Subject Librarian
Lucinda M. Hall
Contact:
Evans Map Room, Baker-Berry Library
Dartmouth College
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Dartmouth College
25 N Main ST
Hanover, NH 03755
(603) 646-0962
Website Skype Contact: d1128r8@kiewit.dartmouth.edu
Course description
The genre of true crime is wildly popular. Enjoying its sensational narratives for entertainment purposes, however, raises difficult questions. What are the implications for justice when podcasters, documentarians, and tabloids weigh in on high profile cases? How do new visual and social technologies impact the genre? What does our cultural fascination with violence reveal about our society? This seminar offers a critical introduction to the practice of reading and writing true crime. We aim to extend the boundaries of the genre by considering underrepresented harms and unconventional stories. We begin with theory from harm studies and critical criminology that contextualizes the state’s role in defining what constitutes crime. Then we embark on an extended period of self-directed research complimented by shared readings that illustrate the potential of the true crime genre to reveal social harms. Readings include, Slavoj Žižek’s Violence, Jess Walter’s Ruby Ridge, Dave Cullen’s Columbine, and Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. By the end of the term, you will complete a significant independent study that culminates in either an original true crime narrative or a critique of an existing true crime story. Ahead of your final project, you’ll practice a number of real-world short forms, including pitches, proposals, and reviews. You will also experiment with ways of writing-without-writing and pre-writing designed to level-up your skills, build confidence, and cut the stress and procrastination out of your process.
[Source: Registrar, 02/23/2024 ]
In the Library's collections
You can use one of these subject headings to start your research in the library's online catalog:
- reality television programsCall number range is PN 1992.8 .R4 through PN 1992.8 .R43 located on Baker Level 4.
Introductory reading(s)
Crimesploitation: crime, punishment, and pleasure on reality television by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781503631748"Due to the graphic nature of this program, viewer discretion is advised." Most of us have encountered this warning while watching television at some point. It is typically attached to a brand of reality crime TV that Paul Kaplan and Daniel LaChance call "crimesploitation": spectacles designed to entertain mass audiences by exhibiting "real" criminal behavior and its consequences. This book examines their enduring popularity in American culture. ...
Crime watching: investigating real crime TV by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9786612527067In recent years reality TV formats have proliferated on television. One of the most significant and controversial strands within this has been the growth of 'real crime TV.' Encapsulating everything from crime appeal shows to reconstruction programmes and actuality footage shows, real crime TV now plays a major role in our television schedules. [This book] examines the spectacular growth of real crime TV, arguing that the birth of the BBC's Crimewatch UK in 1984 was a key transitional moment in the emergence, expansion and subsequent popularity of these programmes both in the UK and internationally. ...
Criminal justice: a very short introduction by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780191785092The criminal justice system (CJS) is wide ranging: it covers crimes, policing, the sentencing of offenders, and prisons. Criminal Justice: A Very Short Introduction draws upon the latest research and current practices from various countries around the world. Focusing on the adversarial model of justice found in common law countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, it discusses topics such as the uses of imprisonment, the effects of capital punishment, and the purposes of sentencing. Considering the role of the victim throughout the CJS, as well as public knowledge and attitudes towards criminal justice, it critically assesses the way in which the system functions.
Justice on demand: true crime in the digital streaming era by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780814340646Justice on Demand: True Crime in the Digital Streaming Era offers a theoretical rumination on the question asked in countless blogs and opinion pieces of the last decade: Why are we so obsessed with true crime? Author Tanya Horeck takes this question further: Why is true crime thought to be such a good vehicle for the new modes of viewer/listener engagement favored by online streaming and consumption in the twenty-first century? Examining a range of audiovisual true crime texts, from podcasts such as Serial and My Favorite Murder to long-form crime documentaries such as The Jinx and Making a Murderer, Horeck considers the extent to which the true crime genre has come to epitomize participatory media culture where the listener/viewer acts as a "desktop detective" or "internet sleuth." ...
