Charlotte Beyer
University of Gloucestershire, Creative Arts, Faculty Member
- University of Gloucestershire, Education, Faculty MemberUniversity of Gloucestershire, Humanities, Faculty Memberadd
- New Zealand Literature, Australian Literature, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Multiculturalism, Humanities, and 28 moreWomen's Studies, Feminist Theory, Irish Literature, Literature, Popular Culture, Postcolonial Studies, Irish Diaspora, Aging, Poetics, Gender, Film Adaptation, Crime fiction, Memory Studies, Postcolonial Literature, Contemporary Writing, Asian Australian Children's Literature, Contemporary Women's Writing, Spy Fiction, Irish Identity, Creative Writing, Mapping Maternal Subjectivities, Identities and Ethics, Contemporary Fiction, Contemporary British Literature, Irish Studies, Detective Fiction, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Motherhood, and Motherhood Studiesedit
- I am Senior Lecturer in English Studies, and have published widely on crime fiction, women's writing, and contemporar... moreI am Senior Lecturer in English Studies, and have published widely on crime fiction, women's writing, and contemporary literature. I am Editor-in-Chief of Teaching the New English, the Palgrave book series on HE pedagogy.edit
Forthcoming Feb 2022, Demeter Press
More than perhaps any other genre, crime fiction invites debate over the role of popular fiction in English studies. This book offers lively original essays on teaching crime fiction written by experienced British and international... more
More than perhaps any other genre, crime fiction invites debate over the role of popular fiction in English studies. This book offers lively original essays on teaching crime fiction written by experienced British and international scholar teachers, providing vital insight into this diverse genre through a series of compelling subjects. Taking its starting-point in pedagogical reflections and classroom experiences, the book explores methods for teaching students to develop their own critical perspectives as crime fiction critics, the impact of feminism, postcolonialism, and ecocriticism on crime fiction, crime fiction and film, the crime short story, postgraduate perspectives, and more.
Conceiving of and representing mothers without their children seems so paradoxical as to be almost impossible. How can we define a mother in the absence of her child? This compelling volume explores these and other questions from a range... more
Conceiving of and representing mothers without their children seems so paradoxical as to be almost impossible. How can we define a mother in the absence of her child? This compelling volume explores these and other questions from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, examining experiences, representations, creative manifestations, and embodiments of mothers without their children. In her 1997 book, entitled Mother Without Child: Contemporary Fiction and the Crisis of Motherhood, the critic Elaine Tuttle Hansen urged for critical and feminist engagement with what she described as ‘the borders of motherhood and the women who really live there, neither fully inside nor fully outside some recognizable “family unit”, and often exiles from their children’. This book extends and expands this important enquiry, looking at maternal experience and mothering on the borders of motherhood in different historical and cultural contexts, thereby opening up the way in which we imagine and represent mothers without their children to reassessment and revision, and encouraging further dialogue about what it might mean to mother on the borders of motherhood.
Charlotte Beyer, Janet MacLennan, Dorsía Smith Silva, Marjorie Tesser
This chapter investigates representations of transnational child trafficking in contemporary crime fiction, focusing specifically on the depiction of child trafficking and its victims. Beyer examines the role of crime fiction in raising... more
This chapter investigates representations of transnational child trafficking in contemporary crime fiction, focusing specifically on the depiction of child trafficking and its victims. Beyer examines the role of crime fiction in raising reader awareness of human trafficking and of the child victims’ predicament and plight, considering didactic dimensions of the genre and how it tends to erase victims in the aftermath of crime. Through detailed examinations of representations of child trafficking and its social and cultural contexts in selected post-2000 British and Scandinavian crime fiction texts, the chapter argues that crime fiction can be seen to engage explicitly in public and private debates around human trafficking, and, through its popular outreach, has the potential to affect popular perceptions of human trafficking and its victims.
Human trafficking is regularly presented in twenty-first-century crime fiction, frequently through stereotypes of femininity but rarely involving mothers or maternal experience. This article seeks to remedy this gap in representation by... more
Human trafficking is regularly presented in twenty-first-century crime fiction, frequently through stereotypes of femininity but rarely involving mothers or maternal experience. This article seeks to remedy this gap in representation by analyzing two twenty-first-century crime novels featuring trafficking plots that focus specifically on the politics of representing mothers.
