Heroes and Villains: Justice and Punishment
Saturday 10th September – Monday 12th September 2011
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom
Call for Papers
A villain (also known in film and literature as
the bad guy, black hat, or heavy) is an
evil character in a story, whether a
historical narrative or, especially, a work of
fiction. The villain usually is the antagonist,
the character who tends to have a negative
effect on other characters. A female villain is
sometimes called a villainess (often to
differentiate her from a male villain). Random
House Unabridged Dictionary defines villain as a
cruelly malicious person who is involved in or
devoted to wickedness or crime; scoundrel;
or a character in a play, novel, or the like, who
constitutes an important evil agency in the plot.
Indicative themes for research and development
will include (but are not limited to);
* How do we define a villainous act?
* What is a villainous act? How do we define it?
* When we look at actions which are deemed
and judged to be right/wrong, good/bad, how are
such actions classified?
* What is a crime?
* How are crimes classified?
* What disciplines are needed to uncover,
discover and identify a crime?
* How do we define crime scenes, ex. Scenes
of atrocity, crimes against humanity?
* What do we learn about our view of crime
via the depiction of forensic investigations of
crime scenes?
* How does the idea of a criminal
underworld which exists beneath, underneath,
below the everyday world influence us?
* Why are villains more
intriguing/interesting/attractive than heroes?
* How is the perception of crime and villainy
shaped by space, place AND time?
* Does villainy belong to the realm of the night?
* Does villainy belong under cover of darkness?
* Does criminality and villainy depend on
being hidden or concealed?
* Who are the people charged with doing the
investigation, detection, sleuthing?
* What do villains do and why do they do it?
* What tools/skills do they have/use?
* Does the villain create the person who
catches him/her – i.e a nemesis?
* Does the existence of a villain create the
need for a hero?
* What kind of personality/character
traits/deviance creates a villain?
* What is the nature of the criminal mind?
* Is it differentiated from the minds of
those who do good?
* What is the character of the heroic mind?
* Why do good? Why be a hero?
* Why side with/dispense justice?
* Why do we have 'criminal' psychology?
* Why don't we have 'goody two-shoes' psychology?
* How do notions of responsibility and
diminished responsibility factor into the debate?
* How is crime defined by punishment?
* What are the causes of crime/villainy?
* What are the consequences of crime/villainy?
* How does fear define crime/villainy?
* Can villains actually be heroes?
* Can Villains be portrayed as sympathetic/
or gain our sympathy?
* Is the villain sometimes on the side of
right? Can criminality be an attempt at social
justice against unjust regimes?
* Are heroes made villainous by blind
allegiance to moral codes?
* Must justice involve punishment of the
villain?
* Is punishment of the criminal required by
justice?
* How does the punishment of the hero
increase his heroism or the lack of punishment
increase the villainy of the villain?
* How does the depiction of heroes/villains
evolve?
* How does such depiction shape or reflect
society?
Papers will be accepted which deal with related
areas and themes.
The 2011 meeting of Heroes and Villains: Justice
and Punishment will run alongside our project on
The Patient and we anticipate holding sessions
in common between the two projects. We welcome
any papers considering the problems or addressing
issues that straddle these two themes.
Papers will be considered on any related theme.
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday
25th March 2011. If an abstract is accepted for
the conference, a full draft paper should be
submitted by Friday 22nd July 2011.
300 word abstracts should be submitted to the
Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word,
WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:
a) author(s)
b) affiliation
c) email address
d) title of abstract
e) body of abstract
E-mails should be entitled: Villains Abstract
Submission
Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain
from using any special formatting, characters or
emphasis (such as bold, italics or
underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to
all paper proposals submitted. If you do not
receive a reply from us in a week you should
assume we did not receive your proposal; it might
be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look
for an alternative electronic route or resend.
Organising Chairs
Sorcha Ní Fhlainn
Evil Hub Leader, Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
E-mail: snf@inter-disciplinary.net
Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Network Leader
Inter-Disciplinary.Net, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
E-mail: hv3@inter-disciplinary.net
The conference is part of the 'At the Interface'
series of research projects. The aim of the
conference is to bring together people from
different areas and interests to share ideas and
explore various discussions which are innovative
and exciting. All papers accepted for and
presented at this conference are eligible for
publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may
be invited to go forward for development into
a themed ISBN hard copy volume.
For further details about the project please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/evil/villains-and-villainy/
For further details about the conference please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/evil/villains-and-villainy/call-for-papers/
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