A lot has changed since Neil Gaiman’s character complained “I’m sick and tired of women in our line being stereo-typed as black widows or killer nurses” [The Sandman vol. 2], both in popular culture and crime studies.
Over the last three decades there have been a few 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. Academics and authors studied the iconicity of the killers [David Schmid 2005], consumers of the serial killing ‘business’ [Brian Jarvis 2007], the language of serial murder narratives [Christina Gregoriou 2011], female serial killers [Marissa A. Harrison et al. 2015 and 2019], lives of the victims [Hallie Rubenhold 2019], case studies and profiling outside of the Western culture [S. A. Deepak 2021], or fictionalised representations of real-life serial killers [Brigid Cherry 2022]. We would like to address these questions and more.
Our purpose is further re-framing of 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.
The dual focus of the theme – serial killing and serial narratives – allows for a broader and more interdisciplinary perspective, 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:
- narrative cycles: news reporting – documentary/book – screen adaptation
- cultural memory of the murders
- true crime podcasts and serial killer documentaries
- dark tourism
- transnational & glocal perspectives
- killing in serial narratives across media
- generic liminality and hybridity
- visualising / estheticizing the narratives
- female focus / focalisation/gaze
- victims – from sets of clues to human beings
- the detective / profiler-killer dynamic
- character(s) and narratives
- queering characters
- demythologising the killer
- forensic science & ‘death’ of the serial killer
- the anniversary effect and/or copycat murders
- the ‘serial-killer killer’ trope
- commodification of violence & projecting traumas
- reception studies
- Binge-watching / reading / playing & escapism during the pandemic
We welcome proposals for:
- individual papers [20 min.]
- 3-paper panel sessions [3 x 20 min.]
- response papers [2 x 10 min.]
- roundtable sessions [60 min.]
- workshops [60 min.]
pdf version
THE CONFERENCE PROGRAMME [PDF FILE]
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
PROF. FIONA PETERS, BATH SPA UNIVERSITY
Director of the International Crime Fiction Association (from 2017) and organiser of the Captivating Criminality conferences (from 2014).
In 2019 she established the Edinburgh University Press Journal Crime Fiction Studies of which she is editor.
Prof. Peters will deliver a talk entitled Never Speak His Name:
This paper will build on my existing work on True Crime narratives and the ways in which the audience/readership become obsessed with- and often valorize, the serial killer. This is evident not only in the case of serial killers bit spree killers. Three years ago, New Zealand premier Jacinda Arden, vowed to never speak the name of the man who murdered fifty people at a Christchurch mosque. Nonetheless, Netflix's top rating show is currently Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, bringing in the viewers despite the show's avowed intention to 'largely show' events from the points of view of his victims. It's the killers whose names are seared into our brains and remembered. Very few True Crime narratives foreground the victims, an exception being the documentary based on Michelle Mac Namara's I'll be Gone in the Dark which demonstrated an extraordinary and moving attempt by victims to demonstrate the inadequacy of the Golden State Killer, in part by bearing witness against him in court. The paper will raise the question of the validity and thus future of this sub-genre unless this issue is more broadly addressed.
DR HELEN GAVIN, UNIVERSITY OF HUDDERSFIELD
Principal Lecturer and Subject Lead in Criminal Psychology. Her publications include Criminological and Forensic Psychology, and Women and the Abuse of Power. She teaches, researches, and writes on topics such as deviant sexual expression, female violence, homicide, and sexualised and gendered homicide. She finds people often regret looking over her shoulder to see what she is reading.
Dr. Gavin will deliver a talk entitled History and the Serial Killer: Deep in the Psyche:
Serial killer. The term evokes many emotions. To most, there is an indefinable fear at the idea that a random stranger runs amok amongst us. To law enforcement officers there is a righteous anger and drive to investigate and apprehend. But to the psychologist there is curiosity and a need to know why serial killers are, well, what they are.
We may be forgiven therefore for thinking that the term serial killer is a modern one. The words might be, but the concept is not. Serial killers have always been with us, and they are a global monstrosity. Folklore contains more references to serial killing than we may be aware, as the stories disguise the monstrosities as alien and supernatural beings, hiding their human nature. Serial killers are not monsters, they are mere people who have done monstrous things. They are not the Wendigo, or the witch, or the vampire, or the Popobawa, or the bunyip. But the fact that each generation of Native American children, European toddlers and African kids are terrorised by them tells us that there is something hidden deep in human psyche that knows there are people who do terrible things.
But is it not more frightening to think that serial killers are simply the same as your or I, save for the pleasure they take in fear and death? Stories may simply be the early form of the modern warnings of stranger danger, spun to bind our families closer to us and safety. In this paper, I will present the evidence for the ancient presence of serial killers and their worldwide ubiquity and explore some of the reasons that set some people aside in the pleasure they take in killing. And killing again…
IN CONVERSATION
We will be talking to Dr Rebecca Frost - if there is something you would like to ask her, let us know using THIS FORM.
ROUNDTABLE
Sarah E. Fanning and Claire O'Callaghan will moderate a discussion with some of the authors who contributed to this forthcoming collection:
- The Diminished Figure of the Serial Killer in A Confession: (Louise Wattis, Northumbria University)
- The House at the End of the World: Seriality, Death and the Collapse of Meaning in Twin Peaks (Chase Bucklew, Independent Scholar)
- WA Strange Sort of Comfort: Domestic Architecture, Home-Bodies, and the Nostalgia of Suburban Containment in American Serial Killer Narratives (Brenda S. Gardenour Walter, Independent Scholar)
- Sweet Uncle Charlie: The Unsuspecting Killer in Shadow of a Doubt (Douglas MacLeod, SUNY Cobleskill)
- See No Evil: The Moors Murders on Screen (Ian Cummins, Marian Foley & Martin King, Salford University)
- “Homicidal Hams” and “Psycho Clowns”: Serial Killer Humour in American Television Comedies (David Scott Diffrient, Colorado State University)
- ‘Jazz Hands and Strangulation’: Serial Killers in Musicals (Louise Creechan, University of Durham)
- ‘We’re here for something else’: Mindhunter, Serial Murder and the Reverential (Rachael Collins & Michele Byers, Saint Mary’s University, Canada)
ORGANISERS
BARBARA BRAID, PH.D. University of Szczecin
TV series afficionado,
mad for all things
neo-Victorian and ghostly
MONIKA SZYMCZAK-KORDULASINSKA, PH.D. University of Szczecin
enthusiast of the art of detection,
exploring the symbolical,
the moral and the philosophical
LUCYNA KRAWCZYK-ZYWKO, PH.D. University of Warsaw
adaptations acafan,
researching rewritings of
Victorian villains and detectives
KLARA MEDNIS, PH.D. CANDIDATE University of Warsaw
pop culture addict,
investigating fictional villains
and femme fatales