Throughout history, men have prayed to the gods and poets have interpreted the ancient myths for new audiences. But what of the women? Here, scholars examine how modern female poets take on the legends of Persephone, Helen, and Eurydice,... more
Throughout history, men have prayed to the gods and poets have interpreted the ancient myths for new audiences. But what of the women? Here, scholars examine how modern female poets take on the legends of Persephone, Helen, and Eurydice, subverting and flipping classical expectations. After essays on the works of H.D., Louise Glück, Ruth Fainlight, Rita Dove, Sylvia Plath, and many more, the collection ventures to the goddesses of other countries: Buddhist Kwan Yin, Irish Macha, Aztec Coatlicue, Hawaiian Pele, Indian Sita, Sumerian Inanna, African Yemonja, the Mexican Llorona, and many more. With sections on teaching and modern writing, there's something for every scholar in this groundbreaking new collection. It will be published by McFarland in Fall 2016.
Research Interests: Mythology And Folklore, Mythology, Poetry, Feminism, Ancient myth and religion, and 9 moreContemporary Poetry, Greek Myth, Adaptation (Literature), Classical Mythology, Comparative mythology, Feminist Myth Rewriting, Womens Spirituality, Indigenous Womens Rights, Women Activism, World Mythology, and Indian feminist mythology
This chapter investigates representations of transnational child trafficking in contemporary crime fiction, focusing specifically on the depiction of child trafficking and its victims. Beyer examines the role of crime fiction in raising... more
This chapter investigates representations of transnational child trafficking in contemporary crime fiction, focusing specifically on the depiction of child trafficking and its victims. Beyer examines the role of crime fiction in raising reader awareness of human trafficking and of the child victims' predicament and plight, considering didactic dimensions of the genre and how it tends to erase victims in the aftermath of crime. Through detailed examinations of representations of child trafficking and its social and cultural contexts in selected post-2000 British and Scandinavian crime fiction texts, the chapter argues that crime fiction can be seen to engage explicitly in public and private debates around human trafficking, and, through its popular outreach, has the potential to affect popular perceptions of human trafficking and its victims.
I am on the Editorial Board for the following journals: Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics; The New Americanist; American, British and Canadian Studies. I am also on the Advisory Panel for... more
I am on the Editorial Board for the following journals:
Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics;
The New Americanist;
American, British and Canadian Studies.
I am also on the Advisory Panel for the journal Interactions.
Area Editor for The Literary Encyclopedia (post-1945 crime fiction)
Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics;
The New Americanist;
American, British and Canadian Studies.
I am also on the Advisory Panel for the journal Interactions.
Area Editor for The Literary Encyclopedia (post-1945 crime fiction)
The idea of a mother killing her child to many presents the greatest taboo, and the most disturbing and upsetting aspect of maternal experience. In Toni Morrison's 1987 novel Beloved, escaped slave mother Sethe addresses her daughter... more
The idea of a mother killing her child to many presents the greatest taboo, and the most disturbing and upsetting aspect of maternal experience. In Toni Morrison's 1987 novel Beloved, escaped slave mother Sethe addresses her daughter Beloved whom she murdered out of desperation, in order to avoid her returning to a life of slavery and sexual abuse. Sethe reflects, " I'll explain to her, even though I don't have to. Why I did it. How if I hadn't killed her she would have died and that is something I could not bear to happen to her. When I explain it she'll understand. " Are mothers who kill inevitably represented as monsters in our culture? Or are there certain contexts that may urge us to reevaluate maternal behavior? This anthology will examine the complex issues of infanticide and mothers who kill from a broad, interdisciplinary perspective. We welcome contributions, which explore infanticide, and mothers who kill from literary, psychological, biological, socioeconomic, criminological, artistic, film and media perspectives, and more. We also welcome contributions, which examine the criminalization of mothers who kill and analyses of case law/legal judgments, and cases of mothers who have been wrongfully accused or convicted. Through the incorporation of a variety of disciplines and methodologies as well as creative practice, we aim to promote a wide range of work on infanticide and mothers who kill. Contributions which address race/ethnicity, age, dis/ability, class, gender and sexual identity in relation to infanticide and mothers who kill are encouraged. We welcome both academic and practically-oriented contributions, as well as creative work such as poetry and short stories.
