The popularity of the true crime genre, including books, podcasts, TV shows, and documentaries, has seen a resurgence over the past decade. It’s certainly had an effect on our media consumption, but it has other consequences, too. In The New True Crime: How the Rise of Serialized Storytelling Is Transforming Innocence (NYU Press*, 2023) , Dr. Diana Rickard, Professor of Criminal Justice and Social Science at Borough of Manhattan Community College, argues that it’s done much more, such as expose the inequalities inherent in the American criminal justice system. In this episode Diana talks with her BMCC colleague, Associate Professor of English Dr. Tracy Bealer, who is well-versed in the world of true crime fiction. You can check out her Substack newsletter, True Crime Fiction, and look out for a forthcoming collection from McFarland that looks at true crime through the lenses of history, ethics, gender, and genre to which she contributed a chapter entitled “A Counterhistory of American True Crime.”
Dr. Rickard mentions a couple of things in the episode that she recalled by name after the fact: an HBO MAX series Mind Over Murder, about the aftermath of an exoneration of several wrongfully convicted people in a small Nebraska town, and the book Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession by Alice Bolin.
This episode continues a collaboration with CUNY Academy. Diana Rickard is a past participant in their book talk series.
*Diana did an interview with NYU Press about The New True Crime.
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