Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DETECt (Detecting Transcultural Identity in European Popular Crime Narratives)

Teaser

DETECt—Detecting Transcultural Identities in European Popular Crime Narratives—investigates the contribution of popular cultural production, and particularly popular crime narratives, to the generation of transcultural European identities. In this context, identity is...

Summary

DETECt—Detecting Transcultural Identities in European Popular Crime Narratives—investigates the contribution of popular cultural production, and particularly popular crime narratives, to the generation of transcultural European identities. In this context, identity is preliminarily defined as the variable result of a continuing process of transformation fostered by the mobility of people, products and representations across the continent. Because of their extraordinary transnational mobility, popular crime narratives play today a decisive role in circulating representations (such as their depiction of places, characters, historical or political events, and so on) that, accumulating in time, end up forming a shared cultural asset for large sectors of European societies. By analyzing crime novels, films and TV dramas from 1989 to the present, the project aims to understand whether and how “mobility factors” such as co-production, serialization, translation, adaptation, and distribution may help create and disseminate engaging representations of transcultural European identities. In addition, DETECt also asks whether and how the transcultural treatment of certain narrative features such as place, historical time and character identity may affect the ability of European crime narratives to migrate beyond their places of origin and be appropriated elsewhere as “mobile signifiers”. Finally, DETECt wants to test the transcultural potential of both the traditions and contemporary breeding of the European crime narrative genre for “meaningful learning” in a transnational virtual environment, through the establishment of a transnational Learning Community and an integrated programme of associated educational activities. In this way, DETECt wishes to contribute to the elaboration of better strategies to foster transcultural integration in both European research and European educational activities.

Work performed

To respond to the multiple challenges of collaborative research in a transcultural, transnational, transdisciplinary, multilinguistic environment as well as to ensure adequate dissemination of research findings, DETECt has devised an innovative methodology meant to assist the integration of research, educational and public engagement activities. During the first year, research was especially focused on establishing the methodological framework and designing and implementing the beta version of the project’s portal, which constitutes the digital hub for all the project’s activities. In particular, the semantic modelling of the domain in the form of a Concept Map has served the purpose of elaborating a consistent semantics for structuring the architecture of DETECt digital Repository, Learning Community, Atlas and MOOC. Based on this modelling exercise, five different semantic areas were identified and immediately applied to determine the topical organization of both DETECt scholarly outputs and learning materials; they are: Space and place, History and politics, Production and distribution, Promotion and reception, Representation (including Crime and detection and Diversity).
The consortium also accomplished the difficult task of determining the nature and properties of a possible representative corpus for the study of transcultural identities in European popular crime narratives. Data collection and curation started in parallel to the generation of DETECt Intermediate Corpus and the definition of subcorpora for specific case studies; this work will be carried out throughout the next phases of the project. Next year will be focused on delivering the portal’s final version and elaborating the learning materials for DETECt MOOC. The project is committed to experimenting new learning formats adapted to contemporary modes of cultural consumption, including various types of visualizations, such as interactive maps and timelines and multimedia materials. These materials will be produced and initially tested within the transnational virtual environment provided by DETECt Learning Community, before being assessed, revised and finally transferred into the MOOC.
Work in the different research areas will require developing the already existing intersectoral networking activities with the project’s stakeholders, especially in the industrial field. Contact has already been successfully established and interviews have started to be taken with several players and professional figures in the field, including authors, publishers, producers, broadcasters, and film commissions. This network will be extended through the next phase, and the first-hand information obtained by adopting methods from production and reception studies will be organized and elaborated into the project’s different scholarly and educational outputs. Research in the application of digital technology to cultural tourism will lead to the development and testing of a Web responsive app, based on an exploration of best practices and scholarly contributions in the field of location studies.
From year two, the work on the industrial and consumption aspects associated to the European crime genre will go in parallel with the study of the representational patterns found in this production. This will involve the analysis of DETECt corpus, subcorpora and case studies through both close and distant reading methods, in an original imbrication of humanistic and digital techniques. Representation studies will interrogate the notion of transculturality in relation to the characterization of identity at different levels: space, historical time, and intersectional characters’ identity (class, age, profession, sex, gender, ethnicity and so on), as well as the characterization of criminal and investigative strategies.

Final results

All this will provide a substantial body of new knowledge and innovative methodological expertise that, in addition to the extensive programme of educational and dissemination activities (which also includes a combined physical/virtual exhibition, Wikipedia workshops, and a screenwriting contest) can be expected to generate a wide impact on different target audiences. In particular, DETECt Learning Community and MOOC will provide an opportunity for a large number of students across the continent, and beyond, not only to acquire new knowledge about the transcultural aspects of present-day European culture, but also to improve their transliteracy as well as transcultural skills. At the same time, the project also expects to achieve a more indirect, yet structural impact through its different scholarly outputs, such as conferences, publications and policy documents. The objective is to offer both valuable theoretical-methodological insights and replicable models to advance scholarly research in European popular culture and help model policy strategies to support the production and circulation of transcultural content across the continent.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.detect-project.eu/.