Capital Crimes: Reading and Writing Crime and Cities

Supported by The British Academy

28 October 2009

Cardiff University, Trevithick Building, The Parade, Newport Road, Cardiff CF24 0DE

Poster: Capital Crime: Reading and Writing Crime and Cities

The colloquium is a free event but registration is essential. To register, please email: capitalcrimes@cardiff.ac.uk

This one day colloquium devoted to ‘Capital Crimes’ will consider how crime is represented in a range of capital locations, addressing issues, such as the significance of space and place in the construction of crime; the role of the capital city as crime metropolis and magnet; the relationship between real and imagined perpetrators and crimes within the capital city; and national crime cultures and circulation of criminal archetypes and myths anchored in the city

Speakers at the colloquium include established academics and literary specialists of crime fiction, as well as doctoral students, the latter presenting their work in progress on the capital crime thematic in an afternoon poster session. A major innovation of the event will be the participation of major British and Irish crime writers in an evening round table discussion. A selection of papers will be published as an edited collection with the University of Wales Press in their series ‘European Crime Fictions’

PROGRAMME

(Programme correct as at 16th October 2009)

9.00 - 9.45	Registration
9.45 - 10.00	Welcome
10.00 - 11.15	Edinburgh and Dublin Gill Plain (St Andrews): ‘“The Map that Engenders the Territory”? Rethinking Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh’ Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin (Trinity College, Dublin): ‘Crime and the City: Dublin’
11.15 - 11.30	Coffee
11.30 - 12.45	London Louis James (Kent): ‘Crime as Urban Nexus: G.W.M. Reynolds and the ‘The Mysteries of London’' Struan Sinclair (Manitoba): 'Impossible Readings: Transparency and Opacity in Poe’s Urban Imaginary'
12.45 - 1.45	Buffet Lunch
1.45 - 3.15	Postgraduate Presentations and Posters - Abstracts
3.15 - 3.30	Tea
3.30 - 5.30	Rome, Paris, London Maurizio Ascari (Bologna): ‘The Mysteries of the Vatican: From Nineteenth-Century Propaganda to Dan Brown’s Religious Thrillers’ Margaret Atack (Leeds):'Streets and Squares, Quartiers and Arrondissements: Paris Crime Scenes and the Poetics of Contestation' Stephen Knight (Cardiff): ‘A Tale of Three Cities’
5.30 - 6.30	Interval
6.30 - 7.00	Wine reception (Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, School of Optometry, Maindy Road, Cardiff CF24 4LU)
7.00 - 8.00	Writing the City: Crime Writers Round Table (Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, School of Optometry) With Lindsay Ashford, Ann Featherstone, Richard Gwyn, Struan Sinclair, Cormac Millar and John Williams