The NYU Cultures of War and the Postwar Research Group, in conjunction with the Centre for the Americas and the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice at Queen's University Belfast, invite you to a panel discussion as part of a seminar series examining the complex relationship between race, class, and policing in the Americas.
Join Frankie Bailey (SUNY Albany), David Schmid (SUNY Buffalo), and novelist Steph Cha to discuss the capacities of crime fiction to critically reflect on the failures of policing in the US and the ongoing search for racial justice. The issue of whether a form or genre given over to the investigation of crime and that aims to give readers answers and resolutions can get to grips with the brokenness of the justice system will be discussed. As will the question of how to portray the police and policing in light of the killing of unarmed black men and women—and whether the traditional police procedural form is fit for purpose.
Steph Cha will also read from her 2019 prize-winning novel, Your House Will Pay, and take questions about it.
Frankie Bailey is Professor of Criminal Justice in the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs at SUNY Albany. As well as being a prolific academic whose work explores the intersections of crime, social history and popular culture, including Out of the Woodpile: Black Characters Crime and Detective Fiction (1991), she is the author of The Red Queen Dies (2013) and What the Fly Saw (2015).
David Schmid is Associate Professor of English at SUNY Buffalo. His research focuses on Americans' unusual fascination with murder and murderers and the development of the popular culture of true crime in the U.S. He is the author of the book Natural Born Celebrities: Serial Killers in American Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2005) as well as numerous edited books, anthologies and essays on crime fiction, urban studies, horror and masculinity.
Steph Cha is the author of Your House Will Pay (2019), winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the California Book Award, and the Juniper Song crime trilogy. She is a critic whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, where she served as noir editor, and is the current series editor of the Best American Mystery & Suspense anthology.
Moderated by Andrew Pepper (Queen's University Belfast).
Please register for this event using this link.