The Palgrave handbook of incarceration in popular culture by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9783030360580The Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture will be an essential reference point, providing international coverage and thematic richness. The chapters examine the real and imagined spaces of the prison and, perhaps more importantly, dwell in the uncertain space between them. The modern fixation with 'seeing inside' prison from the outside has prompted a proliferation of media visions of incarceration, from high-minded and worthy to voyeuristic and unrealistic. In this handbook, the editors bring together a huge breadth of disparate issues including women in prison, the view from 'inside', prisons as a source of entertainment, the real worlds of prison, and issues of race and gender. ...
The Routledge companion to radio and podcast studies by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780367432638This comprehensive companion is a much-needed reference source for the expanding field of radio, audio, and podcast study, taking readers through a diverse range of essays examining the core questions and key debates surrounding radio practices, technologies, industries, policies, resources, histories, and relationships with audiences. Drawing together original essays from well-established and emerging scholars to conceptualize this multidisciplinary field, this book's global perspective acknowledges radio's enduring affinity with the local, historical relationship to the national, and its unpredictably transnational reach. ...
Toward a theory of true crime narratives by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780815385707Toward a Theory of True Crime Narratives vivifies how nonfiction murder stories are told, what role they play in society, and in the form of true crime why they remain enduringly popular internationally on every platform. This book establishes for the first time the actual line¿or dotted line¿between mainstream journalism and the multimedia phenomena of true crime. ...
Selected book title(s)
Antisocial media: crime-watching in the internet age by Call Number: Baker-Berry P 96 .C74 W66 2018ISBN: 9783319639840This book provides a cutting-edge introduction to Internet-facilitated crime-watching and examines how social media have shifted the landscape for producing, distributing, and consuming footage of crime. In this thought-provoking work, Mark Wood examines the phenomenon of antisocial media: participatory online domains where footage of crime is aggregated, sympathetically curated, and consumed as entertainment. ...
Crime, culture and the media by Call Number: Baker-Berry P 96 .C74 C37 2008ISBN: 9780745634654Why are newspapers and television programmes filled with stories about crime and criminals? Is their portrayal of crime accurate? How do the media transform our attitudes to crime? Is fear of crime, for example, really created by the media? The relationships between crime and the media have long been the subject of intense debate. From the earliest days of the printing press to the explosion of cyberspace chat rooms, there have been persistent concerns about the harmful criminogenic effects of the media. ...
Ghost criminology: the afterlife of crime and punishment by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781479870493From Abu Ghraib and Holocaust death camps to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and slave plantations, spaces where violent crimes have occurred can often become forever changed, or “haunted,” in the public imagination. In this volume, Michael Fiddler, Travis Linnemann, and Theo Kindynis bring together an interdisciplinary group of distinguished scholars to study this phenomenon, exploring the origins, theory, and methodology of ghost criminology. ...
The new true crime: how the rise of serialized storytelling is transforming innocence by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781479816071How serialized crime shows became an American obsession TV shows and podcasts like Making a Murderer, Serial, and Atlanta Monster have taken the cultural zeitgeist by storm, and contributed to the release of wrongly imprisoned people--such as Adnan Syed. The popularity of these long-form true crime docuseries has sparked greater attention to issues of inequality, power, social class, and structural racism. ...
The TV crime drama by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780748640881The television crime drama has been a constant of the television landscape since it first migrated from film and radio onto the small screen in the 1950s. Since then, from Dixon of Dock Green to The Wire, from Minder to The Sopranos or Cracker to Dexter, the crime drama has continued to attract large audiences even as the depiction of the crime, the perpetrators and the investigators has changed. This book provides an historical analysis of the TV crime series as a genre by paying close attention not only to the nature of TV dramas themselves, but also to the context of production and reception. ...
Other library resource(s)
Reality television from Oxford Bibliographies Online by Call Number: Electronic resourceISBN: 9780199791286While we can locate the start of the most recent wave of American reality TV in the 2000–2001 season with the premiere of Survivor and Big Brother, the history of the genre reaches back to the very earliest days of broadcast television, with programs such as Queen for a Day and Candid Camera. The current, and perhaps most significant and long-lasting, wave of reality television developed out of a moment of financial destabilization for the broadcast networks. In an environment of rising production costs, intense competition from cable networks, and the appearance of a range of new digital technologies that threatened the very basics of the financing and production of broadcast television, networks welcomed reality formats—many of which were created and sold by European packagers—into their prime-time schedules.
