Serial Killers and Serial Spectators

Cultures, Narratives, and Representations

Series: 

Volume Editors:
Anhiti Patnaik
and
Elana Gomel
Serial murder is a global entertainment industry where the serial killer emerges as one of the most significant cultural figures of our time. No longer an exclusively Anglo-American phenomenon, narratives of serial killing are widespread in India, China, Japan, and other cultures. This book asks why this is the case, and how serial violence has been aestheticized in different contexts. It raises important questions regarding the ethics of spectatorship, complicity, and resistance. Unique in its transnational reach, it covers both novels and visual media, both West and East, both perpetrators and witnesses.
Copyright Year:
2024
E-Book (PDF)
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-69280-0
Publication:
12 Feb 2024
Hardback
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-51909-1
Publication:
07 Feb 2024
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Anhiti Patnaik, Ph.D. Cultural Studies, Trent University (2018) teaches at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani in India. Her research areas include Victorian and World Literature, Gender Studies, and Cultural Criminology. She has published articles in Bronte Studies, Neo-Victorian Studies, Journal of World Literature, and Journal of International Women's Studies.

Elana Gomel is Professor Emerita at the Department of English and American Studies at Tel-Aviv University. Among her many books are Bloodscripts: Writing the Violent Subject (OSU Press, 2003) and Science Fiction, Alien Encounters, and the Ethics of Posthumanism: Beyond the Golden Rule (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2014) She is the editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Global Fantasy (2023). She is also an award-winning fiction writer.
Notes on Contributors

Introduction: The Spectacle of Serial Violence in Global Literature and Media

Part 1 Seriality of Violence



1 Abattoir Elegantiarum: Fashion Victimology and Hannibal’s Grand Designs
 Seth Wilder

2 Eat, Sleep, Read, Repeat: Excess and Enjoyment in Tomie
 Shweta Khilnani

3 Caught in Observation: Sublime tableaux morts in Female Serial Killer Narratives
 Natalia Igl

Part 2 Moral Panics and Murderous Sublime



4 “The Horror in Whitechapel”: Sensational Journalism in the Jack the Ripper Murders
 Chen F. Michaeli

5 (Wo)Mens Rea: The Strange Case of Anne Perry and Murder of/for/by Women
 Anhiti Patnaik

6 A Poetics of Restlessness: The House That Jack Built and the Conventions of Serial Killer Fiction
 Luciano Cabral and Pedro Sasse

Part 3 Transnational Evil of Banality



7 Murder and Meaning: The Ordinariness of Violence in Memories of Murder
 Reza Pourmikail

8 Lurid and Unlimited: Interpreting Bateman’s Banality in American Psycho
 Patrick Lawrence

9 The Digital Banal and Sublime Justice in Chinese Internet Literature
 Lina Qu

Part 4 Spacetime of Violence



10 “Blood on the Snow”: Nordic Noir as a Fantasy Travelog
 Elana Gomel

11 “Le immagini ti guardano”: The Gallery City in the Giallo Genre of Italian Cinema
 Peter Vorissis

12 Santusthi and Jodidar through Serial Killing in Raman Raghav 2.0
 Aratrika Das

Conclusion: Healing through Horror in a Pandemic—The Editors in Dialogue
 Anhiti Patnaik and Elana Gomel

The book is for scholars of crime fiction and cinema, including specialists in the fields of literary studies, media studies, visual studies, and gender studies. The book has a broad appeal owing to its transnational and transmedia approach. It can be used as a secondary source in undergraduate and graduate courses on Crime Fiction and Cinema.
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