Research Interests: Crime and Motherhood
CALL FOR PAPERS - FEMINIST ENCOUNTERS Issue 5 Autumn 2019 FEMINISM AND MOTHERHOOD IN THE 21ST CENTURY EXTENDED CALL FOR PAPERS Guest editor: Dr Charlotte Beyer, Senior Lecturer in English Studies, University of Gloucestershire... more
CALL FOR PAPERS - FEMINIST ENCOUNTERS Issue 5 Autumn 2019
FEMINISM AND MOTHERHOOD IN THE 21ST CENTURY
EXTENDED CALL FOR PAPERS
Guest editor: Dr Charlotte Beyer, Senior Lecturer in English Studies, University of Gloucestershire
Motherhood has long been a vital yet complex, even problematic topic for feminism. This special issue of Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics investigates the meanings of motherhood for feminism today, and the challenges it poses, in a glocal context characterised by gender fluidity and social inequality. We are putting together a multi-faceted special issue on 21st Century motherhood.
We are particularly keen for lesbian voices and perspectives to be part of this publication, and actively encourage submissions on lesbian motherhood.
In her 2010 book Twenty-first-Century Motherhood: Experience, Identity, Policy, Agency, scholar Andrea O’Reilly comments on the significance of motherhood, arguing that, “Over the last twenty-five years the topic of motherhood has emerged as a central and significant topic of scholarly inquiry across a wide range of academic disciplines.” Yet motherhood has presented feminist critics and scholars with complex questions surrounding agency and identity. What are the problems and challenges encountered by women who mother, globally and locally, in real-life and in texts, and what insights do their experiences generate for 21st century feminism? In her article ‘“Global Motherhood”: The Transnational Intimacies of White Femininity’, critic Raka Shome argues that the term “global motherhood” poses problems for feminist criticism, as the term is inextricably linked to the re-production of white femininity on a transnational scale through discourses of whiteness in popular culture. What insights can studies of motherhood from postcolonial contexts, and from Asia and Africa, contribute to our understanding of motherhood? What lessons can be drawn from vulnerable mothers, and experiences and portrayals of mothering under political and/or social oppression and through austerity? In what ways are conventional definitions and understandings of motherhood challenged by issues such as distance mothering, absence, migration, trafficking? What are the challenges posed to the conceptualization and embodiment of motherhood by transgender motherhood?
These and other questions will be examined in this special issue of Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics, which is dedicated to the critical analysis of contemporary motherhood and its glocal representations and manifestations. This issue has an interdisciplinary focus and welcomes contributions from a wide range of fields, including arts and humanities, social science, psychology, philosophy.
Article length 7000-9000 words including notes and works cited.
300 word Abstract and Bio by 1 December 2017 to cbeyer@glos.ac.uk
Decision 1 February 2018
Full articles due by 1 November 2018
FEMINISM AND MOTHERHOOD IN THE 21ST CENTURY
EXTENDED CALL FOR PAPERS
Guest editor: Dr Charlotte Beyer, Senior Lecturer in English Studies, University of Gloucestershire
Motherhood has long been a vital yet complex, even problematic topic for feminism. This special issue of Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics investigates the meanings of motherhood for feminism today, and the challenges it poses, in a glocal context characterised by gender fluidity and social inequality. We are putting together a multi-faceted special issue on 21st Century motherhood.
We are particularly keen for lesbian voices and perspectives to be part of this publication, and actively encourage submissions on lesbian motherhood.
In her 2010 book Twenty-first-Century Motherhood: Experience, Identity, Policy, Agency, scholar Andrea O’Reilly comments on the significance of motherhood, arguing that, “Over the last twenty-five years the topic of motherhood has emerged as a central and significant topic of scholarly inquiry across a wide range of academic disciplines.” Yet motherhood has presented feminist critics and scholars with complex questions surrounding agency and identity. What are the problems and challenges encountered by women who mother, globally and locally, in real-life and in texts, and what insights do their experiences generate for 21st century feminism? In her article ‘“Global Motherhood”: The Transnational Intimacies of White Femininity’, critic Raka Shome argues that the term “global motherhood” poses problems for feminist criticism, as the term is inextricably linked to the re-production of white femininity on a transnational scale through discourses of whiteness in popular culture. What insights can studies of motherhood from postcolonial contexts, and from Asia and Africa, contribute to our understanding of motherhood? What lessons can be drawn from vulnerable mothers, and experiences and portrayals of mothering under political and/or social oppression and through austerity? In what ways are conventional definitions and understandings of motherhood challenged by issues such as distance mothering, absence, migration, trafficking? What are the challenges posed to the conceptualization and embodiment of motherhood by transgender motherhood?
