LOIS PRESSER
University of Tennessee,
Knoxville (Tennessee, USA)
The theme intends to confront scholars, in times of pandemics, with many important questions in the field: fiction and nonfiction in criminal narratives; the role of the imaginary in the shaping of mainstream, deviant and criminal narratives and tropes; narratives as conditioned by and conditioning our vision and appreciation of cultural, social and personal realities.
The Symposium, in presence, will be held in English
(simultaneous translation will be provided for the plenaries)
Genoa, 16 June - 18 June 2022
LOIS PRESSER
University of Tennessee,
Knoxville (Tennessee, USA)
SVEINUNG SANDBERG
University of Oslo
(Norway)
JENNIFER FLEETWOOD
University of London
Goldsmiths (United Kingdom)
FABIO INDIO MASSIMO POPPI
Sechenov, Moscow University
(Russia)
University of Łódź,
Poland
ISABELLA MERZAGORA
Università di Milano Statale
(Italy)
GABRIELE MANDARELLI
Università di Bari
(Italy)
ANITA LAVORGNA
University of Southampton
(United Kingdom)
ADOLFO CERETTI
Università di Milano Bicocca
(Italy)
ANTONY PEMBERTON
Tilburg University (Netherlands),
KU Leuven (Belgium)
OLGA PETINTSEVA
University of Ghent
(Belgium)
HEITH COPES
University of Alabama at Birmingham
(Alabama, USA)
ORIANA BINIK
Università di Milano Bicocca
(Italy)
ADOLFO FRANCIA
Università dell’Insubria,
Varese (Italy)
LORENZO NATALI
Università di Milano Bicocca
(Italy)
The origins of “narrative criminology” are framed within the so-called “narrative wave” in the field of human sciences; but a deeper look into the history of the discipline allows us to discover that the interest in the narrations of crime dates back to the dawn of criminology and has influenced the development of the science ever since the time of Lombroso. Moreover, it has imbued the various traditions that have characterized criminology itself.
In developing its distinctive peculiar approach, narrative criminology has focused on narratives as motivators and producers of crime (subverting the commonspread opinion), discovering that crime narratives often do not appear centered around a unitary conception of a Self, but multi-dimensional, fluctuating, fragmented and disarticulated. Moreover, narratives depend on the situation of the narrator, his/her positioning in the social structure and determination by the cultural or social fields; and sometimes the narrator is pushed by forces which he/she does know nothing about.
Crime narratives are full of references to other texts, and their interpretation is complex. Sometimes they are elliptical, concise, short, referring to what everyone knows and must be simply hinted at: they sign the emergence from the not-said, the not-knowable, anticipating an act which doesn’t frequently find words, or taking its place. It follows that, since its inception, narrative criminology has revealed itself to be very interested in the analysis of singular cases (“one is enough”).
Narrative criminology, in sum, positions itself in a space previously not occupied, and connects with other new exciting developments in the field, contributing to the study of the relation between individual and social narratives on one side, and among not easily tellable individual, structural, social and cultural dimensions on the other.
The present symposium will focus on the interrelations, intersections and counterpositions between reality and unreality, fantasy, truth, lies, imagination, narrative, literature, on the one side, and crime and criminal justice on the other.
Fiction and Nonfiction in Narrative Criminology - 3rd Narrative Criminology Symposium - © 2022 WyrdLab - Cookie Policy - Privacy Policy