Media@McGill, McGill University'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 “chick dick” 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 (McGill University), Jenny Burman (McGill University), Michele Byers (University of Nova Scotia), Thomas Heise (McGill University), Allan Hepburn (McGill University), Alison Jacques (McGill University), Anna Leventhal (McGill University), Graciela Martinez-Zalce (Universidad Nacional de Mexico), Jaclyn Reid (McGill University), Carrie Rentschler (McGill University), Carol Stabile (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Will Straw (McGill University), Susana Vargas Cervantes (McGill University), Aurora Wallace (New York University), and Laurel Wypkema (McGill University).
All events will be held in room W-215 Arts Building (3rd floor, west wing), McGill University, 853 Sherbrooke St. West, Montreal, QC.
Supported by a strategic research grant from the Beaverbrook Fund for Media@McGill. See: Crime, Media and Public Culture
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: “The Media Don't Care About Black People: Race and Criminalization in the News"
Jenny Burman, McGill University: “Just Desserts: The Jamaicanization of Gun Crime in Toronto”
Laurel Wypkema, McGill University: “The Ethics of Looking: Art Photography and the Prison Crisis”
Michele Byers, Saint Mary's University: “Is It Always (and Inevitably?) Neo-Liberal: Ambivalent Representations of Criminality, Identity and Citizenship”
(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, McGill University: "Faces of Victims, Places of Murder"
Susana Vargas Cervantes, McGill University: “The 'Look' of a Serial Killer: el/la Mataviejitas”
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, McGill University: "Blood Relations: Genealogy and Inheritance in British Detective Fiction"
Andrea Braithwaite, McGill University: “Killer Accessories: How Chick Dicks Dress for Success”
Thomas Heise, McGill University: "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, McGill University: "On the Whiteness of the True Crime Magazine"
Jaclyn Reid, McGill University: “Obscenity as Crime: A Social History of the Obscene Publications Act in Nineteenth-Century London”
Anna Leventhal, McGill University: “Representing the Unrepresentable: Trauma Stories at Work”
Alison Jacques, McGill University: “`It Hurts All Over Again': Press Coverage of Karla”
Speaker Bios
Andrea Braithwaite: “Killer Accessories: How Chick Dicks Dress for Success”
Andrea is a PhD candidate and sessional instructor at McGill University. 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: “Just Desserts: The Jamaicanization of Gun Crime in Toronto”
Jenny Burman is Assistant Professor of Communications in the Dept. of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. 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 (McGill-Queen's), Black Geographies and the Politics of Place (BTL) and Claiming Space (WLU).
Michele Byers: “Is It Always (and Inevitably?) Neo-Liberal: Ambivalent Representations of Criminality, Identity and Citizenship”
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 “Dear Angela:” Remembering My So-Called Life (with David Lavery) and “The C.S.I. Effect:” 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 McGill University.
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: “`It Hurts All Over Again': Press Coverage of Karla”
Alison Jacques is a Ph.D. student in Communication Studies at McGill University. She studies historical and contemporary representations of crime and criminals, with a focus on women who commit murder.
Anna Leventhal: “Representing the Unrepresentable: Trauma Stories at Work”
Anna is in the MA program of McGill'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 Autónoma 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 Gutiérrez de Velasco and Ana Rosa Domenella) is Feminine/Masculine in the Literature of the Americas, Writings in Contras.
Jaclyn Reid: “Obscenity 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 McGill University. 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 McGill University. 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: “The 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 McGill University.
Susana Vargas Cervantes: “The 'Look' of a Serial Killer: el/la Mataviejitas”
Susana Vargas Cervantes is a first year MA student in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. 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: “The Ethics of Looking: Art Photography and the Prison Crisis”
Laurel Wypkema is a PhD student in McGill'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.