Based on her Edgar Award-nominated book The Rise of True Crime: 20th Century Murder and American Popular Culture, Dr. Jean Murley examines the true crime genre within popular culture. The lecture will present an overview of the book along with material about high-profile criminal events such as the “Helter Skelter” murders, and a look at true-crime as the subject of blogs and television programs.
Praeger Publishers writes, “The Rise of True Crime, a vibrant and meaningful strand of popular culture, is written for people who read and enjoy true crime, and wish to learn more about it.”
The lecture also explores the centrality of the individual killer and victim, particularly the psychopath. True crime, whose reader audience is largely female, is also a category of literary composition where notions and definitions of evil are presented without ambiguity. The Rise of True Crime examines the cultural work of true-crime, work that is important, compelling, and often misunderstood.
Dr. Jean Murley, an Assistant Professor of English at Queensborough Community College, a College of The City University of New York (CUNY), teaches courses in writing, American literature, mystery, detective fiction, and American popular culture. The Rise of True Crime, Dr. Murley’s first book, has been nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award by the Mystery Writers of America for the best critical/biographical book of 2008.
Dr. Murley is the secretary of the New York Metro American Studies Association and editor of their bi-annual newsletter, The Metro. Her current research interests include crime literature, representations of violence in American popular culture, and hip-hop music and culture. She has published an article about Charles Brockden Brown and Edgar Allan Poe in Understanding Evil: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Rodopi Press, 2003) and an encyclopedia entry on contemporary true-crime literature in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of New American Reading (2008).
Dr. Murley received a B.A. in English from Hunter College in 1997, and a Ph.D. in English, with a certificate in American Studies, from The City University of New York Graduate Center in 2004.