Médecine, criminalité et meurtre

White-Coat Stories: Medicine, Criminality, and Murder 


Call for papers

Conference


Date
June 5, 2026 - June 6, 2026

Location
Romania

Subject Fields
Film and Film History, History of Science, Medicine, and Technology, Law and Legal History, Literature, Public Health


Interdisciplinary Workshop

White-Coat Stories: Medicine, Criminality, and Murder invites scholars, researchers, practitioners, and artists to explore the interplay between medical authority, investigative logic, and criminal transgression across historical periods and media forms. We are particularly interested in the dual figure of the doctor as both potential criminal and detective: healer and killer, diagnostician and investigator, authority and suspect. We welcome contributions that examine how medicine intersects with crime detection, violence, illegality, and moral ambiguity in literature, film, television, history, law, and public discourse.

Possible Topics Include (but are not limited to):

• Doctors as perpetrators: medical serial killers, malpractice, euthanasia, and covert harm
• Physician-investigators in literature, television, and film
• The medicalization of criminality (e.g., insanity defenses, forensic psychiatry)
• Autopsy, pathology, and the forensic gaze in crime fiction and true crime
• Hospitals as spaces of secrecy, conspiracy, or institutional violence
• Gender, race, and power in narratives of medical crime
• Organ trafficking, body commodification, and biopolitical control
• Bioethics and the boundaries of “legitimate” killing
• Representations of medical crime in media

This workshop is part of AICED-27, the 27th ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT, UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST, to be held on 5–6 June 2026

Conference presentations must be in English and will be allocated 20 minutes each, plus 10 minutes for discussion. Prospective participants are invited to submit abstracts of up to 200 words. Proposals should be in .doc or .docx format and also include (within the same document): name and institutional affiliation, the title of the proposed paper, a short bio note (no more than 100 words), 5 keywords, and the participant’s e-mail address.

Please submit proposals to our email addresses, specifying the workshop title, "White-Coat Stories: Medicine, Criminality, and Murder": conf.eng.litcult@lls.unibuc.ro, roxana.doncu@umfcd.ro, monica.manolachi@lls.unibuc.ro, lorena.mihaes@lls.unibuc.ro

Deadline for proposals: 15 March 2026


Conference fee

Early bird: 100 Euro or 500 lei (by 1 April 2026)

Regular: 120 Euro or 600 lei (by 30 April 2026)

MA students and PhD Candidates: 50 Euro or 250 lei

Contact Information

Roxana Doncu, “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Bucharest, roxana.doncu@umfcd.ro

Monica Manolachi, University of Bucharest, monica.manolachi@lls.unibuc.ro

Lorena Mihăeș, University of Bucharest, lorena.mihaes@lls.unibuc.ro

URL
https://engleza.lls.unibuc.ro/conferinte/