Reality television from Oxford Bibliographies Online - Communication by Call Number: Electronic resourceISBN: 9780199756841Reality television, which can be broadly defined as unscripted entertainment programming, has existed since the emergence of television in the late 1940s. Hidden-camera programs, daytime talk shows featuring ordinary people as guests, and cop shows involving real police officers are some early strands of reality television in the United States and Europe. The late 1990s and early 2000s witnessed a surge of prime-time reality formats that combined the conventions of dramatic entertainment and documentary, including “docu-soaps,” reality sitcoms, adventure games, and makeover programs. ...- Reenactment in cinema and media by Call Number: Electronic resourceISBN: 9780199791286The reenactment is a representational form organized around the reproduction of preexisting situations, actions, and events. The use of reenactments predates the emergence of technically reproducible media. Numerous examples of commemorations, ceremonies, and religious celebrations around the globe, including, for example, passion plays originating in the medieval era depicting the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as well as a wide variety of state-sponsored spectacles, demonstrate that the reenactment has a long history across a range of cultural forms. ...
Podcast information and manuals
Podcasting as an intimate medium by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781003340980This book delves into the notion of intimacy as a defining feature of podcasting, examining the concept of intimacy itself and how the public sphere explores the relationships created and maintained through podcasts. The book situates textual analysis of specific American podcasts within podcast criticism, monetization, and production advice. ...- The Routledge companion to radio and podcast studies by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780367432638This comprehensive companion is a much-needed reference source for the expanding field of radio, audio, and podcast study, taking readers through a diverse range of essays examining the core questions and key debates surrounding radio practices, technologies, industries, policies, resources, histories, and relationships with audiences. Drawing together original essays from well-established and emerging scholars to conceptualize this multidisciplinary field, this book's global perspective acknowledges radio's enduring affinity with the local, historical relationship to the national, and its unpredictably transnational reach. ...
Stories told through sound: the craft of writing audio dramas for podcasts, streaming, and radio by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1991.73 .P22 2023ISBN: 9781493065349From Intimate Family Dramas to Epic Sci-Fi to Large-Cast Musicals, audio drama is a medium without limits, because listeners create the visuals in their mind. In this engaging guide, audio dramatists Barry M. Putt, Jr. lays out the essentials of the form, revealing the top reasons audiences don't connect with a character and how to avoid them, ways to create exciting plot twists, career pitfalls to watch out for, and tips for a dynamic marketing plan that will bring your work to the largest possible audience. ...
Selected True Crime podcasts
- Casefile: True Crime PodcastCasefile is an award-winning true-crime podcast that presents unforgettable stories in a professionally produced audio format. Their episodes delve deep into the circumstances, investigations and trials of both solved and unsolved cases from all over the world. ...
- My Favorite Murder
My Favorite Murder is the original hit true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Since its inception in January 2016, the show has broken global download records and sparked an enthusiastic and dedicated community of listeners, aka Murderinos. ... - True Crime All the TimeHosts Mike Ferguson and Mike Gibson guide you through the most interesting true crime stories. This is a true crime podcast that spares none of the details and delves into what makes these killers tick. ...
Finding scholarly articles & journal title(s)
Crime, media, culture: an international journal by Call Number: Electronic journalCrime, Media, Culture is a fully peer reviewed, international journal providing the primary vehicle for exchange between scholars who are working at the intersections of criminological and cultural inquiry. It promotes a broad cross-disciplinary understanding of the relationship between crime, criminal justice, media and culture. ...
Academic search complete by Call Number: Electronic resourceA scholarly, interdisciplinary article index and a good starting place for article searching on any subject.
Web of science citation databases by Call Number: Electronic resourceThe online version of 3 separate ISI indexes: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index and, Social Sciences Citation Index.
Finding newspaper articles
Newspapers are an excellent source for "true crime" stories. Many newspapers have crime beat reporters. You start your search looking for crime stories to see what you get. If you get a long list, you can use other terms to narrow that search.
I also included a link to Newspaper Research Journal. You can find examples of researchers using newspapers.
