Investigating our fascination with crime

A tour of the dark side, real and invented, with highly knowledgeable guides

In an age of seemingly boundless public fascination with real and fictitious crime stories, the McGill Symposium on Crime, Media and Culture will explore the clues that shape our society’s interpretation of all things criminal. Sponsored by Media@McGill and the Department of Art History and Communication Studies, the symposium will be held May 18th and 19th and will feature innovative, multidisciplinary work exploring the ways in which media treatments of crime entertain, instruct and unsettle us.

A plenary session on “Race, Space and the Production of Crime” will kick off the symposium. The panels “Criminal Physiognomies: The Faces and Places of Crime” and “Sex and the Nation in Crime Novel Detection” will follow. The final plenary session, “Crime Stories and the Press” will close the event.

Panelists will include experts in crime scene photography, surveillance and crime in the digital age, crime and gender, race and criminalization in the news media, crime mapping and analysis in police work, detective novels and crime magazines. A link to the complete event schedule is included below.

The symposium is organized by Professors Carrie Rentschler and Will Straw, members of McGill’s Crime and Media Working Group. It is open to the public and will be held in room W-215 Arts Building (west wing), McGill University, 853 Sherbrooke St. West, Montreal, QC.

On the Web:
McGill Symposium on Crime, Media and Culture
Symposium schedule