The Captivating Criminality Network is delighted to announce its eighth conference, which will be held in Bamberg, Germany, on three full conference days from Thursday, 30 June to Saturday, 02 July 2022.

Building upon ideas and themes from the previous seven successful conferences, Crime Fiction, Femininities and Masculinities, will examine the ways in which Crime Fiction as a genre incorporates and (re-)negotiates gender and sex, and represents and/or questions normativity and deviance in gender and sexual identities throughout its own generic developments and also in regard to true crime and historical events.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed life as we knew it. By early 2021, we can only speculate as to the damages the pandemic will have caused on individual and global scales, but we are sure these damages – as well as the pandemic in general – will soon find its way into crime fiction. Until it does, we may look at previous pandemics and epidemic (real and fiction) and their representation in crime fiction. As we have seen during the past months, gender roles have determined our daily lives during the lockdown(s), be that in the workplace on in the care work done at home. In addition to femininities and masculinities, we would thus like to encourage papers that engage with the reality of COVID-19, its consequences, or with pandemics in general and how it has been translated into crime fiction. 

Crime Fiction reaches large numbers of readers with heterogeneous interests. In other words, it provides something for everyone, yet in doing so it can either assert or scrutinise and thus renegotiate gender and sexual normativity. As such, the genre itself is both assertive of perceived normativity and at the same time deviant from socially constructed roles and rules. A crime of any kind, after all, already provides a disruption of order and sets extraordinary events in motion. The exceptional situation a crime creates thus leaves room for all kinds of agents (for queerness or normativity) to revise order and normativity. Crime, sex and gender are intricately linked, be that through the characters, the target audience, or the crime itself. Probably no other genre provides such a broad spectrum of characters, ranging from the occasionally hyper-masculine hardboiled detective and the stereotypically feminine spinster sleuth to androgynous private eyes or genderfluid police detectives.

Moreover, a scholarly focus on gender and sex in Crime Fiction “has […] advanced understanding of the socially constructed nature of crime” (2) as Bill McCarthy and Rosemary Gartner write in the Oxford Handbook of Gender, Sex and Crime (2014). Crime as a social construct inhabits a liminal position. Like gender, it crosses boundaries and is thus positioned on a perpetual threshold between what is read as “order” or “normality” and “chaos” or “deviance.” Crime Fiction provides the space to investigate this liminality and to open up stereotypical concepts of normativity in crime, gender and sexuality. Crime Fiction’s relationship with sex and gender is thus fascinatingly complex and allows for a broad variety of critical angles on the topic. 

Papers presented at Captivating Criminality 8 will examine changing notions of gender and sexuality and their relation to crime and Crime Fiction as well as the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on a personal or global scale, drawing on the multiple threads that have fed into the genre since its inception. Speakers are invited to explore the crossing of forms and themes within Crime Fiction to challenge the notions of gender and sexuality within the genre. Moreover, we particularly welcome papers exploring how femininities and masculinities are represented and negotiated in the liminal space of Gothic and crime. Abstracts dealing with Crime Fiction past and present, true crime narratives, television and film studies, and other forms of new media such as blogs, computer games, websites and podcasts are welcome, as are papers adopting a range of theoretical, sociological and historical approaches.

Now that the pandemic restrictions are easing and more people will be able to travel in the summer, we’re happy to inform you that we’ll extend the deadline for CC8 until 1st March 2022 to give our members extra time to apply now that attending the conference is more likely. To apply, please send your proposals directly to captivating.criminality.2021@gmail.com

The registration for the conference will open on 15 February and run until 15 April. The registration fees are 110€ (60€ reduced fee for students) for the conference and 40€ for the conference celebration (including food and non-alcoholic drinks) on Friday, 01 July. Please find the bank details and instructions on the bank transfer on our local conference page.

Please note that all participants of the conference, delegates as well as guests, will be required to register as the conference fee pays for all coffee breaks as well as lunch on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The conference celebration on Friday evening is optional and thus not included in the registration fee.

IMPORTANT: Please note that at the moment, only people who are fully vaccinated or recovered (active Covid infection no longer than 90 days prior) are allowed to enter university buildings in Bavaria. We do not know if and how this will change, but we will send further information on university-related regulations closer to the event.

The programme of the conference will be put together in late April after our delegates have had time to register for the conference.

We will send out more information on hotels with special conditions and travel information (excluding any info on pandemic-related restrictions) to our delegates after the end of the deadline.

​Please also keep an eye on this website if you want to get a head start.

With this message, we would like to inform you about the current developments regarding the upcoming conference Captivating Criminality 8: Crime Fiction, Femininities and Masculinities. We are aware that many of you have so far refrained from applying because of the difficult situation caused by the pandemic. Given that the situation remains somewhat unstable and there are still travel restrictions in place, which might or might not be lifted towards the end of the year, we have decided to move the conference to 2022 to ensure that all of you can attend. We will now “return” to the regular conference weekend and hope to see you in Bamberg, Germany, from Thursday, 30 June to Saturday, 02 July 2022. There will also be a kick-off lecture on Wednesday, 29 June and you are very welcome to stay the entire weekend and maybe go on a tour of Bamberg on Sunday after the conference.

The call for papers will remain open until 1st February 2022, but we encourage you to apply as soon as you can via e-mail to captivating.criminality.2021@gmail.com. Given the difficult situation, we will review all applications as soon as they come so that delegates will have enough time to apply for funding and/or visa (if necessary). Please let us know if you need an official confirmation of acceptance for your institution.

Since June 2022 is still nearly a year away, we have also decided to stick to our November date and offer an online two-day event on Friday, 26 November and Saturday, 27 November. This online event will both include academic discussion and lectures as well as a chance to meet other delegates travelling to Bamberg in summer. Everybody is welcome to join for free and in order to participate you only need to sign up via e-mail to captivating.criminality.2021@gmail.com until 22 November. We will publish the programme for this online meeting on the website of the International Crime Fiction Association (https://www.captivatingcriminalitynetwork.net/) in November and send out the access codes to Zoom to everyone who registered on Tuesday, 23 November. 

We’re looking forward to receiving your e-mails and proposals and hope you’re all well and safe, 

Fiona Peters and Kerstin-Anja Münderlein