Center for Crime & Popular Culture
Our Mission
The Center for Crime & Popular Culture serves scholars, students, and laypersons interested in issues pertaining to the intersection of crime, social control, and popular culture. The Center is committed to engaging students and fostering critical thinking about how images of crime and justice permeate our daily lives. The Center hosts special events, lectures, and guest speakers on campus, each geared toward understanding the production of popular culture and how cultural artifacts shape and reflect public attitudes toward offenders, victims, and the operations of the criminal justice system.
For more information, please contact:
Dr. Nickie Phillips
Director, Center for Crime & Popular Culture
nphillips@sfc.edu
Beyond Blurred Lines: Rape Culture in Popular Media

Beyond Blurred Lines: Rape Culture in Popular Media (Rowman & Littlefield)
Review in International Review of Victimology
Comic Book Crime: Truth, Justice, and the American Way
Main
The Center welcomes Dr. Alyce McGovern, UNSW, Australia
During the Fall 2016 semester, the Center for Crime and Popular Culture welcomed Dr. Alyce McGovern, Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Dr. McGovern’s research interests include police-media relations and the intersection of crime, media, and culture. Recent publications include:
Crofts T; Lee M; McGovern A; Milivojevic S, 2015, Sexting and Young People, Palgrave Macmillan
Lee M; McGovern A, 2013, Policing and the Media: Public Relations, Simulations and Communications, 1st, Routledge, London.
Lee M; McGovern A, 2015, ‘Logics of risk: police communications in an age of uncertainty’, Journal of Risk Research, pp. 1 - 12.
Lee M; Crofts T; McGovern A; Milivojevic S, 2015, ‘Sexting among young people: Perceptions and practices’, Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice, no. 508, pp. 1 - 9.
McGovern AM; Wise J; Wise N, 2015, ‘’When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die’: Concepts of justice in George R R Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire’, Media & Arts Law Review, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 1 - 13.
Ellis JR; McGovern AM, 2015, ‘The end of symbiosis? Australian police-media relations in the digital age’, Policing and Society: an international journal of research and policy.
Alyce McGovern: Sexting and Young People
Humanizing The dehumanized: The Legacy of Eugenics and the Relevance Today
January 21, 2016 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm at Central Booking, NYC
Moderator: Nickie Phillips, criminologist, St. Francis College, Brooklyn, NYC
Panelists: Artists Noah Fuller, Geraldine Ondrizek, and Barbara Rosenthal featured in Twisted Data exhibit
This panel will explore the legacy of eugenics and the ways that “scientific” data has been used to justify atrocities. The panelists will discuss how the categorization of individuals, dehumanization, and bureaucratization converged to reinforce cultural prejudices and the lasting impact of these policies and practices. The study and reception of bio-criminological explanations of criminality will be discussed in light of the history of eugenics within the field of criminology, as well as other unfortunate implications of the movement to “purify” the population.
Victoria Law: Women Behind Bars: Realities & Resistance Beyond Orange is the New Black
Confined Arts: Solitary Confinement Edition
This edition of The Confined Arts will be a symposium consisting of an art exhibition, poetry, a panel discussion, a promotional screening, and more. Opportunities and Change will be collaborating with the Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement to highlight the humanity of the people held in solitary confinement inside of our nation's prisons. Additionally, we hope to raise awareness about the inhumane conditions and the use of solitary confinement to educate attendees.
Sponsored by The Post-Prison Program @ St. Francis & The Center for Crime & Popular Culture
Gregory Glover on the NYC CCRB
Portia Allen-Kyle on Activism and Police Tactics in St. Louis
Activism and Police Tactics in St. Louis
Nickie Phillips, Portia Allen-Kyle, Emily Horowitz
Seven Shots
Bennett Capers on Techno-Policing
He for She @ SFC
Gender equality is not only a women’s issue, it is a human rights issue that requires my participation. We as conscious members of St Francis College commit to take action against all forms of violence and discrimination faced by women and girls.
Comic Book Crime Event at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK
Criminal Justice Career Day, 2015
Innocents on Death Row
Tuesday, September 9: Michael Siem on “Lethal Injection Challenges.”
Co-Sponsored by the Center for Crime & Popular Culture.
Attorney Michael Siem will speak about his experiences representing death row inmates. Siem represented Jack Alderman, the longest serving prisoner on Death Row. With the help of justice organizations throughout the world, Alderman spent 34 years fighting to prove his innocence before he being executed.
Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/37381942@N04/4905111750/in/set-72157624628981539/
A Career Combating Corruption and Crime
Tuesday, October 14: Federal Agent Denis McGowan on “A Career Combating Corruption & Crimes.”
