Call for Book Chapters: "Media and Familicide, Femicide, and Filicide"

Vernon Press invites book chapter proposals for a forthcoming edited volume on “Media and Familicide, Femicide, and Filicide” edited by Maria Marron.

A quick Google search shows there are far fewer studies of familicide and filicide than of femicide and still fewer studies of media representation of each of them. Therefore, this book proposes chapters on media portrayals of familicide, femicide, and filicide across contemporary media globally. Familicide, or family annihilation, often overlaps with the killing or homicide of children and intimate partner homicide, often that of the woman (femicide), and the suicide of the man/perpetrator.

However, familicide is not linked to all femicides. Gender-related killings of women, or femicides, are the most extreme form of violence against women and girls. Femicides are frequently linked to earlier instances of violence in the home, i.e., Domestic Partner Violence or non-lethal Intimate Partner Violence. For example, the case of Ugandan Olympian Rebecca Cheptegei, who died four days after being set ablaze by her ex-partner in Kenya on Sunday, September 1, 2024, is a case in point. The United States has a high level of female homicides, but the nation’s penal code lags behind that of other countries in documenting femicides, thus making it difficult to track and classify the killing of women and girls.

Filicide, the killing of children, is often perpetrated by women/mothers but sometimes is part of familicides, where a man/husband/father kills his wife and family and then kills himself. The killing of children by family members, such as parents, is referred to as intrafamilial child homicide. It often accompanies Intimate Partner Violence, conducted over a long period of time.  Killings are usually the result of pre-existing violent acts, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime 2019 report, Global Study on Homicide: Killing of children and young adults. “Child homicide constitutes the lethal end of a long continuum of violence against children,” the report notes. “Globally, it is estimated that up to 1 billion children aged 2–17 years experienced physical, sexual or emotional violence or neglect in 2017.”

Chapters for the proposed book should examine how the media (print and digital newspapers, magazines, movies, TV, radio, social media, etc.) portray familicide, femicide, and filicide either through either qualitative or quantitative studies. Case studies, theoretical and empirical studies may be conducted; critical/cultural, historical, ethnographic, legal, mixed and other methodologies may be employed. Chapters should focus on ONE of the three “cides,” or on the overlap of some of them. Global perspectives are welcome. Chapters should be approx. 5,000 words in length, including endnotes/references (no more than 25 pages) for a book of approx. 300 pages or approx. 60,000-65,000 words.

Chapters are likely to include:

Table of Contents:

Foreword by the author

1. Familicide, Femicide, and Filicide—Theories and Research Studies, the commonalities
2. Murder in Appalachia: One family takes out another over a child dispute
3. Femicide in Ireland: Media Coverage of Women’s Assault and Murder
4. Filicide in Ireland: A Mother Murders Her Three Children
5. 5-12 Global Entries about various media and familicide, femicide, and filicide
6. 13. Podcasts and True Crime
7. Contributor Biographies

Please send chapter proposal outlines (no more than 500 words, 12 pt. type, Times New Roman font, double spaced) as a Word attachment to Maria Marron, editor, at mmarron2@unl.edu, no later than 5 p.m., Monday, March 31, 2025. Proposal acceptances will be announced no later than mid-May 2025. Completed chapters will be due Friday, Sept. 5, 2025. Questions may be sent to mmarron2@unl.edu.