HSEM3251H: Sensation—The Past and Future of True Crime

True crime as a genre is exploding in popularity. For example, the first two seasons of the podcast Serial have been downloaded 340 million times. What is at the core of the fascination with these stories? What does this appetite tell us about our culture, ourselves? Whose concerns are elevated? Whose are ignored? And what does consuming this kind of media do to our perceptions of crime levels and safety? Is true crime exploitation or an opportunity for justice? In this course, we will look at the history of the genre, from murder ballads to nineteenth-century newspaper wars where publisher titans Hearst and Pulitzer sent reporters out to solve crimes. We’ll discuss Ida B. Wells’ coverage of the largely overlooked crime of lynching, and the creation of the “nonfiction novel” by Truman Capote with his classic In Cold Blood. We will also explore the influence of this nonfiction form on other genres, like the mystery novel, and analyze the effect of technology on these narratives. Crowdsourced investigations via social media and a return to the serial form of the 19th century in long-form podcasts have been some of the surprising results. We will explore the ethics of this kind of reporting and nonfiction writing and look at the way that the increasing number of diverse voices has changed the genre.

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