The organizers of ‘Crime Cultures’ invite papers and panels which both incorporate and extend beyond established crime texts and genres, exploring more broadly the intersection between crime and culture. Contributors are encouraged to consider the significance of crime in books and films not usually considered ‘crime fiction’, to re-assess canonical crime texts, to analyse how culture ‘constructs’ crime and criminals, or to examine how culture produces, shapes, appropriates or mimics criminal behaviour.

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to: figures of crime (iconic investigators and criminals, real or fictional); figuring crime (how notions of crime are used to understand culture); crime histories; theories of crime; the ‘aesthetics’ of crime; shifting demarcations of crime; symptomatic contemporary crimes (eg. stalking, terrorism, gun massacre); postcolonial crime; political crimes and assassinations; ‘True Crime’; war crimes; gun culture.

Confirmed keynote speakers: Elisabeth Bronfen, Linden Peach, Nicole Rafter, Renata Salecl, Mark Seltzer. Proposals (200-300 words) for 20-minute presentations are welcome from scholars of any discipline and should be submitted electronically to the conference organizers Dr Bran Nicol, Dr Patricia Pulham, and Dr Eugene McNulty, by Friday 29th February 2008 via the conference e-mail address: crimecultures@port.ac.uk A registration form will become available at about the same time. Please note AV requirements and indicate if you would like the abstract to be considered for inclusion in the post-conference publications.