Sponsored by the Center for Crime & Popular Culture.
Federal Agent Denis McGowan will speak about his professional experiences working with the DEA Task Force, FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, and Homeland Security.
It was Rape
Tuesday November 25: Jennifer Baumgardner, Executive Director/Publisher at
The Feminist Press
at CUNY, will screen and answer questions about her documentary, It Was Rape
.
Co-sponsored by American Studies and the Center for Crime & Popular Culture.
After 5 years as an editor at the feminist magazine, Ms. (1993-1997), Baumgardner began writing investigative pieces for Harper’s and The Nation, providing commentaries for NPR’s All Things Considered, contributing to dozens of national magazines, and then authoring 6 books, including Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future. Her new film,It Was Rape, asks why the wrong, illegal, and reprehensible of rape is still tragically common. In this film, 8 women tell their diverse personal stories of sexual assault, from a Midwestern teenager trying alcohol for the first time to a Native American woman gradually coming to terms with her abusive childhood. The film is an opportunity to empathize with people—not just absorb faceless statistics—and to puncture the silence and denial that allow sexual assault to thrive, and sheds light on how this epidemic affects us all.
Policing: A Survivor's Perspective
On February 6, SFC alumnus Richard Loutfi '10 joined our Urban Law Enforcement Problems class to speak about "Policing: A Survivor's Perspective."
For more information on the Office of Victim's Services in New York State, click here.
Innocence Project, Senior Lecture Series
Functional Family Therapy
Katarzyna Celinska on Functional Family Therapy
Guerrilla Girls at SFC
The Graphic Justice Research Alliance (GJRA) is delighted to announce a call for papers for its annual conference at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, NY to be held October 20, 2018. The theme for this year’s Graphic Justice Discussions is ‘Law, Comics, Justice’, and promises to be an exciting event that will be accessible and relevant to scholars, artists, practitioners, policy-makers, writers, and the general public alike.
We are gratified to announce that legendary comic writer and editor Ann Nocenti will join us as this event’s keynote speaker. Nocenti has lent her distinctive voice to numerous beloved comic book runs, including her writings for Marvel’s Daredevil and DC’s Catwoman, Katana, and Green Arrow. We very much look forward to hearing her observations about the industry, as well as reflections on her latest project, the forthcoming The Seeds, a new four-issue series in collaboration with artist David Aja. The series, part of a new line of Berger Books published by Dark Horse Comics, is described as “An eco-fiction tech-thriller … a story of love beyond race and gender, and of the resilience of both human and animal kind.”
Please join us for what promises to be a stimulating and inclusive occasion!
Send 250-word abstracts to nphillips@sfc.edu
Stay tuned for more details to follow…
The GJRA is a multidisciplinary research network exploring the crossover between law and justice and comics of all kinds.
Murray Lee, University of Sydney, Australia on Fear of Crime


Graphic Justice: Intersection of Comics and Law
About the book:
"The intersections of law and contemporary culture are vital for comprehending the meaning and significance of law in today’s world. Far from being unsophisticated mass entertainment, comics and graphic fiction both imbue our contemporary culture, and are themselves imbued, with the concerns of law and justice. Accordingly, and spanning a wide variety of approaches and topics from an international array of contributors, Graphic Justice draws comics and graphic fiction into the range of critical resources available to the academic study of law. The first book to do this,Graphic Justice broadens our understanding of law and justice as part of our human world—a world that is inhabited not simply by legal concepts and institutions alone, but also by narratives, stories, fantasies, images, and other cultural articulations of human meaning. Engaging with key legal issues (including copyright, education, legal ethics, biomedical regulation, and legal personhood) and exploring critical issues in criminal justice and perspectives on international rights, law and justice—all through engagement with comics and graphic fiction—the collection showcases the vast breadth of potential that the medium holds. Graphic Justicewill be of interest to academics and postgraduate students in: cultural legal studies; law and the image; law, narrative and literature; law and popular culture; cultural criminology; as well as cultural and comics studies more generally."
Jennifer Baumgardner: On It Was Rape Documentary
Now That We're Men: Discussion
Stop: A Film about Stop and Frisk in NYC Screening and Q&A with Director Spencer Wolff 10/20 11:10am Room 4202
STOP from Spencer Wolff on Vimeo.
STOP Documentary Screening with Spencer Wolff
STOP Documentary Film - Director Q&A
Randy Williams Speaks Out about Wrongful Conviction
Randy Williams and Bob Rahn
Randy Williams served nine years of a 22 years-to-life prison sentence as a result of a wrongful conviction. He was released in 2016.
