On November 14 and 15, the DETECt Digital Humanities Workshop will host more than twenty scholars coming for various European institutions, including the Universities of Limoges, Paris-Nanterre, Montpellier, Nîmes, KU Leuven and Queen’s University Belfast. The participants will present current research initiatives, both within and outside the DETECt programme, that adopt digital methods such as text mining, digital mapping, data visualisation, and network analysis. The goal is to coordinate the activities of the different research groups in DETECt, selecting the best tools and approaches to study the transnational dimension of European popular culture, with a particular focus on the richness and diversity of crime narratives. Some preliminary results have been included in the ‘Atlas’ section of the project portal and will be the object of discussion and group work during the workshop.

In the afternoon of November 14 the symposium Across Borders: European Crime Narratives as a Genre and a Trans-genre will present the work of the DETECt consortium to a larger audience, composed of students and researchers of the University of Bologna and other institutions. The symposium is organised in collaboration with Numapresse: Du papier à l’écran – Mutations culturelles, transferts génériques, poétiques médiatiques de la presse française, an international research project coordinated by Prof. Marie-Eve Thérenty (University of Montpellier). Across Borders will host a number of important scholars working on the crime genre, serial narratives and media culture more broadly. Barbara Pezzotti (Monash University, Melborune) will discuss her ongoing research on the representation of migration in Mediterranean Noir. Maurizio Ascari (University of Bologna) will present his work crime novels by British authors who live, write and set their works set in Italy. Alessandra Calanchi (University of Urbino) will look at the contemporary, transnational transformations of the Sherlock Holmes myth.

In the second half of the afternoon, the Numapresse team – Marie-Eve Thérenty and Yoan Vérilhac (University of Montpellier), Matthieu Letourneux (University of Paris-Nanterre), Amélie Chabrier (University of  Nîmes) – will present their own work on the circulation of crime narratives in media culture, focusing in particular on the blurring of the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction.

Finally, in the morning of Saturday, November 16, DETECt will contribute to the Giallo Festival with a session devoted to discussion of the transcultural aspects of Mediterranean Noir. The guest are three experts and practitioners of the crime genre: Barbara Pezzotti, specialist of Italian crime fiction and authors of numerous studies on the transnational exchanges in this field; Stefania Nardini, writer, journalist and author of a biography of Jean-Claude Izzo, the ‘father’ of Mediterannean Noir; and Veit Heinichen, German writer who has lived and worked in Trieste for many years, setting his crime novels on a Mediterranean context that is presented as a porous border, connecting Romance, Balkanic and German cultures. Monica Dall’Asta and Federico Pagello (UNIBO) will lead the conversation, focusing on the thematic, narrative and stylistic features that make Mediterranean Noir a deeply transcultural process.

For more information please download:

• DETECt Digital Humanities Workshop (14-15 November 2019)
• Across Borders: European Crime Narratives as a Genre and a Trans-Genre (14 November 2019) Programme and Poster.