平特五不中

Crime, Media and Culture: a symposium at 平特五不中

Media@平特五不中, 平特五不中's Department of Art History and Communication Studies, and the Crime and Media Working Group are pleased to present an international symposium on Crime, Media and Culture. This series of panel discussions, will take place on 18-19 May 2007, and will feature innovative, multidisciplinary work on crime, media and culture. Speakers will address the ways in which criminality is framed, constructed and represented in a variety of media, from detective novels through crime scene photographs. Topics to be covered include gender, race, public security, and the rise of cartographic analysis in police work. From the emergence of the 鈥渃hick dick鈥 through the growth of electronic surveillance systems, this symposium will examine the ways in which media treatments of crime work to entertain, instruct and unsettle us.

Panelists include: Andrea Braithwaite (平特五不中), Jenny Burman (平特五不中), Michele Byers (University of Nova Scotia), Thomas Heise (平特五不中), Allan Hepburn (平特五不中), Alison Jacques (平特五不中), Anna Leventhal (平特五不中), Graciela Martinez-Zalce (Universidad Nacional de Mexico), Jaclyn Reid (平特五不中), Carrie Rentschler (平特五不中), Carol Stabile (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Will Straw (平特五不中), Susana Vargas Cervantes (平特五不中), Aurora Wallace (New York University), and Laurel Wypkema (平特五不中).

All events will be held in room W-215 Arts Building (3rd floor, west wing), 平特五不中, 853 Sherbrooke St. West, Montreal, QC.

Supported by a strategic research grant from the Beaverbrook Fund for Media@平特五不中. See:

Schedule of Events:

May 18th , 2007

9:30-10:00: Welcome and Introductions

10:00 - 12:00: Plenary Session: Race, Space and the Production of Crime

Carol Stabile, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee: 鈥淭he Media Don't Care About Black People: Race and Criminalization in the News"

Jenny Burman, 平特五不中: 鈥淛ust Desserts: The Jamaicanization of Gun Crime in Toronto鈥

Laurel Wypkema, 平特五不中: 鈥淭he Ethics of Looking: Art Photography and the Prison Crisis鈥

Michele Byers, Saint Mary's University: 鈥淚s It Always (and Inevitably?) Neo-Liberal: Ambivalent Representations of Criminality, Identity and Citizenship鈥

(Break for lunch)

1:30 - 3:30 Panel: Criminal Physiognomies: The Faces and Places of Crime

Graciela Martinez-Zalce, National Autonomous University of Mexico: "The Territorialization of Crime in Mexican Cinema, 1990-2002"

Carrie Rentschler, 平特五不中: "Faces of Victims, Places of Murder"

Susana Vargas Cervantes, 平特五不中: 鈥淭he 'Look' of a Serial Killer: el/la Mataviejitas鈥

Aurora Wallace, New York University: "Crime Mapping and the Digital City"

4:00 - 6:00 Panel: Sex and the Nation in Crime Novel Detection

Allan Hepburn, 平特五不中: "Blood Relations: Genealogy and Inheritance in British Detective Fiction"

Andrea Braithwaite, 平特五不中: 鈥淜iller Accessories: How Chick Dicks Dress for Success鈥

Thomas Heise, 平特五不中: "Putting the American Back into Psycho: Bret Easton Ellis and the Criminal Class"

Saturday May 19th , 2007

9:30 - 11:30: Plenary Session: Crime Stories and the Press

Will Straw, 平特五不中: "On the Whiteness of the True Crime Magazine"

Jaclyn Reid, 平特五不中: 鈥淥bscenity as Crime: A Social History of the Obscene Publications Act in Nineteenth-Century London鈥

Anna Leventhal, 平特五不中: 鈥淩epresenting the Unrepresentable: Trauma Stories at Work鈥

Alison Jacques, 平特五不中: 鈥渀It Hurts All Over Again': Press Coverage of Karla



Speaker Bios

Andrea Braithwaite: 鈥淜iller Accessories: How Chick Dicks Dress for Success鈥

Andrea is a PhD candidate and sessional instructor at 平特五不中. In her dissertation she is investigating the amateur female sleuth in the context of postfeminist popular culture, and when not teaching Canadian film and television she voraciously devours books about chicks and crime in the name of research.

Jenny Burman: 鈥淛ust Desserts: The Jamaicanization of Gun Crime in Toronto鈥

Jenny Burman is Assistant Professor of Communications in the Dept. of Art History and Communication Studies at 平特五不中. Her research focuses on the traffic connecting Canada and the Caribbean, the diasporization of Canadian cities and anti-deportation/non-status activism. She has recent articles in Space and Culture, Jnl of International Communication, and the edited collections Urban Enigmas (平特五不中-Queen's), Black Geographies and the Politics of Place (BTL) and Claiming Space (WLU).