On April 14, 2016, Randy and his mom, Rosie, spoke with students at St. Francis College to share their story. They discussed how Bob Rahn and Kim Anklin, of Private Investigations by Management Resources Ltd of NY, worked tirelessly on behalf of Randy uncovering false eyewitness testimony and police misconduct.
Nickie Phillips, Rosie Benjamin, Randy Williams, and Bob Rahn
Anthropologist Gabriella Coleman on her book
Freeing the Wrongfully Convicted
Tuesday October 28: SFC Alumnus Robert Rahn (Sociology, Class of 1976) & Kim Anklin on “Freeing the Wrongfully Convicted.”
Co-sponsored by the Center for Crime & Popular Culture.
St. Francis College alumnus Robert Rahn '76 and his partner, Kim Anklin, will discuss how their private investigation helped free a wrongfully imprisoned man, Jonathan Fleming. Fleming served more than 20 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. Rahn and Anklin will discuss how they investigated the Fleming case and, more generally, about their careers in private investigations. Read more about the Fleming case and the role played by Rahn and Anklin.
FanBros at SFC
Popular Culture, Crime and Social Control
Popular Culture, Crime and Social Control is part of the "Sociology of Crime Law and Deviance" series published by Emerald.
Nancy Silberkleit on Comics and Bullying
Wonder Women! Documentary Screening
Le Tigre: On Tour Screening and Q&A


Criminal Justice Career Day
AMERICAN BOMBER Q & A Part 1
Cultural Criminology and Banksy, Red Hook
Fernando Bermudez on wrongful conviction, Senior Lecture Series
Upcoming Criminal Justice Events
CrimCast Twitter Feed

FDNY Transgender Firefighter Brooke Guinan
#Justice4All
Chase Madar: On Chelsea Manning
Criminal Justice Career Day 2016
In My Neighborhood: Interactions with the Police
What 40 Years of Cop Films Can Tell Us About Racism, White Privilege, and Ferguson
The Crash Reel
Tuesday, September 23: Snowboarder Kevin Pearce Shares Documentary The Crash Reel (in Founder’s Hall).
Co-Sponsored by American Studies, the Center for Crime & Popular Culture, and Communication Arts.
Join us for a screening of the acclaimed HBO documentary The Crash Reel followed by a Q & A with star Kevin Pearce. The film documents Kevin's journey from Olympic dreams to recovering from a traumatic brain injury. The movie features footage of Pearce's crash, as well as the aftermath. Kevin Pearce was a world champion snowboarder before his injury, and a strong contender to win gold in the 2010 Vancouver Olympics when his accident happened. To learn more about Kevin and the film, visit:http://thecrashreel.com.
Yohuru Williams on Black Lives Matter
Eli Silverman: Crime Numbers and the NYPD
Radley Balko on the Rise of the Warrior Cop
Author Radley Balko and criminologist Nickie Phillips
Compliance Screening & Director Q&A


Carol Tilley on Wertham's Scholarship, Social Science, and Archival Research
Go here for our Crimcast interview with Carol Tilley, assistant professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois. Professor Tilley speaks with us about her research on Frederic Wertham, a figure most known for his scathing attacks on comic books during the 1950s. Wertham is most known for suggesting that comic books influence deviant behavior andjuvenile delinquency.
Tilley recently published “Seducing the Innocent: Fredric Wertham and the Falsifications that Helped Condemn Comics” in Information & Culture: A Journal of History.
Should Superman Kill?
Read our post in the Wall Street Journal discussing the concept of deathworthiness and Superman’s actions in Man of Steel (beware: spoiler alert!).
Fernando Bermudez on Graffiti
Demetra Pappas on the Euthanasia/Assisted Suicide Debate
Steve Wasserman Speaks on Stop and Frisk
On March 13, 2014, our Urban Law Enforcement Problems class welcomed Steven Wasserman, attorney with Legal Aid Society, to speak about the New York Police Department's practice of stop and frisk.
Sing Sing University / Zero Percent
Sing Sing University
Writers on Writers: Graffiti, Poetry and Narrative
Brooklyn Aesthetics: Writers on Writers: Graffiti, Poetry and Narrative
Friday, September 2, 2013 at 5pm Founders Hall
Please join us for Writers on Writers, a panel discussion on parallel notions of literature and graffiti as narrative constructions. Participants include Adam Mansbach, New York Times bestselling author of the graffiti novel Rage Is Back; Jean Grae, prominent underground hip-hop artist and producer; and Brooklyn graffiti legend Blake ‘Keo” Lethem.
