s, growing popularity of police professionals, more pronounced female characters, or victim-oriented discourse, are a work in progress.

Continuing our attempts at re-framing the academic discourses of (serial) killer fictions so that the focus is shifted away from the killer as an anti-hero and directed towards other characters and audiences of these fictions, their contexts and their current cultural impact, this time we would like to focus on the figure of the detective.

Detectives have been studied extensively. Academics and authors traced the history of the real ones (Clive Emsley and Haia Shpayer-Makov eds. 2006; Haia Shpayer-Makov 2011) as well as the fictional (Heather Worthington 2005; Barry Forshaw ed. 2016; Alistair Rolls and Rachel Franks eds. 2016; David Geherin 2020), including the greatest ones (Eric Sandberg 2018). They investigated how crime fiction positions their sidekicks (Lucy Andrew and Samuel Saunders eds. 2021) and the ways famous sleuths are adapted (Krawczyk-Żywko ed. 2017). They interrogated the evolution of female (Joseph A. Kestner 2003); Lucy Sussex 2010; Nell Darby 2021) and glocal detectives (Luca Barra, Alice Jacquelin and Federico Pagello eds. 2021). With our detective studies, we would like to explore and expand these perspectives.

Once again, the dual focus of the theme – serial killing and serial narratives – allows for a broader and more interdisciplinary approach, inviting discussions across the fields
of literary studies, film and media studies, forensic psychology, criminology, historical studies, etc.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

• transnational, glocal, local detectives
• transtemporal cases and detectives
• cultural memory of the investigations
• true crime podcasts and documentaries
• the anniversary effect
• forgotten and less known detectives
• detecting in serial narratives across media
• adapting, rewriting, rereading
• generic liminality and hybridity
• female focus/focalisation/gaze
• victims: from sets of clues to human beings
• victims as detectives
• de/re-centring the sidekicks
• the changing detective/profiler-killer dynamic
• detective as perpetrator
• character(s) and narratives
• gendering and queering characters
• forensic science
• reception studies
• paratextuality and marketing

We welcome proposals for:

• individual papers [20 min.]
• 2-paper panel sessions [2 x 20 min.]
• response papers [2 x 10 min.]
• roundtable sessions [60 min.]

Again, the conference will be held on ZOOM

Please submit a 250-word proposal and a 100-word bionote by June 15, 2024 using the form available on our website: www.changingnarratives.weebly.com  

Notifications of acceptance - by June 30, 2024

We are looking forward to your submissions!

Organisers:

Dr Barbara Braid

Dr Lucyna Krawczyk-Żywko

Dr Agnieszka Sienkiewich-Charlish

Dr Monika Szymczak-Kordulasińska