Captivating Criminality 10: Celebrating Crime Fiction

​The Captivating Criminality Network is delighted to announce its tenth conference, Captivating Criminality 10: Celebrating Crime Fiction, which will be held at Bath Spa University in Bath, UK. 

Deadline: 1st May 2023
Conference: 31st August to 2nd September

Building upon and developing ideas and themes of the previous successful conferences, Celebrating Crime Fiction will consider and reflect upon the growing interest in Crime Fiction scholarship over the past decade. We are particularly interested in examining the changes in the landscape of crime fiction study through the years of our Captivating Criminality conferences. The study of crime fiction has now emerged as a vital thread with the capacity to transform interdisciplinary academic discourse. Our aim is to celebrate this expanding and evolving field of scholarship.

For the first time in the Captivating Criminality series, there will be no specific theme. Rather speakers are invited to embrace and celebrate their diverse approaches, exploring the crossing of forms and themes. Papers presented at Captivating Criminality 10 will thus examine any and all aspects of crime fiction. In recent years, the Captivating Criminality series has demonstrated the ways in which crime fiction is no longer regarded as a fixed genre. Emerging areas of study such as Domestic Noir and True Crime now sit adjacent with ‘new’ readings of ‘old’ subgenres such as The Golden Age and the Hard Boiled.  Of course, ‘new’ areas of study all have their roots in the past and abstracts that address that or present work on previously neglected authors are of particular interest. Presentations addressing crime fiction in all forms are welcome, as are papers adopting a range of theoretical, sociological, and historical approaches.

​Topics may include but are not restricted to:

• True Crime
  
• Gender
  
• Crime Fiction in the age of #MeToo
  
• Crime Fiction and Landscape
  
• Revisionist Crime Fiction
  
• Crime Fiction and contemporary debates
  
• Crime Reports and the Press
  
• Real and Imagined Deviance
  
• Adaptation and Interpretation
  
• Crime Fiction and Form
  
• Generic Crossings
  
• Crime and Gothic
  
• The Detective
  
• The Anti-Hero
  
• Geographies of Crime
  
• Real and Symbolic Boundaries
  
• Ethnicity and Cultural Diversity
  
• The Ideology of Law and Order
  
• Tradition and Innovation
  
• Gender and Crime
  
• Women and Crime
  
• Victims and Perpetrators
  
• Crime and Queer Theory
  
• Film Adaptations
  
• TV series
  
• Technology
  
• The Media and Detection
  
• Sociology of Crime
  
• The Psychological
  
• Early Forms of Crime Writing
  
• Victorian Crime Fiction
  
• The Golden Age
  
• Hardboiled Fiction
  
• Conte​mporary Crime Fiction
  
• Postcolonial Crime and Detection

Please send proposals of around 250 words to Fiona Peters and Ffion Davies at captivatingcriminality10@gmail.com by the 1st of May, 2023.
 
The abstract should include your name, email address, affiliation (if any), and the title of your paper. Papers must not exceed 20 minutes in length. Please feel free to submit abstracts presenting work in progress as well as completed projects. Postgraduate students are welcome, as well as proposals for suggested panels.
 
Delegates must be members of the International Crime Fiction Association in order to attend this conference, which will take place in person. If you have previously joined to attend Captivating Criminality 9, either in person or remotely, your membership will also cover this conference. Details of the conference fee, how to join the association, and keynotes, to follow.