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Apr 16, 2026
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CNX 107 - American History in True Crime
Description
Why are we fascinated with true crime stories? With serial killers? Unsolved homicides? We will explore these questions through American true crime stories, which have been a feature of popular culture since the early decades of the 20th century. Their popularity skyrocketed in the 1980s and 1990s with the purported rise in crime and, with this, the explosion of paperbacks, podcasts, and 24/7 crime TV. As proxies for our fears, true crime stories afford a look at American history, its places, its communities, and its secrets. In Cold Blood, the mid-1960s bestseller, tells the story of cold-blooded murder in white, middle-class, rural Kansas. The 1970-80’s “Golden State Killer” raped, killed, and terrorized California communities, but I’ll Be Gone in the Dark (2018) led to the criminal’s apprehension and conviction in 2020. In this seminar, we will examine how true crime stories and their interventions reveal–and conceal–much about American history. Warning: true crime stories contain explicit violence.
Credits: 1
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