These and other questions will be examined in this special issue of Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics, which is dedicated to the critical analysis of contemporary motherhood and its glocal representations and manifestations. This issue has an interdisciplinary focus and welcomes contributions from a wide range of fields, including arts and humanities, social science, psychology, philosophy.
Article length 7000-9000 words including notes and works cited.
300 word Abstract and Bio by 1 December 2017 to cbeyer@glos.ac.uk
Decision 1 February 2018
Full articles due by 1 November 2018
This article explores Margaret Atwood's representations of landscape and gendered identities from a post-colonial/feminist perspective. It examines how, in the three texts discussed, Life Before Man, Cat's Eye andDeath... more
This article explores Margaret Atwood's representations of landscape and gendered identities from a post-colonial/feminist perspective. It examines how, in the three texts discussed, Life Before Man, Cat's Eye andDeath By Landscape', the urban and the ...
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Research Interests: Criminology and Art
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This article examines recent true crime writings about the nineteenth-century British practice of baby farming. The primary textual focus for my investigation of the representation of true crime is Allison Vale and Alison Rattle’s book,... more
This article examines recent true crime writings about the nineteenth-century British practice of baby farming. The primary textual focus for my investigation of the representation of true crime is Allison Vale and Alison Rattle’s book, entitled The Woman Who Murdered Babies for Money: The Story of Amelia Dyer. In the article I draw on a range of recent critical examinations of true crime and femininity, in order to provide an understanding of the context and depiction of baby farming. I also explore the questions raised by these portrayals of true crime, such as linguistic and gender-political dimensions of representation in Allison Vale and Alison Rattle’s book, in order to investigate the complexities inherent in contemporary recasting of historical and true crime.
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The Australian author Kirsty Murray’s Children of the Wind series for 10–14 year-olds (Prawer 2) comprises four novels: Bridie’s Fire (2003), Becoming Billy Dare (2004), A Prayer for Blue Delaney (2005), and The Secret Life of Maeve Lee... more
The Australian author Kirsty Murray’s Children of the Wind series for 10–14 year-olds (Prawer 2) comprises four novels: Bridie’s Fire (2003), Becoming Billy Dare (2004), A Prayer for Blue Delaney (2005), and The Secret Life of Maeve Lee Kwong (2006). Briefly summarized, ‘“Children of the Wind” is a sweeping Irish-Australian saga made up of Bridie’s story, Patrick’s story, Colm’s story and Maeve’s story; four interlinked novels, beginning with the 1850s and moving right up to the present’ (Kirsty Murray). Commenting on her overarching vision behind the series, Murray says: In planning the ‘Children of the Wind’ books, I didn’t want to write a conventional series that just followed one person’s life nor even of a single family. I wanted to write a series that spanned 150 years of Australian history and have the chance to incorporate as much of its richness as was possible. (Kirsty Murray)
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Research Interests: History and Criminology
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This book examines the recent popularity of the dystopian genre in literature and film, as well as connecting contemporary manifestations of dystopia to cultural trends and the implications of technological and social changes on the... more
This book examines the recent popularity of the dystopian genre in literature and film, as well as connecting contemporary manifestations of dystopia to cultural trends and the implications of technological and social changes on the individual and society as a whole. Dystopia, as a genre, reflects our greatest fears of what the future might bring, based on analysis of the present. This book connects traditional dystopian works with their contexts and compares these with contemporary versions. It centers around two main questions: Why is dystopia so popular now? And, why is dystopia so popular with young adult audiences? Since dystopia reflects the fears of society as a whole, this book will have broad appeal for any reader, and will be particularly useful to teachers in a variety of settings, such as in a high school or college-level classroom to teach dystopian literature, or in a comparative literature classroom to show how the genre has appeared in multiple locales at different times. Indeed, the book's interdisciplinary nature allows it to be of use in classes focussing on politics, bioethics, privacy issues, women's studies, and any number of additional topics.
