World Crime Fiction and Comparison: Back to the Future

Guest Lecture: Thursday 5^th of October at 5 p.m. in THB-G010

World Crime Fiction and Comparison: Back to the Future

Stewart King. Monash University

Abstract

The transnational turn in literary studies has transformed the field of crime fiction, challenging the hegemony of British and American models as the defining features of the genre. The increasing transnationalisation of the field has occurred through studies on discrete national traditions, postcolonial and “international” crime fiction and, most recently, through the application of a world literature framework. While these studies have taught us much about the situated practice of crime fiction worldwide, the circulation and translation of specific texts as well as the historical and ongoing dialogues between writers and texts across national, cultural, linguistic and temporal borders, there are still important questions to be answered, specifically how we engage with, understand and incorporate different crime fiction traditions within a genre that is still largely characterised by British and American works. This article argues that in the shift from national to world literature studies, crime fiction scholarship has to a large extent skipped over comparative literary approaches and that it is precisely these approaches that can help us to more fully comprehend the diverse practice of this global genre.

Bio: Stewart King is an Associate Professor in the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University, Australia, and is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities. Originally trained in Spanish and Catalan literary studies, since 2013 he has pioneered the study of crime fiction as world literature. His contributions to crime fiction studies include the monograph, Murder in the Multinational State: Crime Fiction from Spain (Routledge, 2019) and the co-edited collections: Criminal Moves: Modes of Mobility in Crime Fiction (Liverpool UP, 2019), The Routledge Companion to Crime Fiction (2020), winner of the 2020 ICFA Book prize, and The Cambridge Companion to World Crime Fiction (2022). He is currently the co-editor of Crime Fiction Studies (Edinburgh UP).