Michele Byers: 鈥淚s It Always (and Inevitably?) Neo-Liberal: Ambivalent Representations of Criminality, Identity and Citizenship鈥

Michele Byers is Associate Professor at Saint Mary's University. She writes about television series like Buffy, The O.C., Curb Your Enthusiasm, Arrested Development, Sex and the City, Degrassi, Little Mosque, Dexter, and CSI. Michele currently holds grants from SSHRC and the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute. She has edited the book Growing Up Degrassi, and is co-editing 鈥淒ear Angela:鈥 Remembering My So-Called Life (with David Lavery) and 鈥淭he C.S.I. Effect:鈥 Television, Crime and Critical Theory (with Val Johnson).

Thomas Heise: "Putting the American Back into Psycho: Bret Easton Ellis and the Criminal Class"

Thomas Heise has authored essays on Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ralph Ellison, Dashiell Hammett, and Chester Himes, and is the author of Horror Vacui: Poems. His current project is American Underworlds: The Geographical Anatomy of Twentieth-Century Urban Literature and Culture. He is an Assistant Professor of English at 平特五不中.

Allan Hepburn: "Blood Relations: Genealogy and Inheritance in British Detective Fiction"

Allan Hepburn published Intrigue: Espionage and Culture in 2005. He also edited an essay collection called Troubled Legacies: Narrative and Inheritance that will appear this summer with University of Toronto Press. His scholarly articles focus on modernism, with essays on Edith Wharton, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nancy Mitford, and others. His current research involves two separate endeavours: critical editions of Elizabeth Bowen's uncollected essays and stories; a book about art objects in contemporary literature.

Alison Jacques: 鈥渀It Hurts All Over Again': Press Coverage of Karla

Alison Jacques is a Ph.D. student in Communication Studies at 平特五不中. She studies historical and contemporary representations of crime and criminals, with a focus on women who commit murder.

Anna Leventhal: 鈥淩epresenting the Unrepresentable: Trauma Stories at Work鈥

Anna is in the MA program of 平特五不中's Dept. of Art History and Communication Studies. Her interests - research and otherwise - centre on alternative, grassroots, and/or independent media, and she is currently working on public-access television and its accidental agenda.

Graciela Martinez-Zalce: "The Territorialization of Crime in Mexican Cinema, 1990-2002"

Graciela Martinez-Zalce is a researcher at the Centre for Research on North America, National Autonomous University of Mexico; during her sabbatical 2006-2007, professor at Universidad Aut贸noma Metropolitana, unidad Cuajimalpa. She has received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Mexican Centre for Writers, the National Council for Culture and the Arts and the Government of Canada. Right now she is level II on the National Researchers System. Her latest book (edited with Luzelena Guti茅rrez de Velasco and Ana Rosa Domenella) is Feminine/Masculine in the Literature of the Americas, Writings in Contras.

Jaclyn Reid: 鈥淥bscenity as Crime: A Social History of the Obscene Publications Act in Nineteenth-Century London

Jaclyn Reid is a PhD candidate in the Communication Studies program at 平特五不中. She has a BFA in Film and Video from York University, and an MA in Communication and Culture from Ryerson University. Her research interests currently focus on historical constructs of prostitution and late nineteenth-century visual culture.

Carrie Rentschler: "Faces of Victims, Places of Murder"

Carrie A. Rentschler is an assistant professor of Communication Studies in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at 平特五不中. Her academic interests include cultural studies of journalism, feminist media studies, and media studies of crime and victimization. She is currently writing a book on the discourse of victims' rights in US public culture.

Carol Stabile: 鈥淭he Media Don't Care About Black People: Race and Criminalization in the News"

Carol Stabile teaches in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is the author of Feminism and the Technological Fix (1994), editor of Turning the Century: Essays in Media and Cultural Studies (2000), co-editor of Prime Time Animation: Television Animation and American Culture (2003), and author of White Victims, Black Villains: Gender, Race, and Crime News in US Culture (2006). She is currently editing an anthology on Battlestar Galactica and working on a research project on the red scare, television, and the production of family values.

Will Straw: "On the Whiteness of the True Crime Magazine"

Will Straw is the author of Cyanide and Sin: Visualizing Crime in 50s America, and the author of over 60 articles on music, film and visual culture. He is a co-editor of the Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock and author of the forthcoming Popular Music: Scenes and Sensibilities. Will Straw teaches within the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at 平特五不中.

Susana Vargas Cervantes: 鈥淭he 'Look' of a Serial Killer: el/la Mataviejitas鈥

Susana Vargas Cervantes is a first year MA student in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at 平特五不中. She holds a BA in Political Science from Concordia University and studied International Relations at the Public Autonomous University in Mexico City.

Aurora Wallace: "Crime Mapping and the Digital City"

Aurora Wallace is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Culture and Communications at New York University. She is the author of Newspapers and the Making of Modern America (2005) and has published articles in Journalism History, Philosophy and Geography, Environmental Values and Space and Culture.

Laurel Wypkema: 鈥淭he Ethics of Looking: Art Photography and the Prison Crisis鈥

Laurel Wypkema is a PhD student in 平特五不中's Communication Studies program. She teaches Irish film history at Concordia University and her research interests include Hong Kong cinema and visual representations of suburbia.

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