The Criminal Humanities

Contents: Michael Arntfield/Marcel Danesi: Introduction: Rise of the Criminal Humanist - James Johnston: A "notable newe Italionisme": Providence, Plague, and the Final Words of the Criminally Condemned in The Unfortunate Traveller - Lee Mellor: Original Gangsta: Self-Conceptualization and Criminogenic Authenticity in Hip Hop Music - Yair Neuman/Yochai Cohen/James Knoll: Metonymy and Mass Murder: Diagnosing "Splitting" Through Automatic Text Analysis - Joan Swart: Psychopaths in Film: Are Portrayals Realistic and Does It Matter? - Trevor Grant: The Hammer and the Hummingbird: Spectating Crime Inside the Documentary Film - DJ Williams/John Edgar Browning: Looking Inside the Coffin: An Overview of Contemporary Human Vampirism and Its Relevance for Forensics Professionals - Sonia Halpern: A Yiddishe Cop: Jewish Identity, Police, and Prisoners in Contemporary Law Enforcement - Lee Mellor/Vivek Venkatesh/Jason Wallin/Tieja Thomas: Killing for Slender Man: The Emergence of an Electronic Gospel - Victoria Bigliardi: Crime as Curation: Understanding Crime Through the Lens of the Museum - Bethany K. Walters/Eric W. Hickey: Crime and the Canvas: Depicting Criminals and Their Punishments in the Visual Arts, from Antiquity to Present.

Michael Arntfield is Associate Professor of Literary Criminology and Forensic Writing in the Department of English and Writing Studies at Western University, as well as a previous Fulbright Chair specializing in law and literature at Vanderbilt University. He is also a former police officer and is the founder and director of the Western University Cold Case Society. His PhD (also from Western) was conferred while he was still a serving police detective and focused on police murders in Canada and the United States.
Marcel Danesi is Full Professor of Anthropology and Forensic Semiotics at the University of Toronto and a member of the Royal Society of Canada. He is the founder and director of the Centre for Research in Forensic Semiotics and a recognized international authority on semiotics, language, and ritual within criminal organizations, specifically the Sicilian Mafia.