Because The Basic Human Form is Female: The female detective in Television. Edited by Anna Backman Rogers and Laura Nicholson.
For decades, the female detective has occupied space within a genre that is all-too-often reserved for the celebratory storylines of self-sacrificial men. She has served to break down sexist barriers placed before women within professional and personal frameworks, acting as an on-screen surrogate for (female) spectators, globally. The female detective has succeeded in cultivating widespread audience attention and high ratings for multiple series across the world, underlining the popularity of, and desire for, the women-led, crime TV genre. It is curious then, that critical literature exploring this central figure’s contemporary, cultural significance is scarce. Given the abundance of on-screen material that has been produced throughout years of prime-time TV and (more recently) online streaming, it seems the female detective, in all her guises, has yet to be afforded the praise and exploration she deserves.
In response to this paucity of critical text, we are assembling the foundations of a special collection on the female detective in crime TV, in the format of a book to be edited by Anna Backman Rogers and Laura Nicholson. The proposal for this research comes just as we are witnessing a cultural ‘boom’ in detective shows featuring women as driving forces, across multiple media platforms. As such, the need for critical literature that explores the feminist realisations and potential of the female detective and her contemporary cultural importance, is timely.
We are calling for papers from scholars across disciplines, in order to shed light on the legacy of the female detective and the ways in which these powerful characters continue to inspire far-reaching audiences, while responding to the socio-political backdrop of their time.
We especially encourage papers from LGBTQ+, Feminist and BME scholars. We also seek contributions from a global perspective that bring to the fore series that we may be unaware of.
We hope to approach a major university publisher with this project after final decisions made by the editors on the collection.
Please send proposals of no more than 600 words to Laura Nicholson and Anna Backman Rogers before March 5th, 2018 at the following e mail addresses.
Topics may include, but are by no means limited to:
Senior Lecturer in Feminism and Visual Culture. University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Selected Publications:
American Independent Cinema: Rites of Passage and The Crisis Image (EUP 2015)
Feminisms, co-edited with Laura Mulvey (AUP 2015)
Sofia Coppola: The Politics of Visual Pleasure (Berghahn 2017)
Female Authorship and the Documentary Image: Theory, Practice and Aesthetics, co-edited with Boel Ulfsdotter (EUP 2017)
Female Agency and Documentary
Strategies: Subjectivities, Identity, and Activism, co-edited
with Boel Ulfsdotter (EUP 2017)