provide an overview of the scholarly and popular perspectives on the true crime genre.

For this assignment, you will provide an overview of the scholarly and popular perspectives
on the true crime genre. A literature review is a genre of writing that occupies an important
place in academic work, typically arriving after the introduction in a peer-reviewed journal
article or scholarly book. It provides the reader with a condensed understanding of the
perspectives on a subject up to that moment. Literature reviews should provide the
established or canonical views as well as the dissenting ones; they should provide a sense
of historical context (when did perspectives shift and who/what was responsible for this
shift?), a sense of which authors/works of true crime shifted the discourse, and how the
discussion has evolved up to the present day. While literature reviews are relatively
objective, your voice should not be passive. You are encouraged to move between the
different sources in a way that connects the different voices in terms of how they align and
depart from one another, pose questions, or offer caveats and ruminations on the
scholarship. In other words, you should summarize, synthesize, and evaluate.
With this in mind, you might consider the following:
● definitions/what is included in “true crime”
● criticism of the genre
● praise for the genre
● the potential of the genre
● foundational or defining texts/authors in the genre
● the history and evolution of the genre
● the function of the genre
● audience
● different scholarly disciplines
● race, gender, class, and nation/region
● different/evolving media forms
You may draw from any of the sources assigned in our class, including podcasts. You must
include a minimum of eight secondary sources from three genres. Three of these sources
(accounting for one of the genres) must be peer-reviewed journal articles. The remaining
five sources must represent two other genres of your choice (e.g. book, op-ed, blog post,
magazine article, etc).
Other requirements:
● Minimum of four pages, maximum of six, double-spaced.
● MLA format.
What’s bolded/italicized are my main points
Brainstorming
● Start with definition of true crime
○ its literature that recounts a real crime and its details
■ searches:
● true crime definition
● what is true crime
● seems clear cut and maybe even boring, but it has actually become an entire
industry
○ describe the main audience (women)
■ searches:
● who consu up mes true crime
● theres articles we read that spoke on this
● women and true crime
● this newfound interest of our society into true crime has been further investigated w
the intentions to evaluate WHY it is so sought after…
○ authors have used true crime literature themselves as a basis to investigate:
■ what aspects of true crime consumers find intriguing
■ how does this infatuation with true crime affects our society
■ what role does the author play in true crime
■ how true is true crime (fact (is it a non-fiction) vs. fiction genre)
● use evidence from articles and get more articles (podcasts, etc.)
to flush out these points
● ill go so far to push and say what isnt touched on enough (limited research) on
how exclusive this infatuation is to america and what does that say about our
culture ??? … comes up a few times but not thoroughly examined
○ if you are commenting on the *lack* of something then this is fair. I would suggest
you search for scholarship on true crime in an international setting and if you come
up short, you can say something like “one area that appears under-researched is X.
Aside from [article A and book B], there is very little coverage of true crime outside
of the United States. Whether this is due to the bulk of true crime being produced in
the United States is uncertain, but…..” etc. It’s all in the framing. You are merely
commenting on the literature available, so you’re not deviating from a lit review as
long as you are reviewing the lit (or lack of it).
■ searches:
● what country consumes the most true crime
● is true crime american
● true crime and america
just to reiterate, you are relaying other peoples’ views on these topics; you are not offering an
argument about these topics, using other peoples’ views to back you up. Make sure you do the
former, not the latter, or you will slip into an argument/analysis paper rather than a lit review. All
ideas should be presented as other peoples’ and synthesized in a way that indicates how common
that view is/whether other people disagree/etc.