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The article discusses portrayals of male rape in John Harvey's police procedural novel Easy Meat (1996), exploring how the novel interrogates the representation of sexual crime, male rape, and masculinity in crime fiction. By... more
The article discusses portrayals of male rape in John Harvey's police procedural novel Easy Meat (1996), exploring how the novel interrogates the representation of sexual crime, male rape, and masculinity in crime fiction. By examining Harvey's portrayal of masculinity and sexuality in Easy Meat, the author explores the ways in which crime fiction problematizes the politics of representing sexual crime.
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Book Review of Katharine Cockin and Jago Morrison, eds., The Post-War British Literature Handbook
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This chapter examines the representation of Mrs. Hudson in selected episodes of Sherlock and the 2011 short story “The Adventure of the Concert Pianist” by Margaret Maron, focusing particularly on the questions raised by the... more
This chapter examines the representation of Mrs. Hudson in selected episodes of Sherlock and the 2011 short story “The Adventure of the Concert Pianist” by Margaret Maron, focusing particularly on the questions raised by the representation of ageing female characters, agency, and detection in popular culture. Drawing on a range of critical approaches, the analysis focuses on the similarities and contrasts offered by the two texts, and reflects on the implications for the depiction of Mrs. Hudson in contemporary reimaginings of Sherlock Holmes. The chapter concludes that, despite energetic attempts to revitalize Mrs. Hudson’s character, especially by Maron, the issue of Mrs. Hudson’s representation, and the trivialization of ageing femininity in popular culture, remains pertinent.
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Abstract This article offers an analysis of feminist revision of myth, language and spirituality in two recent poetry collections by Margaret Atwood, Interlunar and Morning in the Burned House. An examination of theoretical and critical... more
Abstract This article offers an analysis of feminist revision of myth, language and spirituality in two recent poetry collections by Margaret Atwood, Interlunar and Morning in the Burned House. An examination of theoretical and critical feminist concerns regarding women's ...
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Research Interests: Gender Studies and Art
As a part of a series of works published by Canongate, A.S. Byatt’s Ragnarok enhances intertextual connections between the past and the present forged by myths and fairy tales, material in which Byatt has a long-standing interest. Drawing... more
As a part of a series of works published by Canongate, A.S. Byatt’s Ragnarok enhances intertextual connections between the past and the present forged by myths and fairy tales, material in which Byatt has a long-standing interest. Drawing on critical perspectives on war literature and gender criticism, I examine how in Ragnarok, Byatt explores female identity and childhood experiences of the Second World War, reflected and transformed through the imagery, motifs and narratives of Norse mythology. Byatt’s novel challenges readers to revise their understanding of both myth and war, and questions the finality of war by projecting the possibility of life beyond.
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This chapter examines representations of mothering, class, and maternal affect in May Sinclair’s 1922 novel Life and Death in Harriett Frean, paying particular attention to the critique of social constructions of motherhood articulated in... more
This chapter examines representations of mothering, class, and maternal affect in May Sinclair’s 1922 novel Life and Death in Harriett Frean, paying particular attention to the critique of social constructions of motherhood articulated in the novel. The discussion focuses specifically on social and cultural constructions of femininity and class and the portrayal in Sinclair’s novel of mothering practices and the (in)visibility of maternal figures. As part of my investigation of Sinclair’s critique of the social construction of motherhood, I examine her portrayal of the maternal in relation to class and marital status. Here, my chapter focuses on what I see as Sinclair’s couched portrayal of the controversial practice of baby-farming. I argue that baby farming is implicitly referred to in Sinclair’s Life and Death of Harriett Frean, through the figure of Harriett’s maid, Maggie, and the fate of her baby born outside wedlock. My chapter demonstrates that Sinclair’s portrayal of this topic foregrounds the hypocrisy at the heart of Victorian constructions of femininity and motherhood, and forms a central part of her critique of class and social inequality for women.
