The purpose of this one day Symposium on Crime Fiction and the Law is to develop an interdisciplinary and public-facing research and teaching focus on the relationship between crime fiction and the law.  This focus is broad-based and includes issues such as: the relationship between crime fiction, legal reasoning and critique; psycho-analytical perspectives on crime-fiction; questions surrounding the rule of law and the relationship between law and justice; gender issues; legal, political and social impacts of fictional representations of crime and justice; the relationship between faction and fiction; and, the impact of law on the development of crime fiction.

The Symposium is jointly sponsored by the School of Law, as part of its twentieth anniversary celebrations, and by the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities.

Starts: Dec 08, 2012 10:00 AM
Finishes:Dec 08, 2012 06:00 PM
Venue: Room B33 Main Building
Booking: This event is free but registration is essential – register here

Speakers:

Chris Boge, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cologne:
Suspending Democracy: Vigilante Justice and the Rule of Law in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy

Giancarlo De Cataldo, Judge of the Appeal Court of Assize, Rome; widely published writer of both non-fiction (including In Giustizia (2011)) and fiction (includingRomanzo Criminale (2002), I Traditori (2010) and Io Sono Il Libanese (2012)); screenwriter and translator:
Journalism and Justice

Peter Fitzpatrick, School of Law, Birkbeck:
Mysterium non tremendum, or: the normality of transgression

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, School of Law, Birkbeck:
On Genocide. From Sartre to Cortázar

John Kraniauskas, Department of Iberian and Latin American Studies, School of Arts, Birkbeck:
Force/Law/Power: On The Wire

Fiona Macmillan, School of Law, Birkbeck:
Is Bondurant’s The Wettest County in the World really Lawless?

Janet McCabe, Department of Media and Cultural Studies, School of Arts, Birkbeck:
The Girl in the Faroese Jumper: Female Representation, Sexual Politics and the Precariousness of Power and Difference in contemporary Scandinavian TV crime drama

Patricia Tuitt, School of Law, Birkbeck:
Crime, Fiction and Legal Critique

Barbara Villez, Department of English for specific purposes (Département d’études des pays anglophones), University Paris 8; Visiting Fellow, Birkbeck Institute of the Humanities:
Coming out of the confusion: Representation of French justice through Spiral(Engrenages season 4)

Chair and commentator: Maria Aristodemou, School of Law, Birkbeck

The following two events will also form part of the Symposium:

• Giancarlo De Cataldo (see above) in conversation with Costas Douzinas (School of Law, Birkbeck; Director of the Birkbeck Institute of the Humanities) on law, justice, politics and fiction;

• Collisions by Zimbo (Birmingham-based musician; director and founder of One Mile Away), Anastasia Tataryn (PhD student, School of Law, Birkbeck) and Penny Woolcock (film director and documentary maker; winner of the Michael Powell Award, 66^th Edinburgh International film Festival): A rap-ballet fusion about the collision of two worlds on a street corner – an encounter, where two forms of living (one considered generally illegal and criminal, the other legal and “normal”), two styles of art, two ways of communicating, collide and play-off each other.

Contact name:

T:  (0) 20 7631 6612
E:  j.eisner@bbk.ac.uk