Newspaper research journal by Call Number: Electronic journalNRJ answers questions about all aspects of US and foreign newspapers: their content, their staffs, their management (including advertising, circulation, and production) and economics, their technology, their design and layout, their relationships with their communities and democracy, their relationships with journalism educators, journalism ethics, and more. All research methodologies and all relevant theories are welcome. This is a good journal to see newspaper research in action.- U.S. Newsstream byCall Number: Electronic resourceThis database lets you search a collection of current newspapers. Coverage varies from 1980 to the present. You can search a few or all of the newspapers in the collection.
Proquest historical newspapers by Call Number: Electronic resourcesA collection of major regional and ethnic newspapers from their beginning date to a date in the near past. The New York Times goes until 3 years ago, while the Boston Globe only goes to 1989. The Chicago Defender goes from 1905 to 1975.- Newspaper source plus byCall Number: Electronic resourceProvides cover-to-cover full text for 23 national (U.S.) and international newspapers, including USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Post, The Times (London), The Toronto Star, etc.
The database also contains selected full text from more than 200 regional (U.S.) newspapers.
In addition, full text television & radio news transcripts are provided from CBS News, FOX News, NPR, etc. 
Vanderbilt television news archive by Call Number: Electronic resourceDescriptive summaries of the Vanderbilt University collection of network television news programs and other news-related programming collected in its archive since August 5, 1968. Online videos available for some broadcasts from 1999 to the present.
Note: There may a charge to rent some of the video footage.
Social media and Research
Social media as social science data by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781108496414Social media has put mass communication in the hands of normal people on an unprecedented scale, and has also given social scientists the tools necessary to listen to the voices of everyday people around the world. This book gives social scientists the skills necessary to leverage that opportunity, and transform social media's vast stream of information into social science data. The book combines the big data techniques of computer science with social science methodology. ...
Netnography unlimited: understanding technoculture using qualitative social media research by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780367431426Netnography has become an essential tool for qualitative research in the dynamic, complex, and conflicted worlds of contemporary technoculture. Shaped by academic fields, industries, national contexts, technologies and platforms, and languages and cultures for over two decades, netnography has impacted the research practices of scholars around the world. In this volume, 34 researchers present 19 chapters that examine how they have adapted netnography and what those changes can teach us. ...
Research exposed: how empirical social science gets done in the digital age by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780231188760The era of digital communication provides endless opportunities for the collection and analysis of social data in novel ways. It also presents new and unanticipated challenges, as researchers are often inventing elements of their methodologies on the fly or studying a phenomenon or media platform for the first time. Research Exposed offers in-depth, behind-the-scenes accounts of doing empirical social science in this new paradigm. ...
The Routledge handbook of language and media by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781138014176The Routledge Handbook of Language and Media provides an accessible and comprehensive overview of state-of-the-art research in media linguistics. This handbook analyzes both language theory and practice, demonstrating the vital role of this research in understanding language use in society. With over thirty chapters contributed by leading academics from around the world, this handbook: addresses issues of language use, form, structure, ideology, practice, and culture in the context of both traditional and new communication media; investigates mediated language use in public spheres, organizations, and personal communication, including newspaper journalism, broadcasting, and social media; examines the interplay of language and media from both linguistic and media perspectives, ...
Internet resource(s)
- 60 Minutes - Restorative justice
Crime victims form unlikely bonds with wrongfully convicted men. ... - CrimeReads... It’s a single, trusted source where readers can find the best writing from the worlds of crime, mystery, and thrillers—a literary culture that’s more robust than ever, but diffuse. ...
Citing and Tracking Your Bibliographic References
Use this guide to help you learn how to correctly cite and keep track of the references you find for your research.
Keeping up with scholarly journal literature
Want an easy way to keep up with scholarly journal literature in any discipline? And you use a mobile device? You can install the BrowZine app and create a custom Bookshelf of your favorite journal titles. Then you will get the Table of Contents (ToCs) of your favorite journals automatically delivered to you when they become available. Once you have the ToC's, you can download and read the articles you want from the journals for which we have subscriptions.
You can get the app from the App Store or Google Play.
Don't own or use a mobile device? You can still use BrowZine! It's also available in a web version. You can get to it through our online catalog here. The web version works the same way as the app version. Find the journals you like, create a custom Bookshelf, get ToCs and read the articles you want.