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The article focuses on representations of ageing and black British identity in Andrea Levy’s Every Light in the House Burnin’ (1994) and Joan Riley’s Waiting in the Twilight (1987). Offering a comparative analysis of representations of... more
The article focuses on representations of ageing and black British identity in Andrea Levy’s Every Light in the House Burnin’ (1994) and Joan Riley’s Waiting in the Twilight (1987). Offering a comparative analysis of representations of ageing experiences for the first Windrush generation, I explore areas of these two texts that have received relatively little attention from critics. Specifically focusing on representations of ageing and the body, and on uses of memory in story-telling, the article examines the use of memory writing in the novels, suggesting this discourse as a subjective means by which individuals may (re)connect with and recast their personal and collective histories of race, class, and gender marginalisation. I examine the ways in which Levy and Riley’s novels document the voices and life stories of ageing black British men and women, using a fictional form, thereby creating spaces for those hitherto marginalised accounts and characters in contemporary British fiction. The article furthermore analyses Levy and Riley’s portrayals of ageing characters, their relationship to families and communities, and their exhausting and difficult struggle to reject victimisation whilst retaining subjective agency and personal dignity. In their representations of ageing and the body, Levy and Riley explore the impact of illness, isolation, loss of social status, and the treatment of elderly black British individuals by the health system and local communities. In conclusion, both novels reject the story of silenced victimhood for their ageing characters by foregrounding intergenerational connections as a celebration of continuity that sustains postcolonial and black British identities.
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Conceiving of and representing mothers without their children seems so paradoxical as to be almost impossible. How can we define a mother in the absence of her child? This compelling volume explores these and other questions from a range... more
Conceiving of and representing mothers without their children seems so paradoxical as to be almost impossible. How can we define a mother in the absence of her child? This compelling volume explores these and other questions from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, examining experiences, representations, creative manifestations, and embodiments of mothers without their children. In her 1997 book, entitled Mother Without Child: Contemporary Fiction and the Crisis of Motherhood, the critic Elaine Tuttle Hansen urged for critical and feminist engagement with what she described as ‘the borders of motherhood and the women who really live there, neither fully inside nor fully outside some recognizable “family unit”, and often exiles from their children’. This book extends and expands this important enquiry, looking at maternal experience and mothering on the borders of motherhood in different historical and cultural contexts, thereby opening up the way in which we imagine and represent mothers without their children to reassessment and revision, and encouraging further dialogue about what it might mean to mother on the borders of motherhood.
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This article examines contemporary literary recastings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, concentrating on selected texts from the 2011 short story collection entitled A Study in Sherlock: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon.... more
This article examines contemporary literary recastings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, concentrating on selected texts from the 2011 short story collection entitled A Study in Sherlock: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon. The discussion focuses on the new perspectives these contemporary short fictions contribute in their representations of Holmes and detection, and examines how such texts chime with critical debates on Conan Doyle and recent literary adaptations.
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The article focuses on representations of ageing and black British identity in Andrea Levy’s Every Light in the House Burnin’ (1994) and Joan Riley’s Waiting in the Twilight (1987). Offering a comparative analysis of representations of... more
The article focuses on representations of ageing and black British identity in Andrea Levy’s Every Light in the House Burnin’ (1994) and Joan Riley’s Waiting in the Twilight (1987). Offering a comparative analysis of representations of ageing experiences for the first Windrush generation, I explore areas of these two texts that have received relatively little attention from critics. Specifically focusing on representations of ageing and the body, and on uses of memory in story-telling, the article examines the use of memory writing in the novels, suggesting this discourse as a subjective means by which individuals may (re)connect with and recast their personal and collective histories of race, class, and gender marginalisation. I examine the ways in which Levy and Riley’s novels document the voices and life stories of ageing black British men and women, using a fictional form, thereby creating spaces for those hitherto marginalised accounts and characters in contemporary British fic...
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This article examines recent true crime writings about the nineteenth-century British practice of baby farming. The primary textual focus for my investigation of the representation of true crime is Allison Vale and Alison Rattle’s book,... more
This article examines recent true crime writings about the nineteenth-century British practice of baby farming. The primary textual focus for my investigation of the representation of true crime is Allison Vale and Alison Rattle’s book, entitled The Woman Who Murdered Babies for Money: The Story of Amelia Dyer. In the article I draw on a range of recent critical examinations of true crime and femininity, in order to provide an understanding of the context and depiction of baby farming. I also explore the questions raised by these portrayals of true crime, such as linguistic and gender-political dimensions of representation in Allison Vale and Alison Rattle’s book, in order to investigate the complexities inherent in contemporary recasting of historical and true crime.
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Research Interests: Philosophy and Poetry
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Book Review. The article reviews the book "Scandinavian Crime Fiction," edited by Andrew Nestingen and Paula Arvas