The evening’s wide-ranging conversation will explore narrative and identity in both literary and graffiti cultures; the relationships of both literature and graffiti to authority; and the persistence of "beef" across the genres. Participants will also confront the notion of a hip-hop aesthetic, discuss the importance of codes and code-switching, and discuss the parallel evolution of graffiti, hip-hop, and new literary cultures in New York City.
Adam Mansbach is a NY Times bestselling author. Mansbach's latest novel, Rage is Back, set in NYC graffiti culture, was named a Book of the Month by Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble, and is currently being adapted for the stage by Mansbach and award-winning playwright Idris Goodwin.
Jean Grae is an internationally recognized underground hip hop artist. She has released 9 solo albums since her debut in 2002. Throughout her career she has collaborated with major hip hop artists, such as The Roots, Talib Kweli, Mos Def, and Styles P.
KEO TC-5 is a bona-fide Brooklyn legend in the realm of NYC graffiti and hip hop. SCOTCH 79 came of age in the Brooklyn of the 1970s and learned his craft in the tunnels and yards of the MTAs subway system.
Graphic Justice Discussions
Graphic Justice: Intersections of Comics and Law
About the book:
"The intersections of law and contemporary culture are vital for comprehending the meaning and significance of law in today’s world. Far from being unsophisticated mass entertainment, comics and graphic fiction both imbue our contemporary culture, and are themselves imbued, with the concerns of law and justice. Accordingly, and spanning a wide variety of approaches and topics from an international array of contributors, Graphic Justice draws comics and graphic fiction into the range of critical resources available to the academic study of law. The first book to do this, Graphic Justice broadens our understanding of law and justice as part of our human world—a world that is inhabited not simply by legal concepts and institutions alone, but also by narratives, stories, fantasies, images, and other cultural articulations of human meaning. Engaging with key legal issues (including copyright, education, legal ethics, biomedical regulation, and legal personhood) and exploring critical issues in criminal justice and perspectives on international rights, law and justice—all through engagement with comics and graphic fiction—the collection showcases the vast breadth of potential that the medium holds. Graphic Justice will be of interest to academics and postgraduate students in: cultural legal studies; law and the image; law, narrative and literature; law and popular culture; cultural criminology; as well as cultural and comics studies more generally."
Carol Tilley on Wertham's Scholarship, Social Science, and Archival Research
Go here for our Crimcast interview with Carol Tilley, assistant professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois. Professor Tilley speaks with us about her research on Frederic Wertham, a figure most known for his scathing attacks on comic books during the 1950s. Wertham is most known for suggesting that comic books influence deviant behavior andjuvenile delinquency.
Tilley recently published “Seducing the Innocent: Fredric Wertham and the Falsifications that Helped Condemn Comics” in Information & Culture: A Journal of History.
Comic Book Crime Event at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK

Legendary writer, editor, journalist, filmmaker, Ann Nocenti, keynote speaker at Graphic Justice Discussions 2018
The Graphic Justice Research Alliance (GJRA) is delighted to announce a call for papers for its annual conference at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, NY to be held October 20, 2018. The theme for this year’s Graphic Justice Discussions is ‘Law, Comics, Justice’, and promises to be an exciting event that will be accessible and relevant to scholars, artists, practitioners, policy-makers, writers, and the general public alike.
We are gratified to announce that legendary comic writer and editor Ann Nocenti will join us as this event’s keynote speaker. Nocenti has lent her distinctive voice to numerous beloved comic book runs, including her writings for Marvel’s Daredevil and DC’s Catwoman, Katana, and Green Arrow. We very much look forward to hearing her observations about the industry, as well as reflections on her latest project, the forthcoming The Seeds, a new four-issue series in collaboration with artist David Aja. The series, part of a new line of Berger Books published by Dark Horse Comics, is described as “An eco-fiction tech-thriller … a story of love beyond race and gender, and of the resilience of both human and animal kind.”
Please join us for what promises to be a stimulating and inclusive occasion!
Send 250-word abstracts to nphillips@sfc.edu
Stay tuned for more details to follow…
The GJRA is a multidisciplinary research network exploring the crossover between law and justice and comics of all kinds.
Popular Culture, Crime and Social Control
Popular Culture, Crime and Social Control is part of the "Sociology of Crime Law and Deviance" series published by Emerald.
Should Superman Kill?
Read our post in the Wall Street Journal discussing the concept of deathworthiness and Superman’s actions in Man of Steel (beware: spoiler alert!).